I was interviewed for a project recently which explored the concept of 'the common good'.

It’s difficult to even define the term without slipping into an image of some nirvana, a happy-clappy utopia where nobody is selfish and everything is perfect.

It doesn’t exist.

But without some common good, it would be every man or woman for themselves and the survival of the fittest inevitably means the weak will be left to struggle.

When asked what the core elements of the common good are, I rhymed off a few well-worn worthy attributes including empathy which one dictionary describes as 'the ability to understand and share the feelings of others'.

I think it goes a lot deeper even than that and think of the Book of Romans, which says it means we should 'rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep'.

The current cost of living crisis should put it up to us to search within ourselves to see how much we identify with those struggling to pay the bills, to eat and heat and people who are generally struggling today.

An English Tory MP, Lee Anderson has suggested that, in fact, the amount of use of food banks is exaggerated and he suggested he could make meals for 30 pence. He could do this by buying £50 worth of fresh meat and vegetables and cook a batch of 170 meals.

I suppose I’m showing myself up as one of the decadent lucky ones, but I nearly choked over my £2.50 Americano coffee when he said: “There are generations of people out there that simply haven’t got the skills to budget and do a proper weekly shop like we used to back in the day.”

Under fire for his comments, Mr. Lee suggested that he really just wanted to help people, and he was backed up by our now-former politician Arlene Foster when she told her audience that she believed in “self-help” and cited her Girl Guide experience when she learned from uniformed organisations “getting young women to understand the need to budget and how to cook".

How altruistic of Mr. Lee to so unselfishly seek to help the vulnerable to help themselves.

In another interview, his party colleague Rachel Maclean suggested the Government wanted people to protect themselves better from the rising cost of living. It might mean them taking on more hours or finding a better job.

Ms Maclean has since hit out at the portrayal of her interview, pointing out that she meant it as a short-term solution and it would only apply to certain people. So that’s all right then.

Aside from the fact that it’s not all that easy to get a better job, and that rising inflation means that people’s wages now buys less food, one commentator helpfully illustrated how ineffective working extra hours would be to the five million families now on Universal Credit.

To get an extra £100 a minimum wage a person would have to work about 10 more hours or nearly two days a week. They would pay more income tax and National Insurance, and of course their Universal Credit would be reduced. So, by working those extra hours they’d take home about £30 he suggested.

Still, nice idea.

Whatever the statistics are about food banks, there is a real reliance on them in many quarters, and for a country that is supposedly the fifth richest in the world to have five million families relying on financial help is not good to say the least.

So we buy into the narrative that the country can’t really afford it and that far too many people take advantage and those feckless lot need to do more for themselves.

This week, the governor of the Bank of England actually used the word “apocalyptic” to describe possible rising food prices. I’m not sure about the term which I thought meant a cataclysm in the clash between good and evil.

As one comedian said, language nowadays is changed, 'legend' once meant things like taking a sword out of a stone, now it could be your partner unexpectedly returning home with a chocolate treat!

Still, the fact that such an establishment source as the Bank of England is using the term to warn about the seriousness of a deepening cost of living crisis should be a massive red flag to a Government still reluctant to hit energy companies making extraordinary profits with a windfall tax. While cutting help for ordinary people.

So telling people to help themselves, in my opinion, doesn’t really show much empathy.

People such as the couple from Wigan featured in Sky News reports this week.

Godfrey Ward, aged 77, and his wife, Jeanette worked hard all their lives to afford their own home. But their combined weekly pensions don’t cover their bills, and they certainly can’t afford the £2,000 it would cost to fix their broken boiler.

With no hot water or heating for months, they’re glad we’re into spring.

Godfrey says “We’ve had two bad winters and luckily we’ve got through it. But I don’t think we’ll survive another one.”

But, hey, I’m sure Mr. Lee’s advice on budgeting will prove very useful.

(To digress for one paragraph, there’s a television advert for the Alzheimer’s Society where the woman repeatedly asks her husband what time they’re leaving at; if you’ve been watching it without a lump in your throat, then you haven’t got an empathic bone in your body. So this column's hope of considering others will probably pass you by anyway.)

And also in Wigan, one food bank is now doing 'cold boxes', food which doesn’t need to be heated because there are too many recipients who can’t afford the gas or electric to cook them.

Here in Northern Ireland, despite all the pre-election promises about tackling the cost of living crisis, other political considerations are trumping a return to Stormont.

And it’s not just food. One man I spoke to at the shop recently spoke to me about the delay in his cancer treatment and his worry that it was spreading.

There are many people who are vulnerable and struggling and it’s 2022.

Where is the common good in today’s world? Where is the empathy for other people? Or has selfishness taken over in an 'I’m all right Jack' world.