Wasting money and saving money

Times are tough everywhere, Ireland included. And today a television channel is advertising a programme about how much money we wasted in the last decade! Really, are things not bad enough, without people making money from telling us about how our government wasted our money.
It's not as though we can actually do anything about it now. We spent 51 million Euro on electronic voting machines that don't work, plus 5 million on 25-year contracts to store these useless machines. We're now about to embark on (presumably further contracts! More millions!) a programme of disposing of said machines.
Now, do we want our noses rubbed in it by watching a tv programme tell us what fools our government have been, and by extension ourselves have been. I mean, we did elect them, didn't we? I think I'll turn off the tv and save myself 10c in electricity!
Meanwhile, my family have taken up knitting. It started with the eldest daughter- she raided my box of (unused) wool in the attic, and found some beautiful alpaca, lots of different colours, which is fast becoming a giant scarf. Today I taught her how to do purl, and dug out my collection of old knitting patterns. Some of these belonged to my dear Mum, who was a knitter supremo. She knitted "continental style"- one needle under the arm. That's how I knit also. And now the daughter has learned this method too! It's much faster, and that counts for lots in my book. Today the boy decided he'd knit too. Now, 4 years ago he knitted all our Christmas presents, and very impressive they were too. His teacher's mother came down all the way from Donegal to teach the class. We got stocking decorations to hang on the tree, the sisters got shoulder bags. So it will be an interesting few weeks till they get fed up.
There is a new movement to get grandparents to teach their grandkids these type of forgotten skills. I'm all for it. Wouldn't it be fun to learn how to churn butter, or weave. We'll save a fortune and then we can make a tv programme about it and make even more money!