Richie - tin hats off for the moment, by all means. Here's what it all looks like from one retired person's perspective:

My CV: Lower-middle class family background (rising from generations of miners and agricultural labourers); scholarship to public school; university; jobs in broadcasting and higher education interlocking with jobs as musician; always paid my way; no debts, no mortage; retired now and living in small but pleasant house in small but pleasant village in Sussex; two cars, including one ancient Volvo for gigging gear; taxed at source, even on my modest pension; one hard-working son; two small grandchildren.

I've never had the opportunity to buck the system - tax and Nat Ins., etc., were taken off me for 47 years. I've never been self-employed - the musical life has earned peanuts - and thus not able to claim tax or business perks. In short, a life of exemplary averageness!

And now, after living through a period when, from Thatcher onwards (deregulation of the UK and US banks, and the start of the monetarist system which sowed the seeds of financial greed - borrowing-to-lend, sub-prime mortgage loans, etc., etc.), after living a reasonable, almost exemplary financial life - after all this, I'm told "we're all in it together". But plainly, we're not all in it together. It's utterly galling, to me, to see immense bonuses being paid to senior bankers who, through greed and bad business practices, have demanded to be bailed out by people like me. Of course there are some scroungers on the state benefits system. In my village of around 5,000 souls, there are a handful of lazy sods who get away with what they can - but they're NOT the main problem.

If tax was clawed back from large businesses who use the system to avoid paying what they should pay to function in this country (for example), then a very large amount of money would swell the coffers. You see, it's not a refusal on my part to accept the fact that money needs to be saved - I quite understand the dilemma facing the country - it's a huge anger at where that money is to come from, knowing who the causers of the problem are.

If you can at least understand that point of view - I'm not asking you to agree with it all or in part - then we needn't have quite so much of the tin hat mentality.