As I explore the strange and unfamiliar landscape of global finance, I find myself feeling like the newborn Bambi. I beg information of the more worldly creatures around me but they just laugh at my questions.

How about the unfortunate Jerome Kerviel. The lowly trader wipes out £3.7 billion belonging to France’s second largest bank and is now under investigation by the police and on bail.

What a dick. He made the classic mistake of being a lone rogue trader instead of running with the flock. Jittery traders wiped £77 billion off FTSE share prices last week. But in this instance, they were all allowed to go home to their wives and Porsches. It was the rest of us who were told we’re in trouble.

And how about public sector workers? They’ve been told not to expect inflation-busting pay increases and warned that their demands threaten the economy. They haven’t been called ‘the enemy within’ just yet but give it time. A Sun headline screeching ‘TRAITORS!’ can only be days away.

Conversely, the gas and electric companies have announced inflation-buggering price rises. And yet their profits are astronomical. Quite right too: passing those profits on to the consumer would be madness and very probably communist. Being good capitalists, there’s no question of the privatised power companies threatening the country’s well-being. Gordon Brown isn’t saying they’re threatening financial stability so obviously they can’t be. Customer disconnections are up mind, but it’s probably only poor people who are suffering and they no doubt deserve it.

Thanks God for privatisation. It’s been a boon. A few pensioners might freeze to death as well with a bit of luck, freeing up NHS beds and (if they’re in the nick) much-needed prison places. The fish doesn’t rot from the head down in this country, attrition starts at the bottom. We all know it, we should just have the guts to be honest about it.

And how about Shell’s newly announced annual profits, eh? Wowee! A new record for a British firm apparently. I don’t know about you but I’m swelling with patriotic price this morning. It now costs £40,000 to drive a mile. Or something like that. Looks like war in Iraq was worth every penny, no? If you’re an oil executive, I mean.

Now don’t get me wrong, we have to price people off the roads for the good of the planet and poor people seem the best demographic to start on. Attrition*. They don’t vote, they smell, they squabble amongst themselves and don’t threaten the rest of us unless we’re foolish enough to stray into their enclaves.

No wonder they drink, they’re so poor. Sorry, reverse that. No wonder they’re poor, they’re so drunk. This blog’s compassion valve is leaking again, sorry. No, just think of all the Vauxhall Novas and Ford Fiestas we’re taking off the roads, freeing the highways and byways for school-running** 4×4s.

I don’t know why we don’t simply ban poor people from buying petrol outright and make them dump their money in a huge bucket marked ‘Big Oil’. The effect would be much the same and the rest of us would get to feel a little more superior about our own shitty little lives.

This is all very hectoring I know and I don’t wish to come across as the little boy pointing and laughing at the naked emperor. If for no other reason than the emperor isn’t in the all-together. He’s kitted out with the finest ankle-length mink coat, Savile Row suit and diamond-top cane. You want to see the size of his cigar. And his grin.

* Bless you.
** A new insult. Scowl at your neighbour as she loads her foul offspring into her tractor to drive them half a mile to school. She’s an enemy of the state. Not a drug-runner or a gun-runner, but a school-runner.