Bloody hell. That’s British manufacturing really finished isn’t it? Apart from illegal wars, call centre workers, minor celebrities and hospital superbugs, about the only thing we’ve produced worth a damn in the last few years has been buy-to-let landlords. We’ve been like a tropical island economy that has only coconuts to barter with. Now it turns out the products are faulty and actually dangerous. They make lead-painted Chinese toys look like lollipops.

And so, the nation owns Bradford & Bingley’s buy-to-let landlords and looks like it will do for some time. Seeing as nobody else wants them and they don’t seem to have much other uses, couldn’t we put them to proper work for the good of the country? You know, community service or something.

They could wear high visibility jackets so the public could see justice at work. We could send them rented door to rented door to explain to nurses, teachers and other key workers why there isn’t enough affordable housing to go around. Send the landlords to rural ghost towns to explain why the local economy is knackered and why the original residents’ children can’t afford to live in their home villages.

Such people are puzzled as to why their prospects are in the shitter and who better to explain it to them than those who helped bring it about?

We are, after all, living in a ’something for something, nothing for nothing Britain’. Gordon says so.