Blame academy

The day of the recent demonstrations in London against the cuts, I found myself talking to a member of the Fire Brigade Union at a party. He had been to the protest that day and reckoned there were a million people demonstrating.

The Metropolitan police declared there were 250,000 and the BBC said about half a million. Someone cannot count. Inevitably, we ended up talking about the cuts, particularly when he found out I was a financial journalist. “I suppose you support all those rich bankers do you?” he asked me. “I’m not actually sure what a rich banker is,” I said. “Those rich bastards who get paid bonuses out of my taxes. It really pisses me off as they caused the whole thing in the first place. And now I am supposed to suffer to bail them out.” He had not had too much to drink so I thought I would t...