THIS IS NOT ANY OLD GREED ...

Remember the good old days? When you were doing a DIY job that you’d been putting off for almost a year but your missus had eventually nagged you into doing … and you found you hadn’t got enough long screws in your toolbox to finish the job.

Ah, in those good old days you’d jump in the motor, gun down to Homebase, have a bit of a browse, get some screws almost like the ones you needed, and gun back.

Now you think, Buggered if I’m going to waste petrol just for some screws! So the job gets put on the back-burner until you’ve got a shopping list of at least half a dozen items you need at Homebase. But then you can only go on 10 per cent discount day.

Well, yesterday I needed some printer ink cartridges for a paying job, not any old DIY job, and I seriously thought several times about leaving it till I had a decent shopping list for stationery. But then I came to and did what I had to do. Leaving me with one thought as I drove there and back – if the price of oil is dropping, why aren't petrol prices coming down with the speed they went up?

What a con.

But hold … do my eyes deceive me? Gas prices are going up 35 per cent!? So now this coming winter we’ll have to decide if we need to keep warm a little bit at a time, or save it all up for the weekend and have a good old warm in front of the fire or round the radiator.

I watched the mealy-mouthed boss of Centrica on TV this morning explaining it all terribly reasonably, blaming everything and everybody except Centrica and having the gall to praise their special tariff for the vulnerable. We’re all fucking vulnerable, mate! Unless we’re on the corporate bandwagon.

That’s what gets me as much as anything. This isn’t just corporate greed; this is also individual, executive greed. The MD has to have his massive bonus, whether he deserves it or not, the non-executive chairman has to have his literally unearned whack, the finance director will have worked out how much he can get away with in unearned shares and pension contributions, the rest of the board and key senior managers also have a hefty bonus scheme to protect, and then we come down to middle management, junior management, local management, line managers … all protecting and perpetuating this huge trough so they can gradually shift up a bit until they get their snouts in the really deep bit.

Tossers.

Phew! Just as well I've got some more ink...