I’m reading Extreme Money at the moment. It’s slow going. For one thing it’s information heavy, jumping from idea to idea as it traces the history of the modern obsession with the market. I’m also already angry at the politicians who are destroying all the good things in our country, and this book shows up the emptiness of the ideology they’re hurting us all for.

The financial sector- the thing the Tories will kill and destroy to protect- isn’t a house built on sand. It’s an ugly and decrepit Disney castle held together by a string of lies and floating on the hot air generated by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of economics. The experts whose study is cited to justify austerity can’t even add up a column in Excel. If they’re incapable of the intellectual rigour required to check their sums, why on earth are we letting their ideas ruin our lives?