Gaby Hinsliff writing in the Guardian observed with sadness that those little treats enjoyed by middle earners are becoming less affordable. I pondered why this might be.

My mind turned to the larger stage of public expenditure and I see much the same picture as I have observed before. Schools are squeezed so PTAs have to fund raise for basics. The NHS is squeezed. After an operation I was invited to help fund raise, again for basics. Our military has been operating on a shoe string for years. We don’t have anyway near enough social housing. Libraries and swimming pools have closed. Roads have pot holes, trains are dirty. One million children live in poverty.

Yet, we are the seventh wealthiest country in the world!

As I have written before, that wealth is tied up in land and buildings the cost of which has been driven up by wealth from overseas. It is a fiction, or is it?

The bail out of the banks after 2008 massively increased government borrowing which the Conservatives sought to address through austerity rather than recovering money from banks and their owners. In its own way productivity has shifted reward from labour to capital increasing the wealth of its holders. All the statistics point to fewer and fewer people holding the nation’s wealth. It is 1984.

To my mind there is an overwhelming case for redistribution through taxation and the current talk about reviewing the taxation of property seems a good starting point.