I refer, not to the weather, but to the disgustingly self-pitying state of the nation. Anyone would think we couldn't take a crisis or two in our stride without indulging in such orgies of self-pity as would put the average banana republic to shame. Is this not a nation of resilient shopkeepers that has kept any number of nasty dictators and tyrants at bay?

So what if petrol has risen by a few pence? Is is not for the general good? Should we not just tighten our belts and leave our gas guzzlers in the garage and make the brats walk to school with their security guards instead of encouraging widespread indolence and obesity? And if the cost of food is rising too, is that not all for the best as well? To your allotments, children of Britannia. Dig for victory and cheaper vegetables!

To hear the moans and rending of clothes just because a little common sense has at last been introduced into the vastly over inflated housing market one would think the the end of the world is nigh, nay, already upon us! A credit crunch? About time I say, all those overdressed women holding up us pensioners at the supermarket checkout while they shuffle through their pack of credit cards to pay for a can of beans. Cash was good enough for generations of the great British nation, and it should be good enough for us.

The collective hysteria at the re-introduction of some reality into the British way of debt is astounding to behold. Whole generations are being forced into debt from student loans, impossible house prices, cheap credit and the sheer inevitability of some kind of cold shower of reality has been so obvious for a long time. Government has relied on everyone feeling better off, simply because the price of their house was rising, ignoring the basic fact that it was all total fiction. The emperor's clothes writ large. Sub Primes and Northern Rock thankfully have blown such a large hole in this tissue of lies that it and the politicians responsible, should be sunk without trace in the inevitable complete collapse that will mark the next election.

If ever there was an argument for a political system which demanded that no politican should spend a penny of our money without a national vote, if necessary on an annual basis, then this is it. We have the crazy situation where the Bank of England is fixed like a rabbit in the headlights. Put up interest rates to reduce inflation or reduce them to encourage growth? One will produce a deeper recession, the other will push inflation into double digits. God help us, because those we have elected plainly cannot while they are busy feathering their own nests at our expense.

To the barricades mes braves while we can still afford the petrol for the Molotov cocktails!