In an ideal world, Linnet and I would like to refurbish our home, the schooner Leopard Normand III, at a cost of about £100,000. We would also like to have extensive dental work done and to help some relatives back in the UK. Many charities need help. We would love to buy a permanent mooring and to be able to afford flights to visit friends and family all over the world. Of course, this is a wish list.

The reality is that we have to live on a strict budget and must be responsible enough to stay within the constraints of that budget. In a way, every household (or boat-hold) is a microcosm of government. The difference is that government these days appears to be financially incompetent, to the point of stupidity and lacking in common sense to the point of imbecility. Those in charge of national finance fail, comprehensively, to understand that it is the people's money that is being spent, not theirs.

When government representatives assure people that 'the government' will underwrite something or 'pay for' something they give the impression that they have funds at their disposal that were not provided by the tax-payers when, obviously, that cannot be the case unless it is money they have acquired by selling off national assets, which comes to the same thing.

When government borrows billions, it is doing so in the name of the tax-payer who will have to make repayments long after the job of governing has changed hands. The giving of foreign aid, usually to despots who will bank all of it in a personal Swiss bank account anyway, is done without asking those whose money is being so liberally splashed around whether they might not prefer to see major local and national problems solved first.

When government commits the nation to participating in a war, regardless of the fact that there is no direct reason for such an action, it plunges all of us into a world that is more dangerous than it need be, and at present is more so than it has ever been since the end of the second World War. Trying to push democracy down the throats of others is no less tyrannical then any of the objectionable behaviour that sparks such activity. Especially when democracy so clearly does not actually exist!

What any reasonably intelligent person could figure out very easily (if only they had the time between struggling to earn enough to pay the mortgage and figuring out what else could be sacrificed to meet the shortfall) is that hiring millions of extra civil servants at the same time as allowing millions of able-bodied people to live on benefits is a recipe for financial disaster.

Add to this a police force that only the innocent need fear, schools that leave pupils illiterate and violent roaming the streets and hospitals that appear to be more dangerous to the health than staying at home and hoping illness will simply pass, and you have a recipe for social disaster as well.

'Mistakes' made by government would result in instant dismissal, if not a jail term for fraud, if perpetrated in the world of commerce! Using tax-payers money to bail out financial institutions that have heretofore had a license from the government to steal from the public, in exchange for swelling the tax coffers, is adding insult to injury.
This is not only poor budgeting, it is deranged and reckless spending. It is difficult for us to imagine how this new political elite can still expect respect from the population at large.

Until government realises that the adage "Charity begins at home" is not just empty rhetoric, the tax-payer will continue to be treated like geese that lay golden eggs. Let's hope government doesn't decide to ignore another old adage - the one about the foolishness of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs... It is not only the Exchequer that is unfit for purpose - government as a whole has become that way.