WE have witnessed an austerity budget the like of which has not been seen for more than 30 years to try to rectify a balance of payments deficit greater than any since the last world war.

At least there was a good reason for the 1946 deficit – Europe was in ruins and our economy war-ravaged.

This time there is no good reason. No reason, that is, except exceptional risk-taking by bankers driven by their own greed and the promise of fat bonuses and profits. For this reason alone, a whole generation of people must now toil and suffer.

Many of those in the public sector who are perceived to be making nothing that can be sold at a profit are to lose their jobs, while those who previously made things that could be sold were despised by politicians and bankers alike and bankrupted on the altar of cheap imports.

They are now to be resurrected and as a means of displaying our innovation and perhaps our salvation.

It seems a little late after years of thinking that the UK was fit for purpose only on the backs of our banking system.

It leaves me wondering: what were our astute politicians thinking of while all this was going on? For the most part we find that they were thinking mostly of themselves, so Nero fiddling while Rome burned became MPs fiddling while Britannia sank.

Salavaging Britannia is a task fit only for heroes. Are there any heroes still left out there? I wonder.

Douglas Mills, Fraser Road, Poole