The Government wants us to bankroll our way out of recession. It's brought in a raft of measures to convince us to do a Viv Nicholson and spend, spend, spend.

Mr Darling is going to borrow £78 billion this year and £118 billion next to cut income tax, give extra cash to parents and pensioners. Oh, and he's knocking 2.5 per cent off VAT.

That's great, but the trouble is that 2.5 per cent of anything is, well, peanuts.

Let's face it, a 2.5 per cent drop in VAT is about a penny off a Mars Bar. Do you honestly think anybody's going to bother to change the prices on smaller items? Me neither.

Then there are the repercussions. We're going to have to pay for all this largesse. Through the nose.

I'm really looking forward to the hikes in national insurance, the duty on booze and fuel staying higher – because that won't drop when VAT goes back to normal or even higher – and all the measures they will bring in to try to reduce the national debt.

Still the Government has been pretty clever, don't you think? By putting off the rises until after the next election, it has given itself time to sort things out. Or, alternatively, it has passed the problem on to the Tories. No wonder they are complaining about a tax timebomb.

Oddly enough, I don't blame the Govern-ment for this mess. No, I blame greedy fat-cat bankers.

Their dodgy get-rich-quick investments managed to turn a little local difficulty with American sub-prime mortgages into a worldwide crisis.

I speak as a Northern Rock shareholder – and as someone whose only other shares have sunk from over a fiver each to, last week, a grand 7p.

So I have some sympathy with some Swiss investors who decided enough was enough.

Someone once said the only thing the Swiss had ever given us was the cuckoo clock. But they've given us more than that – they've given us a way forward.

Everyone thinks of them as rich and dull. But it hasn't always been like that. In the 19th century they endured famine and that has stayed in the collective memory. So if you mess with their money, they don't like it.

Bosses of the struggling UBS bank ran to their government begging for help but still gave themselves huge salaries. They stood god-like under spotlights on a raised dias at the bank's annual meeting. Big mistake.

A furious shareholder jumped on to the platform, buttonholed the chairman and ordered him to hand back his fat bonus. He then reached into his pocket, pulled out a string of sausages and waved them under his nose, saying: "Here, just in case you go hungry, I've brought you something to eat."

Others are threatening to feed the UBS top brass to the crocodiles.

How do you think British bank bosses would react to such a proposition? Feel like finding out? I know I do.

jane.percival@halifaxcourier.co.uk