National Insurance

We need a permanently higher rate of corporation tax on the banks, with strict regulation to protect workers, consumers, communities and the environment from bearing the costs. The money would be used to reimburse the employers' National Insurance contributions for workers aged under 25, aged 55 or over, or previously long-term unemployed.

Now that the banks are in public ownership, instead of paying out gargantuan bonuses, the profits to which public ownership has restored them should be used for a scheme like this. Rather than taxing the bonuses as a one-off, don't pay them in the first place, and use the money on this instead. Why not?

If anyone on tonight Chancellors' "Debate" were saying these things, then I might not mind so much the messing up of my Monday evening routine: Coronation Street, EastEnders, Coronation Street, Glee, The Cleveland Show, Newsnight, bed. Thank goodness for E4+1. Thank goodness, even if only this once, for BBC Three.

But curse, curse and curse again whatever force has delivered us no better alternative than George Osborne or Vince "Smash The Unions" Cable. Where is our national insurance policy against this baleful state of affairs, and how do we claim on it?