IT was one of the scariest nights of my life. It was February 18, 1987, and my livelihood was hanging by a thread.

I WAS at a party the other night. Lovely affair, generous host and hostess, plenty of food and drink (we were taking a taxi home). And not, by any means, a left-wing group, although they were all utterly charming.

HOW did the Government manage to bring in a budget of such fundamental unfairness? How was it possible to get it so badly wrong that the authority of government itself has been perhaps fatally undermined?

I’m not advocating that we should abandon the pension reserve fund to pay for day-to-day expenditure.

THROUGHOUT our country there has never been fear like there is right now.

SO we’ve bailed out the banking sector. Yes, it had to be done. But look at the risk involved.

SO, capitalism is in crisis. The Americans have had the most extraordinary week when a crisis in the financial markets got mixed up in the presidential election.

WHAT a week of irony. The Progressive Democrats finally decided to fold up their tents and at the same time the world’s leading exponents of the free market all begged and pleaded for state intervention.

IT WOULD be reassuring, wouldn’t it, to be certain that convicted sex offenders were being monitored.

I WAS upbraided in the street by a fairly senior civil servant last week. He was polite, of course, as all senior civil servants are. But he made it pretty clear he thought I was talking through a certain part of my anatomy when it came to public spending.