The recent firago about First Direct bank’s plan to charge its poorer customers £10 a month for the privilege of using their money (disclosure: my wife is a customer though unaffected by the move) re-focussed my mind on something which has been bugging me for some time.

It’s this: just exactly when was it decided that a company is somehow failing if it doesn’t increase its profit margin, year on year, by some obscene percentage?

These are not poor companies. These are businesses whose profits are measured in millions of pounds. Their shareholders already earn substantial amounts on their investment.

What’s more, this is an unsustainable expectation which is totally out of touch with common sense. Does the owner of a vineyard expect a vintage harvest every year, each better than the last? Of course not!

Yet somewhere in the rarified atmosphere of global finance there are greedy, amoral and corrupt idiots feeding the fires of such expectations.

We all know what the results of these pressures are - continued “cost-cutting”, with thousands of people thrown out of gainful employment and those “lucky” enough to be left in work facing such pressures that are unrealistic, unfair and highly damaging to their health and happiness, to their families and to society in general. The “ASBO culture” isn’t a societal accident - it has deep roots and causes.

When Christmas starts on November 3 (the earliest I can ever recall seeing a “festive” TV ad) what hope for those caught in the great machine?

Times like this, you think Lenin had a point…