This is how it starts ...

Eric Blair would have liked the headlines in the papers at the moment:

The Observer talks about the creation of a People's Bank.

The ever cheerful Daily Mail demands British jobs for British workers.

There is a simple political term for what is happening in this cold rainswept island off the northwest coast of Europe. It is called National Socialism.

The state is expanding to the point where it has become the economy. Financial services, which used to be 'the engine of our prosperity' - yeah, I can't write that with a straight face either - are now centrally planned in the most Soviet sense of the word.

Civil liberties are being eroded daily. Soldiers die in a far off war every week for reasons no-one can really articulate other than we need to be fighting 'them'. Support our boys on the Malabar front. And now the Government is goading us to blame them foreigners with their garlicky breath and weirdo Polish names made up entirely of consonants for all our difficulties.

And this is only February. What's it going to be like in six months time, when people realise the economy is in genuine depression and not going to recover any time soon?