It grows on trees

Despite the spectre of "efficiency savings" (or cuts as they used to be known), there is a certain schadenfreude, not to say smugness, within the public sector about how prudent and wise they have been in managing their budgets (Icelandic savings accounts notwithstanding) - in direct contrast with the UK banking industry.

In this week's Municipal Journal, Mike Suarez, Director of Finance at Lambeth Borough Council, in London, wrote: "We haven't had to take hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money to bail us out just to be solvent".

Hate to burst your bubble, Mike, but where do you think it comes from? Surely that's exactly what keeps you in the black?