Brian Greene Budget comment

"Rashers, applying his mind to the matter, began at the beginning. Anything that lived; men, women, children; dogs, pigeons, monkeys; even lesser things like cockroaches, flies and fleas, had to eat. He had been of their company for long enough to sympathise with them all - the child rooting in the ashbin, the cat slinking along the gutter, the cockroach delicately questing along the wooden joins of the floor, its grey blue body corrugated with anxiety. These were sometimes his competitors, but more often his brothers. He could never watch a dog nosing in a bin without a feeling of sympathy and fellowship."

"Emergent service workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains" doesn't have the same ring to it, was one response to the recently published Great British Class Survey, which itself concluded that traditional social divisions of upper, middle and working class are out of date in 21st century Britain.

The reality of what the bank bailouts mean for working class communities is very real. Billions are already being sucked out of public services and publicly funded programmes - and worse is to come.