So Mr Austerity gets paid big bucks to advise banks on cuts

This, of course, makes him well placed to lecture others about financial matters, and charge accordingly (by the way, he is not the only one to cash in his connections – stand up, Mr Blair).

Mere mortals may still like to know the enormity of this off-shoot of political expertise and influence. In the months between his sacking as Chancellor and becoming editor of a London newspaper (September 2016 to April 2017), multi-talented George has charged just over £1,000,000 for his speeches, but more precisely, figures just released by the parliamentary Register of Members’ Interests show that his final three speeches, costed at over £65,000 each, were delivered to HSBC, Nomura Holdings, a Japanese financial company, and Price Waterhouse Coopers, an accounting firm, particularly well known to the tax-dodging elite of this country.

We will all be pleased to know that Mr Osborne has also recorded that each speaking engagement involved work of between five and seven hours. The hourly rate must exceed those enjoyed by most of the Star’s readers.

So there we have it.

The principal architect of the Tories’ austerity programme – the programme that attacked, and still attacks, the poorest and weakest in society, the working poor, the unemployed, the sick, the elderly; the programme that closed libraries, day centres, youth services – works hand-in-glove with the financial institutions – the banks whose mismanagement caused the financial crash, the tax advising firms whose jiggery-pokery ensures that large companies (and in particular multi-nationals) pay little or no tax – gets very well paid for keeping those companies abreast of the latest thinking of financial whizz kids.

I call it disgraceful. What do you call it?

David Askins, Lightmoor