Nick Clegg plays Robin Hood today

Some say the party conference season is just like a series of pantomimes. Well, if that is so, the Liberal Democrats are putting on Robin Hood with Nick Clegg in the starring role as Robin of Locksley himself. Vince Cable, as Friar Tuck, is the Treasury spokesman of the LibDems. He is all for a 0.5% annual levy on the most expensive homes in Britain, raising £1 billion in extra tax. This would apply to the extra value over the £1 million mark. Are there that many million-pound mansions in the country? The Lib Dems say about 250,000 property-owners would pay about £4,000 a year each on average mostly in the South-East of England. The tax would be based on Land Registry valuations. That includes quite a few properties worth considerably more that £1 million.

Nick Clegg says, "I think people, even at the top end, now accept we need to try and rebalance things a bit so that everyone moves together - the whole of society moves together. This is a small correction which I think will make a big difference for people who are really struggling to make ends meet." I am all for helping people out but "rebalancing a bit" is surely not going to help matters much in the struggle to pay back our National Debt.

He says the reason for the new tax was "fairness" and rebalancing "one of the most unfair tax systems around". Granted, but we need a powerful hedgecutter to trim things back, not a puny pair of secateurs!

VAT will have to go up. Bank bonuses will have to be curtailed. Corporation tax will have to go up. Public spending will have to be seriously reduced. It will hurt, but this is the time to take off the rose-tinted specs and get a pair of glasses that gives us 20/20 vision!