In life, I think, people can be separated into two sorts. There are the spenders of worth and there are the creators of worth – or maybe I should say of value.

The people who start with a little resource and fly by the seat of their pants, tenacious in character, create more worth or more value to themselves, their families and businesses. In other words, they make a profit.

You can always hear the spenders – mainly politicians, petty local government bureaucrats and union officials – because they always sound as if it is their money they are spending or giving away. As Margaret Thatcher once commented: “Socialism only works when you are spending other people’s money.”

Without so much as a “by your leave” these folk will dip their sticky hands into your pockets and take your money, by trying to make you spend it for some either impracticable project or some change to guidelines, dreamt up by an inexperienced committee where no single person is accountable.

For example, pensions: the government has decreed that we, the value generators, have to set up and then pay a minimum of 2% contribution into our employees’ newly created pension fund. Why? Please do tell me.

By default, everybody has just received a 2% pay award on top of the National Minimum Wage award increase, totalling nearly 4%… by the back door, for no progress. And we, the creators, have to fund it, while the government takes the applause. There really is something wrong with this equation somewhere.

At the Lib-Dem annual conference recently, one by one, they all got up on the podium to scathe the rich, “the profit-makers”, and they want to tax the rich more.

They all seem to think that by taxing the rich more highly because they, through their own ingenuity, have created value and generated worth so that they can live in a bigger house or drive a bigger car or maybe – “heaven forbid” – send their children to be privately educated, it is going to result in a fairer system.

Surely it is fairer to give everybody the opportunity to create more value or worth for themselves. This will create more employment overall and, of course, greater wealth.

The profit-makers – the employers of distinction – and the true creators of worth should be the celebrities of today. And not, in my opinion, television judges who criticise some poor home baker.

David Smart