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“Bugger this for a lark, I’m changing the channel – this is making me too ragey.”

I was doing a jigsaw and watching something by Al Murray. It was on Dave. He was ranting about banks “throwing away all our money”.

Now, I love shouting about “hilarious” bollocks as much as the next dimwit, but there was a major flaw in his, ahem, arguement, that rubbed me up the wrong way.

I admittedly don’t know much about economics: as far as I’m concerned, my earnings exist as potential Koppaberg and Irregular Choice shoes. Oh, and noodles. In fact, along with the rest of the country, I know only that we’re all a bit screwed, in so much as the prices of bread and electricity and optimism are on the rise, and that that guy is one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The bank managers apparently have personal vaults housing their collection of innocent civilian souls, cooped up in specimen jars like underfed jellyfish. Our economic standing in the world is a glorified a high school popularity contest, only it’s a whole country’s money you’re messing with, not how someone feels about their ability swap saliva with well fit ladz, innit.

According to so many people, all of this is the fault of the banks. The government. We gave them tax money and they gave us a global cock up. And us? We had nothing to do with any of it.

That’s pretty much what Al Murray said. The truth is far less popular.

What happened was that we believed our own bullshit and kept spending invisible money that the bank so kindly gave us. We took our little bits of plastic and we spent them on things we couldn’t afford. We spent the invisible money and then said “Oh, hang on, I actually can’t give that back.”

“It’s down to the banks! They shouldn’t give invisible money! They squandered our imaginary tenners!”

No, that’s like blaming Maccy D’s for your obesity – it’s not their fault you ate 3 Big Macs for breakfast every day.

I’m not saying the government and the banks had no role in it – of course public spending is a major issue and one that has perhaps not been as carefully handled as it should have been, and maybe there should have been tighter controls on credit and the like. But maybe it’s time people started looking at their own financial failings too, rather than blaming everyone around them.