I HAVE a few friends left in the arguably anti-Scottish Labour Party.

It's fair to say their brains have calcified. They've no ideas nor even intelligent discussion left in them. Their party loyalty is entirely tribal or careerist. Privately, they know the game's up.

On the public stage, volatile boobies like Tom Harris lash out blindly. And if Douglas Alexander is your idea of a statesman, then put down the Plasticine and walk away from the playpen very slowly.

As for electing Ed Miliband party leader (in Britland; what about that grim wifie in Scotia – stairheid rammie, anyone?), yes, that was shrewd. We all know the party is sick, but applying a Milibandage ain't the answer.

It's unfair to pillory Ed because he talks funny and looks like something from The X-Files. But it's fair to criticise him for being shallow. He's playing at being a politician, mouthing the "let us be clear" shibboleths and telling us how "strong" and "firm" he is, as he makes "tough decisions". Well, Ed, when you decide firmly to bog off, do let us know, perhaps through a press release headed: "Miliband clear that he's a berk."

However, not everyone is all bad, except maybe Boris Johnson. And Eddie the Eager has accidentally put his digit on the popular pulse with his call to end Britainshire's "rip-off consumer culture".

It's nothing new, but it chimes with my feelings of late. I've been shelling out left, right and arguably centre for fees and charges. Every day, grasping hands paw me: tradesmen, lawyers, car parks and banks, all wanting a piece of my pie, leaving me crumbs.

I'm battling my bank again. Two months in a row, they charged me for going into the red by tiny amounts of money for a few hours: £25 a throw. Fifty quid for nothing. I protested and, in the ensuing wrestling, learned it was actually £100; ie £50 a throw, more than the amount I'd gone into the red.

Securing an explanation was like getting empathy out of a Tory, but it transpired that, each time, there was a £25 charge plus a £25 "service fee" for the charge. As my mate put it: "They've charged you £25 for being overdrawn and another £25 for the costs involved in charging you £25."

But it doesn't end there: £9.60 for a couple of hours' parking in central Embra; £15 to get into Embra Castle. A gardener who trimmed a short length of leylandii hedge charged £120. The work took him and his mate 40 minutes. That's £90 an hour each: for gardening.

A garage has just charged me £400 for essential work to get my Ford Focus through its MoT, and they want £300 more for another job. How do I know that's what the work is worth? How does anyone outwith the trade? You put your car into a garage and just cross your fingers. You spend your Saturdays humming and also hawing whether to spend £7 on a DVD, then take your car to a garage, whose oily wee man holds out his hand for £740.52, including random tenners here and there for "consumables".

Two different people at the same garage recently quoted me for the same work: with a £26 difference in their quotes. How does that work? Oh, it's just £26? I see your point.

Proletarian tradesmen are worse than bourgeois professionals for quoting humungous sums, then looking at you as if these were somehow normal or easily manageable. "It's only £700. Surely you can afford that?" That's why in the last 20 years we've come to see a plethora of tradesmen's vans in posh suburbs – sitting outside their own homes.

But no-one beats middle-class professionals for ripping off the public. How much does a lawyer charging for administering a will? £170 an hour. Investigating fearlessly, I discovered the charge was standard.

How come we never read about that in the papers? A nurse or fireman asks for an extra quid an hour and they go nuts. Ed Miliband may be nuts too but, for once, the faintly ludicrous fruitcake has had the kernel of an idea: it's time to stop shelling out willy and arguably nilly.