The statement "the personal is political" may have lost clout for some (and never had any for others), but not for me. I don't mean party political, but rather the workings of power in general. If my personal beliefs are out of sync with my activities in the world, then my life is not what it could be.

To be repeatedly put down and witness others being put down induces a sense of powerlessness. Anger is for fighting back, righting wrongs, striking a blow for justice. It is evolutionarily adaptive. Anger is what brings people out onto the streets. It brings about anti-discrimination legislation and Arab Springs. Anger is also why — given half a chance — the disenfranchised tear things apart.

Just as suicide bombings are not cowardly acts, vandalism and rioting are not mindless. Don't get me wrong. Saying that something is neither cowardly nor mindless is not to say it's right. Describing is not endorsing. And as philosopher Peter Singer points out, just because something is doesn't imply that's how it ought to be. For example, out of our awareness of the innate human capacity to inflict damage come our collective efforts to curb it. In contrast, rather than curbing the meanest and greediest of activities, market economics applauds them. Why enforce laws against violence and theft at the same time as freeing the market to take whatever it can?

The question isn't rhetorical and the answer's not rocket science. What investment banker has to spend more than the odd moment (for eample using public transport, having forgotten to remove his Rolex) worrying about imminent physical attack? On the other hand, what investment banker doesn't spend a great deal of time worrying about losing a centillionth of his freedom to reap in squillions for doing precisely nothing productive? The 1 per cent knows how to look after itself.

Which brings me to the Occupy movement. As an aside, I'd target the top 10 per cent that owns 85 per cent of global wealth. The rest is the 90 per cent; more than half of which shares just 1 per cent of the wealth. Current statistics on global wealth disparity equate it to a scenario where, out of a 100-person population, one person receives $900 and each of the others, $1.