All in this together.

This is a view over the rooftops of Kirkby Lonsdale, the smallish town where I live. It has a couple of thousand residents although there are lots of villages and hamlets in the surrounding area. By way of illustration, the secondary school in KL has 1400 pupils.

For various reasons, not least because of the success of the school, the town has a very mixed population in terms of age, income and - dare I use that nebulous phrase - class. By and large, it's a gregarious place with eight pubs and bars on the main street, mainly thanks to the fact that lots of people come to visit the town.

The reason I'm mentioning all this is to make it clear that I don't live in some pleasant suburb isolated from other parts of society; we have a good mix in Kirkby Lonsdale and I know and I am friends with people from all backgrounds and careers.

As a consequence of this, I can say with a fair degree of confidence that we are not "all in this together".

Ignoring the significantly wealthy - and we have some of those, a mix of the stuck up and the utterly charming and flavours in between - we're all feeling the increase in petrol and fuel prices. But, for those of us in work, actually, the recession doesn't seem to be making that much of a difference.

Of the people I know who work, one person has lost their job (and immediately started a new one) and no one has had their salary lowered. People are still going on holiday, sending their children on school trips, changing cars, eating out, buying clothes, living their lives. When I talk to people about the recession, no one's really very engaged; they know it's a bad thing and that something needs to be done. Most of them don't know the difference between debt and deficit.

Which leaves those on benefits, those people who can't find work or who are unable to work, people who need help from society. These people are acutely, directly and painfully aware of the recession. This is because the government is taking money away from them under the pretence that it is making a significant contribution to reducing the deficit.

On the other hand, the recent budget made city hedge funds better off by £135M and made 29 cabinet members better off by at least £28k each due to the cut in the higher rate of tax. (23 cabinet members are millionaires.)

In summary then, the wealthy are getting better off, those in work are feeling a pinch that is unrelated to the recession and those most vulnerable and unable to protect themselves are having their money taken off them by this government.

I don't think we can wait until the next election for things to change. Our society - and our economy - is being destroyed for short-sighted ideological reasons. It's not enough to sign petitions, it's time for people to start threatening their MPs with losing their jobs if they don't change the way they're running the country.