Teresa Hunter: Scotland a saver place in spite of taxman's efforts

So far we have worked 149 days this year exclusively for the government. Hardly surprising given how much taxes have gone up, I hear you say.

But hang on a minute. This year's tax burden is run-of-the-mill compared with the last decade, according to the Institute. In 2006, it took 154 days of honest labour to keep the taxman happy, and 151 in 2007. This year is no worse than 2005 and 2008.

So when you have a bad day at work and you find yourself asking why you do it, there's your answer. To keep the taxman in clover.

Someone must be making some money, though - in Aberdeen anyway. After Richmond, London, the Aberdeen postcode of AB15 4 has, at 26,130, the highest average savings balance in the UK. Edinburgh's EH12 residents are no slouches either. They've stashed away 22,158, making them Britain's fifth richest savers.

No wonder Scots are bucking the inheritance trend. While the Pru has discovered that half of those coming up to retirement despair of ever leaving anything to their family, 70 per cent of Scots are confident of being able to do so.

In whose interest?

Interest rates must remain low until 2013, according to former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee David Blanchflower. His words echo the sentiment of that other committee member, Paul Fisher, when he visited Edinburgh last week.

These comments will come as a deep disappointment to savers who increasingly despair of finding a good return on their savings.

But the policy isn't working when it comes to borrowers either. House prices are at best stagnant, while mortgage lending continues to slide.

So if savers are suffering and borrowers are also struggling, who is cashing in? The cheap answer is the banks.

Darling comes clean

The Financial Services Authority increased to 150,000 the compensation that can be paid to consumers who are badly treated by their bank or other financial institution.

Watchdogs are, as we report on this page, particularly concerned at the routine mis-selling of products to customers who fail to understand what they have bought.

But the most gullible suckers of all, in the run-up to the financial crisis, were the FSA's own supervisors. You could have sold them any dodgy old rubbish and, indeed, banks frequently did, when they filed their returns.

No wonder the watchdog is so cross. It was good, though, to hear former chancellor Alistair Darling acknowledge that regulation had failed in his recent David Hume speech. He went on to admit it failed because bankers didn't understand what they were doing, the risks they were running or how inter-connected the banking systems had become.

On top of this, the regulator was clueless about much of what the banking industry were up to.It's understandable. The bankers were the golden boys of money, a bit like Premier League football players. They were rich, they were talented. They were too good to be true. How intimidating that must have been for the lowly FSA opo.

Now the banks are having a collective nervous breakdown, yet still screwing borrowers and savers as never before. They've sacked the Cavaliers, and put the Puritans in charge. They are building up capital like no tomorrow, but as Darling says, more capital will cushion, not prevent, further crashes.

He is also sceptical about regulatory reform. It's like employing plenty of attendants on the Titanic to keep moving the deckchairs around, but not enough lookouts up front, watching out for icebergs.

Only when regulators are capable of understanding banking to the same extent as the practitioners - spotting the risks and challenging them - will future crisis be averted.

He has a point. He also says giving greater powers to the Bank of England is a waste of time, as it would have been no better at preventing the crash.

Maybe. But it couldn't have been any worse.