I can’t help feeling more than a little amused by the cries of complaint about the chancellor’s announcement that it will not, after all, be possible to buy property, fine wines and the like as part of a pension scheme with generous tax breaks.

Various representatives of the financial services industry (tax avoidance wing) have been saying that up to 50,000 homes were lined up for such schemes.

I just look at it as 50,000 homes which have been rescued from being bought at a subsidy – paid for by me – by people who have no intention of living in them and who are the people least in need of financial assistance from the public purse. These 50,000 homes might now be available to be bought by people who do want to live in them. The price of these houses might even go down a bit. It might even act as a slight brake on the rise in house prices which is turning us into a nation with two ever-growing minorities: those who can’t afford to buy a house and those who can afford to buy several, which they rent to the first group at rates which prevent them ever leaving that group.

I always thought this SIPP scheme was a way of making the rich even richer, and not the sort of thing a Labour government should be proposing, so I am particularly chuffed about the news.