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Autumn time in British woods where the earthy smell of rotting leaves mingling with a waft of wood smoke on the air makes it seem as though Robin Hood and his Merry Men are just a sniff away.

Lawless Robin robbed the rich and gave to the poor, becoming one of our most popular folk heroes. He didn’t use it to buy a flash horse or a swanky castle. He just repaid the exorbitant taxes that the royals and wealthy nobles were fleecing from the people, who until then had just accepted the unfairness of the situation and tried to manage.

Just like us today, when even the measliest wage packets suffers deductions, pensioners pay thumping great council tax bills, grieving people have to find inheritance tax and VAT is slapped on everything.

Only nowadays we are Robin Hoodless.

Do we need a modern day Robin Hood with his Merry Men to squat in a corner of the local Town Hall or the House of Commons, helping themselves to wine and food from the huge feasts and functions and distributing it to the homeless? Or maybe to set up a squat in the second or third homes of wealthy Members of Parliament, distributing their goods and clothes to those on the streets? Maybe, but it would only be through the viewpoint of history that we would see them as anything but criminals.