Yobbery among the young has increased and - despite its claims to the contrary - the government has a policy of discouraging the expulsion of disruptive children. So at schools, middle class children, too, are more likely to be bullied and have their study disrupted.

Those who make the sacrifices to pay for full-time private education have long had to pay for education twice: once through their taxes and again through their fees. Now the government, in the Queen's Speech, has revived a plan to make them pay a third time, by forcing private schools to do more charitable work or else be taxed more heavily.

We grow up and get a job. Before we know it, we are paying a third of our income in tax and national insurance. If, in our efforts to get on, we succeed in earning more than £36,000, we are quickly into the top rate of tax. More people pay the top rate now than ever before.

The next step could be to buy a car. That's fine except that the tax on petrol is so high that a litre is not far short of a £1. Oh, and the Labour Government virtually stopped improving roads when it came to power in 1997, so they are more jams than before. The car - as Tony Blair once recognised - is the modern symbol of middle class life and it has come up against an anti-car culture, wholly in contrast with that in France or America.

Many of us then get married and have children. It is a quaint old tradition that survives among the middle class. Unfortunately the tax system is now loaded against you if you would like to split your roles with, say, the wife looking after childen and home and the husband going out to work. There is no married couples allowance or children's tax allowance any more. After the second world war a married man on average earnings with a wife looking after their two childen paid no income tax at all. Now they pay plenty.

At least we all have far more holidays than we used to. Unfortunately, the Euro has been strong in the last few years so holidays in Europe are pretty expensive. And it is not exactly cheap if we stay at home, either. A recent survey suggested that London is the second most expensive city in the world in which to live.

Still, we plough on. At least the middle class does not get the worst of rising crime, although we endure an increasing amount of rudeness and theft. There comes a point where we begin to think more about saving for a pension. Unfortunately we find that Gordon Brown has been thinking about pensions, too, and has been taxing them. Mr Brown has introduced an anti-savings tendency in government - a direct hit at the middle class. And if that was not bad enough, the stockmarket, into which most pension money is invested, has performed miserably since 1997.

Some of the middle class are doctors, teachers and policemen. They increasingly find that their role in life is being told what to do. Their independence and judgement have been replaced with instructions. And then, when the government-dominated system fails, who gets the blame? The government points the finger at precisely these middle class professionals whom it has disempowered.

Other members of the middle class run their own businesses. If they do well, they want to employ more people. That's a pity because there is a big tax on employment called employer's national insurance. Then they have to comply with a massive raft of laws. They must master the terrible complexities of the working tax credit, comply with the new religion of health 'n' safety and be ready to defend themselves in court if they have the temerity to sack anyone.

Even when we die - and probably would like to pass on our hard-won assets to our children - we are obliged to hand over 40 per cent of anything over £275,000 to that non-relative of ours, Mr Brown.

We keep going, but it seems like an uphill struggle. It feels as though the government does not want us to succeed and, instead, is piling extra weights on our backs.

All of which may explain the rising emigration from Britain. A record 191,000 Britons packed up and left last year. That was more than fifty per cent more than in 1994. The number going to Australia has doubled in the past two years.

Has the increasing burden on the middle class at least done some good to the rest of society? Have the poor benefited? Sadly, even that does not seem to be the case. The poor are almost as highly taxed as the middle class - mostly through indirect taxes. On top of that, they get the worst of state education and medical care.

So it is all for nothing. Being a member of the British middle class is still better than most fates. But it is no longer the great privilege it once used to be.

(This is an unedited version of an article that appears in today's Daily Express. The surprise in the research I did for it was the major rise in the rate of emigration. 125,000 Britons left the country in 1994. 191,000 left in 2003.)