The government was in serious debt and could not possibly afford to hire anybody extra. Meanwhile the private sector had shown that it was not eager to employ that many people at current wages. However it was possible that if the unemployed accepted a lower wage then more jobs might be created. I said that I used to live in Hong Kong and at that time the welfare benefits had been minimal and the numbers unemployed had similarly been minimal. (I could have added that the benefit level strongly affects the level of pay that people are willing to accept.)

These statements probably sounded heartless but I argued that it was better for people to work on low pay than to be unemployed (given the damaging effects of unemployment on individuals, some of which he himself had described).

He said that he felt that at last we had got to the nub of the issue - which may be true, in fact.

So it was not about scroungers and bad attitudes to work, he said. No, I agreed. I did not blame the young people. They were reacting to the conditions they found themselves in which were created by governments.

He then went on to suggest that I had revealed by my comments a plot to drive down wages. I am not sure who he thought was organising this plot. Surely he does not really believe that there are groups of people gathering in rooms to think up ways of lowering wages and, if there were, why would they be doing it? My primary motive is to secure better lives for those who are currently unemployed and to bring them towards feeling more involved in society and less alienated which can have damaging effects on society generally. My secondary motive is to reduce the cost of the unemployed in benefits. The high cost means that many poor people are taxed. We do live in a country where the poor are taxed.

So I then asked him where he thought the extra jobs he wanted - which, he insisted, should be at a 'proper' wage - were going to come from? He said 'the government'. Where was the government going to get the money? By taking it off the bankers who were getting huge bonuses. He had worked out the value of bonuses and decided that this money would provide large numbers of jobs.

I said that bankers on large bonuses would not hang around in Britain to have the lot taken off them. They would move abroad. Already Zug, in Switzerland, is a centre for financial services and their highly paid employees do not even want to be taxed at 40pc or 50pc. Which bankers on massive bonuses would stay here to be taxed at, say, 100pc? It was cloud cuckoo land.

I referred to the experience we had seen whereby the Thatcher administration had reduced the top rate of tax and, straight afterwards, found it was collecting more money from the richest few than when the tax rate had been higher. The Institute for Fiscal Studies did a study some years ago which suggested that even a rise from 40pc to 50pc would probably result in no increase in revenues. The evidence was, on balance, that it would result in a slight reduction in revenue.

So the sudden and repeated use of money from rich bankers will not and cannot take place. The jobs he wishes to have created cannot be created his way.

Some will feel that I should not spend so much time and energy rebutting arguments which are so extremely unrealistic. But I was struck that such arguments could be believed by someone who was evidently intelligent. Also, if not challenged, such arguments can influence public opinion.