Figures available this morning indicate that St Albans residents on average pay £10,500 per head in income tax – more than in any other town or city in the UK.

We have long thought that we subsidised the rest of the country – and to some degree that it what it means to be a nation: one part helps the other. But the starkness of the contribution has only just been revealed.

Worse: what do we get back? Our railways are hugely expensive and desperately overcrowded. We don’t have enough schools, a decent available hospital, a public transport system worthy of the name or even the power to run our own affairs. These things are available elsewhere in the country.

Of course, it is too easy just to blame the Labour Government for treating us as a cash cow. It would help if the money sent back to Hertfordshire were not wasted in county hall inefficiency or indeed spent in other parts of Hertfordshire which need it less.

For further reading: the Guardian page 22