Actually Alan Sugar doesn't come across as particularly impressive. He gives contradictory messages, misses strengths and focuses on irrelevancies.

It is sometimes argued against Socialism that life is unfair, unequal. This is a curious and a stupid argument. It is certainly a true observation but the natural reaction is to support a social system that mitigates this condition of life, not to endorse a politico-economic system that accepts and indeed exaggerates this unfairness.

In capitalist mythology business leaders are supposed to have something special, a particular dynamic that marks them out. The one thing the Apprentice proves is that they don't, unless you count boundless and unwarranted self-belief. They come across - and in the assignments are often proved to be - arrogant and frankly often rather stupid people. They don't usually perform well, even in the areas they are supposed to be good at, and time and time again it is proved they lack elementary work place skills like listening to others and working as a team.

I realise they are carefully selected for their personalities and their self-regard rather than their actual acumen - it's a TV show - yet these young business men and women are the sort of people we are supposed to admire. In the nightmarish neoliberal world that we are promised, we are supposed to rely on their skills and 'entrepeneurial spirit' for our economy, our jobs and our future.

One of the features of the neo-liberal capitalist worldview is that it regards poor public services as the norm. A good, efficient and popular public service is, according to their ideology, a contradiction. Therefore do not be at all surprised when public services that are well-run, inexpensive and much used get undermined. It's not an accident, it's not (entirely) stupidity. It's deliberate, it's policy.

Any curbs on the ransacking of public provision are not through tender-heartedness, but because Neo-Liberals of both parties want to be re-elected.