I got a letter from my bank a while ago. It effectively said this. Many years ago you paid money to a credit card. There was a mistake. We didn’t bother telling you. We just kept the money. Looks like we might get caught over this so you better have it back. With a few pence interest. Cheers, the Royal Bank.

Being a bit dopey I fairly regularly forget to actually take the cash from the cash machine. First time was £200. It was sucked back into the machine. I was able to confirm on CCTV that happened. No problemo, my trusted bank will contact me. Return it. They know exactly whose account it came from. Uh-oh.

Just like the thing with the credit card payment. Santander, whose name was on the machine, and my mates at the Royal had no intention of mentioning it to me. If I hadn’t contacted them? Cheers. The money was going straight into their fat pockets. If an individual had done that? We wouldn't get away with it. But done by banks, regularly and systematically on who knows what scale? What’s he going to do about it? Dopey lone consumer. What about online? If Amazon and Trip Advisor know their sites are packed with completely fake and even paid-for reviews is that a fraud? The Americans think so. Though both companies have some neck claiming surprise and outrage. In Britain? Officially?

If American consumer groups are complaining our Government may eventually look into it. Like the Volkswagen emissions scam. This is kinda funny. Not the fact that they rigged their cars. Or that they were caught - again in the US. What’s funny is the complete humbug that surrounds it. Hello?

Almost every car manufacturer in the world has been systematically defrauding the consumers, the little guys, with completely fake fuel consumption figures for years. It is so blatant and so utterly dishonest that at least one car magazine What Car has for a long time published Real MPG figures from their own tests. The differences are staggering. So what?

Surely, here’s the so what. It’s not that we’re paying more to run our cars. In the UK we’re just dumb lone consumers. The funny thing is that nobody is pointing out that massaging fuel tests can surely only be done by massaging emissions and that diesel particulates from emissions cause lung cancer.

Our Government a decade or so ago deliberately lowered the tax on diesel fuel causing an explosion of diesel car sales. These cars, not to mention the vans, and buses are producing vast quantities of fumes and particulates. And I mean vast. Our air stinks of diesel. We suck up lungfuls of it every day. It’s actually visible. People cycle in it, walk in it, drive in it.

And don’t give me any nonsense about particulate filters. Hey, I’m no tree hugger. And I love cars. But I do have children. So why is the diesel pollution not a scandal? Is it because there are virtually no diesel cars in the US? And they don’t have the problem. While we don’t have the right sort of consumer rights?