What entrepreneurs and business people don't appreciate

Over the past 30 years, and especially the past 20, we've seen the lionisation of business and entrepreneurs. In no particular order, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Mark Zuckerberg, Alan Sugar,Sergei Brin and Larry Page are all celebrities recognised and admired by millions. The Apprentice and Dragon's Den are prime time viewing.

Many people aspire to have some of that oomph and to be entrepreneurial in one way or another. It's exciting, it's self-expressive, it's changing fast, it's very now. Sexy. And of course as we have learned to the point of orthodoxy, virtually everything in our society depends on business and entrepreneurs coming up with new products, employing people and keeping the wheels of the economy turning.

Now, with austerity looming and the need to pay down the huge debts the UK (and other countries) have run up, business people and entrepreneurs are looking to their wallets and passports and wondering whether they should move somewhere that's more business-friendly and takes less in tax.

I don't like paying tax any more than anyone else and I don't like waste of tax money of the sort highlighted routinely by the Daily Wail and others. I don't like "big government" that demands and controls increasing proportions of the national pie.

I don't like selfishness either. Among entrepreneurs and business people I see a great lack of appreciation for ordinary people who provide vital public services for pretty poor money - teachers, nurses, servicemen and women, emergency service workers, police, prison officers etc. Every country has them - has to have them - and every country has to pay them. How they are funded is a moot point - the business models that they work by. They have to be paid a living wage, even if they're imported from low-wage countries (ooops, immigration issues).

There seems to be a general assumption that a lot of public service workers are in their job because they haven't got the wit or energy or courage to do something more entrepreneurial: that they're losers and slackers with no get-up-and-go. Somehow we have lost the understanding that public service can be an honourable and admirable calling, a source of great satisfaction and pride and even moral principle.

It's a huge paradox that the people who earn least do jobs we rely on most, and the people who earn most do the most superfluous jobs.