I’VE NEVER really understood how the money markets work: how traders and merchant bankers can rake in six-figure salaries (plus bonuses) without bankrupting their employers.

Where does all the money come from? And whose money is it?

Even more importantly, what do these people actually do that makes them worth so much? And how can their time be worth so much more than mine?

I started thinking about all this when the news broke of former PM Tony Blair’s new part-time job with a merchant bank in Wall Street.

It’s rumoured he will be raking in a £500,000-a-year salary, which will finally give him a similar wage packet as his QC wife.

What’s more, he’ll have time to fit in another job or two just in case their joint earnings are not enough.

I know that being PM is a meal ticket for the rest of your life but there are meals, banquets and Bacchanalian feasts.

We could be forgiven for thinking the average senior politician has as little idea of how ordinary families live as Paris Hilton or Prince Charles.

Where will the waste go?

IN THE modern world, the quest for energy and its use is all-consuming and affects every aspect of our lives.

It’s responsible for wars and conflicts (hence the interest in the affairs of oil-rich Middle Eastern countries), environmental change and ‘natural’ disasters such as this summer’s floods.

Instead of encouraging everyone to use less of this limited and expensive resource, successive Governments have sought to push forward an increasing reliance on nuclear power.

The news this week that the Government intends to build a new generation of nuclear power stations has, however, not been greeted with overwhelming joy.

Although nuclear energy is, on the face of it, cleaner and seemingly limitless, it has two major flaws.

It’s potentially dangerous, and produces waste so toxic that it will kill the archaeologists of the future who dig it up.

The tragedy of this situation is that our world is naturally endowed with many forms of free and clean power, simply waiting to be tapped.

Solar, wind and wave power have yet to be fully explored but could, if we learned to be less profligate with energy, service our needs.

Germany already uses 300 times more solar energy than we do and has 10 times the harnessed wind power. There are no plans for new generation nuclear power stations there.

The last decade in the UK has seen an unprecedented building boom – and a missed opportunity for improving our use of clean energy.

Instead of making plans that will further despoil the planet, the Government could have insisted that all new houses and apartments carried solar panels.

But this didn’t happen and now the search is on for a Cumbrian town or village prepared to accept low- level nuclear waste in return for a multi-million pound cash injection to attract business, social and ‘environmental’ projects.

The really dangerous stuff will be dumped into the sea off the coast.

Perhaps those who campaign against wind farms would like to find a place for the waste in their home towns.