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I’ve been frightened many times in my life.

When I realised that 18-stone prop forward had actually heard what I’d said about him and was quite cross about it.

When I drove very rapidly around a mountain hairpin, hopelessly out of control in some form of Renault, and saw a bus full of tourists heading up the allegedly closed road towards my fragile frame in its spinning tin can. (“This is going to sting a bit”, muttered my veteran navigator, Dave Orrick, who’d seen it all and been hit by it all before).

When my legs wouldn’t work for some reason and the doctor asked me if I’d heard of some dreadful phrase ending in the word “syndrome”, never in any circumstances a happy word. (It wasn’t a syndrome).

When Management informed me that we were pregnant. When Management informed me that our second child’s arrival was considerably more imminent than I had hitherto been led to believe. For just a few examples.

But this morning I came across a phrase that filled me with real dread.

The front page of the ‘I’ newspaper contained the story of this crazy Government’s crazy plan to privatise some roads, which is frightening enough – but it had a sub-heading containing this:

“Sell-off plans modelled on 80s’ water privatisation”.

Leaving the apostrophe aside, what could be worse news for any of us? We’re already taxed virtually beyond the limit of human and fiscal endurance to ensure the Conservative Party’s wealthy friends in business can carry on as they are, and soon we will be driving on roads which have been handed over to private companies in the same way as the water that falls from the sky was gifted to private business chums of Margaret Thatcher (it’s a great sadness that she suffers from Alzheimer’s, as it has removed the dream I’ve always had that she would one day answer to a court for her crimes against society).

Our public transport system is already a laughing stock around the world – much more so than in the old nationalised days. Then, at least, there was a sense of all being in it together when British Rail handed over a soggy ham sandwich; now, when TrainCorp charges you £10.50 for a soggy prosciutto on ciabatta and your train for which you’ve paid £100 is late, there’s just a sense that you’re being ripped off to line some fat sweaty shareholder’s pockets again.

Now roads are going to be handed to the private sector, you know, that part of the economy that’s got us where we are today, in the same way as water was. And all of us, every single one of us, we all know what a great success water privatisation has been, don’t we? We all pay our bills happily, don’t we? None of us has received bad service, or waited on the telephone, or experienced delay in fixing a problem, or had an issue with a meter, or been concerned about pollution, or….

I think what bugs me about this is not the selfish dogma – you expect that from politicians, that they put the interests of their friends first. No, it’s the crass stupidity allied to the ease with which they can dress it up for an electorate too dumb to reach for the pitchforks and placards. Maybe private roads will be a step too far? The Englander does love his car and his “open” road…

The MP Hugo Swire, as Tory a Tory as you could ever wish to meet, talked about how it was his government’s intention to get the public sector as involved as it possibly could – it’s the private sector that’s the engine of our economy, apparently.

Well, if it is our economy’s engine, it’s misfiring, and you don’t need to be flipping burgers on the minimum wage, struggling to pay your mortgage or cancelling your second foreign holiday of the year to know that. In fact, you only need to study a little history to know that the private sector has never, ever, not once, never, never, ever engineered an economic recovery for the benefit of the many. It is only ever state involvement that engineers widespread wealth; once it used to be state involvement through the economic benefits of waging war, more latterly it was through a more enlightened and less violent approach. But still we fall for it.

Lloyds TSB, which knows a thing or two about economic difficulty, reported this week that 45 per cent of households now spend at least 75 per cent of total income on essentials. Gas and electricity bills are up 10.5 per cent over the past two years, food and drink 6.4 per cent, and water – on which the privatisation of the roads is to be modelled, don’t forget – water up 15.9 per cent. And still we fall for it. See why I’m worried?

No wonder Cameron wants to hand roads over to his business chums – who wouldn’t want to invite a friend to help himself to a 16 per cent pay rise over two years in these straitened times, and who wouldn’t want to share a laugh over the exquisitely designed Italian dining table at just how shoddy a service with which you can fob off  the proles?

It’s no wonder the water companies are so execrable at responding to the public – they can’t hear us for the sound of howling laughter from the boardroom. South West Water? Its owners made £274 million last year, thanks. Ker-ching! Network Rail, overseeing our shambles of a rail system? £438 million. Ker-ching! Who wouldn’t laugh at that?

Of course, Mr Cameron is ‘freeing’ us from the shackles of the state, having once again forgotten how the ardour of the right to ‘free’ us all from the state very quickly dampens when the wallets of the wealthy are at risk – when the banks faced meltdown, dogma was very quickly abandoned in the mad panicked rush into the welcoming arms of the state, which mopped the bankers’ fevered brows and bailed them out, leaving us in the financial pickle for which Mr Cameron wishes us to pay.

But who’ll listen to a leftie like me? Not you? Would you listen to that old Tory Charles Moore, then, scion of the Establishment and former Editor of the Daily Telegraph? Here’s what he wrote in July 2011:

 “The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything. It turns out – as the Left always claims – that a system purporting to advance the many has been perverted in order to enrich the few.”

What better phrase could describe the lunatic idea of privatising the roads? “A system purporting to advance the many has been perverted in order to enrich the few.”

I hesitate to urge action – because by the time …. I can’t bring myself to type his name because it makes me angry that somebody so privileged, arrogant, advantaged yet selfish, stupid and anonymous could actually get anywhere near any position of responsibility more important than blowing his own nose … by the time the Chancellor has delivered his Budget, I hope the whole country will be up in arms. If they sell off the roads and the health service, botch education, fail to reform the banking system, drive up prices, cut jobs and make it impossible to afford to live, isn’t that the only reaction? Or will we still fall for it?

Thank goodness for Cornwall and its Spring finery in the glowing sunshine this morning. Seeds burst, daffodils bloom, buzzy things buzz and the sap rises everywhere. What could be more beautiful or blessed than to be in Cornwall in Spring? Imagine dealing with the news if you lived in Slough.