We in the City like to call it a “spine-chilling war on the rich.” Last week the Chancellor went straight for our wallets, increasing the tax rate for everyone earning more than £150,000 from 40 per cent to 50 per cent. I personally prefer attacks from protesters near Bank to attacks from politicians on my bank account.

Now, my finances are a bit of a mess, but I’m only on the hook to Visa for a few thousand quid. On the other hand, UK finances are astonishingly dire – and bankers are now asked to pick up the tab.

I feel thoroughly persecuted – not that I earn enough to join the filthy rich club, but because I aspire to. We all do. The City has a well-deserved reputation for being a high-intensity environment where its employees work long hours. We have motivation and ambition for one simple thing: money.

So as Alistair Darling read out his budget last week, hysterical Tories looked meek compared to hysterical traders. Moving to a tax-free jurisdiction seems like the only option. Most of us spent Wednesday afternoon Googling finance jobs in exotic locales with better tax rates. Dubai, Hong Kong, and Singapore were the favorites – and Dubai most popular thanks to the 0 per cent tax. But there’s one snag with ­Dubai – it’s in the middle of the desert. Not to mention its somewhat harsh attitude ­towards women.

So it was back to considering whether the downsides of living in London – the weather, the Tube, the prohibitive expense – outweigh the benefits. The conclusion I came to was that, much as it sucks that they’re raising taxes, there aren’t any other options as far as global financial centres go. Most of us will stay in London, complain taxes are too high and let our advisers work out how to reduce how much we pay.

Of course, I hardly expect my plight to inspire sympathy. Pocketing six figure salaries remain nothing more than a pipe dream for most Britons.

Perhaps our City expectations have ­become unrealistic. Finance wasn’t ­always so swish – before the 60s, the City was not a preferred career path for top graduates at all. Dealing was regarded as a job for thugs, a bunch of big guys in rough trading pits coping with fistfights and stress. One City exec ­remembers being told: “Only s***s go into the City.”

He was probably still a lot more popular (and taxed less) than bankers are now.