More freeloaders than free market. How Britain bails out the business chiefs | Aditya Chakrabortty

It's a scandal. Charlatans in pinstripes are being allowed to wring dry their companies, with the taxpayer footing the bill

On Wednesday, two very different men will have to explain themselves. Both appear in London, to a room full of authority figures - but their finances and their status place them at opposite ends of our power structure. Yet put them together and a picture emerges of the skewedness of today's Britain.

For the Rev Paul Nicolson, the venue will be a magistrate's court in London. His "crime" is refusing to pay his council tax, in protest against David Cameron's effective scrapping of council tax benefit, part of his swingeing cuts to social security. In order to pay for a financial crisis they didn't cause, millions of families already on low incomes are sinking deeper into poverty. In order to pay bills they can't afford, neighbours of the retired vicar are going without food. The 84-year-old faces jail this week, for the sake of 2,831.

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