The years between 25 and 34 are, you would have thought, years of aspiration in which the young settle down, lay down their career paths, and put in place all their foundations for the future.

Instead there is evidence today that people in this age bracket are being disproportionately hit by financial desolation.

Official figures show that more people aged 25 to 34 are turning to debt relief orders – a cheaper option than going bankrupt – than any other age group.

Days of hope, then, are becoming days of despair. To have a DRO, which protects you from creditors, you have to own nothing of value, have no significant savings, and not have a car worth more than £1,000.

It is an option for those who have been financially wiped out.

How and why people have got themselves into such a situation will be through many and varied causes, but these figures do mean that many of the very people who the nation needs to be the powerhouse generation to lead the recovery are not in a position to do so because they are financially on their knees.

Mortgages and other bills will have been crippling burdens for some.

Others will have been the architects of their own financial downfall.

In a must-have society in which the Government has spent beyond its means and the banks have been reckless and irresponsible, it is understandable that some people have been sucked in by the many inducements to drag them into debt.

Spending money you do not have has been positively encouraged as a way of keeping the economy bubbling.

As much as anything, the problem is psychological. Previous generations did not try to buy what they could not afford.

It is a lesson which needs to be relearned.

Crime was the lowest of the low:

A firefighter from Oswestry was unable to respond to an urgent callout because somebody had slashed all the tyres on his car.

The cliched thing to say about this is that it was mindless vandalism, but in this instance being mindless would be about the only thing to say in favour of this criminal attack, because it would at least mean that the moronic perpetrators did not really know the full implications of what they were doing.

However, as the culprits not only slashed the tyres but also damaged the bodywork, we have to entertain the possibility that they were not acting in a mindless fashion, but committed this crime with deliberation and may well have known that the victim was a firefighter and intended the consequences and inconvenience which potentially put others at increased risk – the callout, incidentally, was to a crash on the A5.

Until the culprits are caught, we cannot know for sure. But as this crime happened just before Christmas it was particularly nasty and those involved are contemptible.