When Madame La Guillotine chopped off Louis XVI's head in 1793, reports said the French King let out a short, terrifying scream.

He had it coming.

While Louis and his truculent nobles lived high on the hog in the Palace of Versailles, gorging themselves on luxuries only premiership footballers and Stephen Hester can imagine, some peasants were reduced to eating tree bark and grass.

Not for them those delicacies of French haute cuisine, horse meat and snails.

I know all this because I saw a programme about it on CBBC last week.

And while considering the decadence of Louis and his gang of self-entitled acolytes, I couldn't help thinking about the situation we currently find ourselves in today.

Replace the perfumed French aristocracy with any number of bank bosses, bonus wielding civil servants, politicians and sumptuously remunerated CEOs – and then replace the unwashed hoi poloi with the rest of us and it struck me that nothing's changed.

Take, for example, BAE Systems where 845 normal, hard-working folk are currently facing the axe.

When it is announced that chief executive Ian King and a bunch of top execs are about to feast on multi-million-pound bonuses, it sticks in my craw.

We're all in it together my backside.

But the grotesque Mr King and his chums aren't alone.

In the past few weeks alone we've heard how several multi-nationals are considering chopping workforces across the country while their bosses go on living gilded lives, hundreds of miles away from the harsh realities of the faceless workers whose lives they're ruining.

Now I'm not some hang-wringing, hemp-wearing namby pamby leftie who moans about injustice at every opportunity.

These days socialism is about as relevant as a gramophone at an iPod convention.

I've got no problem with successful people reaping the rewards of their hard graft.

There's nothing wrong with encouraging entrepreneurs and there's nothing I admire more than someone who's built their own business from scratch, working every hour God sends to provide for his family. But I know when something's morally wrong – and this stinks. What I can't stand is fat cat managers at the top being rewarded for failure while the rest of us scramble for scraps.

The simple truth is BAE enjoyed sales of £19.2 billion last year, giving them profits of £2 billion.

Yes, that profit was down seven per cent on the previous year but still, it's £2 billion, it's not to be sniffed at.

How much profit is enough?

At what stage will the bosses on their bloated bonuses and their grasping shareholders consider they've gorged enough?

Will they ever sit back and say: "You know what? The world's in a parlous state, maybe we should look after the little fella for once, just until things pick up."

The old argument defending these bosses who lurch from one obscene payout to the next is: "Oh, but if we don't pay them what they're worth, they'll walk and we won't be able to attract the top people for the job."

Hogwash. I simply don't buy it.

These top boys aren't super- human. They aren't sent from above, arriving from Krypton blessed with superpowers by Earth's yellow sun like the fledgling Kal-El.

They're no different to thousands of other intelligent, capable people out there who, given half a chance and some self-belief could sack thousands of people and lord it over the rest of us just as effectively.

The times may have moved on in some respects since 1793 – we wear considerably fewer wigs for a start – and I don't for a minute condone chopping off people's heads unless they've appeared on The Only Way Is Essex.

But until this untouchable elite come to their senses and stop flaunting their wealth while the rest of us dangle over the precipice, I'm almost tempted to cry Vive La Revolution.