Two stories caught the eye and left a sour taste in the mouth yesterday.

First, Scottish and Southern Energy (owner of Scottish Hydro Electric) is laughing all the way to the bank, thanks to that wicked surprise extension to the winter that had some of us twiddling our thermostats right up to last week. SSE's annual profits were up nearly 30% to £1.4 billion, on the back of a cruel 9% price hike just ahead of the first icy blasts of autumn. And unlike Centrica (owner of British Gas) which is using its serendipity to hold down prices, SSE warns bills will rise further.

Fuel poverty is now such an issue in chilly soggy old Scotia, with its rattly windows and perpetual winters, that thousands of the company's customers will have shivered through the cold weather because they could not afford to top up their power sticks and eat as well. (In the "bad old days", papers such as the Evening Times used to be packed with stories about heartless power companies disconnecting vulnerable customers who had fallen into arrears. Now they don't need to. These customers effectively disconnect themselves.)

To add insult to injury, SSE was hit with a record £10.5 million fine in April for mis-selling, though it looks like a flea bite on the balance sheet. (Slick sales teams persuaded power users they would save by switching, then put them on pricier contracts.)

One man who won't need to choose between heating and eating is 51-year-old retiring chief executive Ian Marchant. Even after waiving his bonus and share option, he will walk away from the £892,000 job with a £420,000-a-year pension to savour and about £6m in shares. Mr Marchant told a recent interviewer that he believed he was underpaid and indulged in a spot of circumlocution and moral relativism. The sales pitch used on hapless customers was "fragile", he said, and maintained that his company's misdemeanours paled beside those of the banks. Try that one on St Peter, why don't you?

Perhaps it is unfair to single out one man. His £2m home is modest by the standards of senior management and a lot of FTSE chief execs earn more. As he observed yesterday, rewards in the unscrutinised private equity market are considerably higher. At least he has demonstrated entrepreneurial flair in growing the business three-fold during his decade at the helm. Also, though it may seem an obvious thing to say, because Mr Marchant and his company are nailed down on British soil, at least they pay their taxes.

This brings us to a second story that sent my sparks flying yesterday. By an odd coincidence I'd started the day in Apple's elegant emporium in Buchanan Street, being initiated into the mysteries of an iPad mini by one of their charming soft-spoken sales staff, clad in blue to match the subtle lighting. Meanwhile his boss's boss's boss's boss, Apple chief exec Tim Cook, had made it on to the front pages of the papers by telling a Senate hearing in Washington that if the US slashed corporation tax (currently 35%), Apple would be prepared to pay it. Meanwhile, the company (perfectly legally) will continue to route its business through an Irish subsidiary and pay just 2% tax, thanks to an agreement dating back to 1980. If only it was that easy for the rest of us: "Hello HMRC. Anne here. Tell you what. Forget my tax bill and I'll make a handsome donation to your coffers. What was that? No, I thought not."

Starbucks, Amazon and Google have experienced similarly taxing times under the searing scrutiny of Margaret Hodge and Westminster's Public Accounts Committee. It is the sheer bravado of these men that is hard to stomach and their assumption that we should all be grovellingly grateful for the jobs they bring with them. What they seem to ignore is that these jobs, which are often minimum wage, part-time and insecure, displace others in small cafes and independent bookshops, businesses that have no choice but to pay tax.

The only thing wrong with Ed Miliband comparing corporate tax avoidance with benefit cheats is that it implies some sort of moral equivalence. The Department of Work and Pensions calculates fraud costs some £1.2bn a year. By contrast, some of the biggest companies operating in the UK are said to contribute to £120bn in tax avoidance, tax evasion and late payment. That's more than the entire deficit.

According to Oxfam yesterday, rich individuals using tax havens deprive the world of £100bn a year, while corporate tax dodging costs £105bn. That would be enough to end extreme poverty four times over. A lot of it is sitting in British Overseas territories and Crown Dependencies: Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Jersey, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Addressing this scandal could, at least in theory, give everyone on earth $5 a day to live on. The Prime Minister writing stroppy letters to the British Virgin Islands (but failing to put a tax deal on the table) leaves some of the poorest countries in the world powerless to claim the billions they are owed and leaves citizens nearer home facing mounting austerity.

David Cameron yesterday urged EU leaders to back global action against tax evasion and "aggressive" tax avoidance prior to next month's G8 summit. But there's something hypocritical about this stance when the UK has taken so few concrete steps to put its own house in order.

Behind all this lies widening inequality and stalled social mobility. The UK and US are slipping further and further behind egalitarian societies such as Norway and Denmark where children can expect their individual talents and hard graft to carry them to the high water mark of their potential. Here, more than at any time since before the Second World War, some babies are born with the dice loaded against them.

One of the consequences of unfair taxes and cuts concentrated on the poorest is the rapid rise in inequality. The latest research from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development measured how the poorest in Britain (especially 18 to 25-year-olds) are suffering disproportionately and there is worse to come. There will always be tax evasion, which is by its nature unmeasurable, but if tax avoidance was tackled seriously on a global scale, there would be no need to write off public services and much of the welfare state as "unaffordable" or "unsustainable".

It's also time to tackle the absurdity and unfairness of those of us who cannot avoid tax, seeing some of our hard-earned pay going on tax credits to subsidise employers who sit on piles of cash and pay their staff peanuts. The best way to tackle the £24bn tax credits budget and incentivise people into work is not by slashing benefits but tackling poverty pay. Too many British employers rely on the state to top up their workers' pay packets and treat the minimum wage as the maximum wage (or ignore it altogether with little fear of prosecution). This isn't just about fairness. It's about common sense.

Iain Macwhirter is away.