Hair shirt

He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer’s peas. He wears a hairshirt winter and summer and scourges himself every Saturday.

And when he went on to say, “The curse must be within ourselves,” Muir bequeathed us a hairshirt: the guilty conscience that plagues so many of us when we see what we are doing to the rest of nature.

The gloomy contentions of “hairshirt economists” who want more public and less private spending were assailed today by Robert W. Sarnoff, chairman of the National Broadcasting Company.

No hair-shirt ascetiscism, but far less consumerism, less shopping for the sake of shopping, less conspicuous consumption, less waste. There will be less trade, but it will be more judicious, and there will be more 'self-reliance' in energy, food and manufacturing.

Ireland – the "poster child" for the International Monetary Fund and EU's bailout programmes – endured its sixth hairshirt budget on Wednesday with the imposition of €2.5bn (£2bn) of cuts as its finance minister insisted the country is emerging from the fiscal crisis.

Boris Johnson has called on the government to drop its "hair shirt, Stafford Cripps" agenda as he outlined a seven-point growth plan for London involving building thousands of new homes and investment in major infrastructure projects.