Life's Not Fair

The government's reliance on the concept of fairness is something I've been curious about. Since they talk it up so much, it would seem logical that there are some arguments, or even policies, to make the cuts seem fair. These haven't been easy to find, though, so I was pleased that Nick Clegg had apparently seen fit to explain by way of an article in the Guardian.

When I started reading this piece, I was expecting to be annoyed. I anticipated that Clegg would make some moderately specious arguments, based on carefully chosen statistics. I intended to refute these arguments. But as I read on, all I could think was, he's not even trying. The last three paragraphs of the article don't even have anything to do with fairness or inequality; they're merely a defence of the Liberal Democrats decision to pal around with Tories.

Mr. Clegg, I'm not just angry, I'm also disappointed. Let us examine what is being said here.

Clegg begins by drawing a line between 'old progressives' and 'new progressives'. He doesn't bother to define progressive, but one can only assume that he means someone who promotes progress and improvement. The old progressives, it seems, happen to be concentrated in the Labour party. They believe that the more the government spends, the more progress will be made.

This is dismissed as, 'clearly nonsense'. Yes, it is simplistic and I doubt anyone would disagree. In fact, I doubt Labour would disagree. Clegg then makes the jump to paying off the deficit more quickly being progressive in and of itself, making no mention of any possible implications that this might have. Paying off the deficit is being carefully partitioned away from cuts to public services. The former can be painted as an economic imperative; the latter scares people. Discussing one without the other is dishonesty by omission. Clegg's justification for deficit panic is the risk of higher interest rates on mortgages, more debt servicing, and a greater burden for taxpayers. Frankly I'm getting tired of these three excuses. There are a multitude of assumptions under there, the most significant of which is that austerity won't cause the same chaos here as Ireland is currently enjoying.

Clegg doesn't go into this. Instead, he proceeds to say that lifting people out of poverty isn't progressive. I am not exaggerating. Quote:

Old progressives see a fair society as one in which households with incomes currently less than 60% of the median were to be, in Labour's telling verb, "lifted" out of poverty. The weakness of this approach is that significant resources end up being devoted to altering the financial position of these households by fairly small amounts – just enough, in many cases, to get them above the line. But poverty plus a pound does not represent fairness.

Mr. Clegg is saying that putting significant resources into making a lot of people's quality of life better is wrong. How can you counter that sort of breath-taking arrogance? What is unfair about helping people to move above the poverty line? The whole idea of a poverty line is that below it quality of life is inadequate and basic needs cannot be met. I'm sure the people helped by the state to heat their homes, pay their rent, and clothe their children didn't stop to think, 'Gosh, how unfair it is that the state is helping me! Damn their unprogressiveness!'

After conceding that poverty is a perhaps little bit about money, Clegg makes the connection with quality of public services. These would be the same public services from which the government is chiselling around £80 billion of savings over the coming years. Will this increase the quality of services to the poor? Do I need to answer that?

The three areas of public spending identified as progressive, and therefore worthy of protection, are early years, schools and the NHS. That's it. From this we can infer that there's nothing fair about protecting people from crime, so cut the police. Or from injustice, so cut the courts and legal aid. Providing welfare payments for the disabled, sick and elderly isn't progressive at all, so they can all be reduced. There is apparently no fairness in allowing people a half-decent home, so cutting the housing budget by half is no problem. Higher education isn't progressive, so universities can be encouraged to raise their fees in order to make up funding cuts. Caring for vulnerable children isn't progressive, neither is protecting the environment, nor responding to fires, providing transport, community centres, flood defences, job centres, libraries, trading standards, and so on.

The title of the article implies that the government is concerned about inequality persisting down the generations, yet no examples are provided of ways in which entrenched poverty will be tackled. This argument that cuts won't be made to the NHS, schools or early years is the only one tried. Quite apart from the fact that close examination of the CSR undermines it, all that the government are doing here is freezing spend at the level of the previous regime. This is supposedly progressive, although increasing the level of state funding to that level during the Labour years wasn't.

Faced with this slight difficulty in his public services argument, Clegg veers off into social mobility. New progressives want to remove the barriers to social mobility. That's entirely laudable, but what is the government doing about these barriers? Apparently just the Pupil Premium, which will be paid for through reductions elsewhere in the education budget. It's yet to become clear how it will work, but importantly it is for school children. The social mobility of everyone older is left unmentioned.

Turning now to tax, Mr. Clegg states:

New progressives want to reshape the tax base fundamentally, towards greater taxation of unearned wealth and pollution, rather than of people.

How nice. I presume a carbon tax is forthcoming? A land tax, perhaps? Extra tax on second homes? Clegg must surely working on those? Very quietly, though, as all he mentions are the changes to income tax and capital gains tax. I don't disagree that those changes seem seem to benefit those on lowest incomes most, as the IFS analysis showed. What goes unmentioned is the most regressive tax of all, VAT, being raised to 20% next year. There is also no reference to the purpose of most tax: to redistribute money. Wanting to move away from taxing people implies that this is no longer an aim of the government. Why not? Are we back to the Victorian notion that every individual is responsible for their own level of wealth, and if they can't earn enough to feed and clothe themselves they don't deserve help? How is that in any way consistent with social mobility?

The article then ends with an extraordinary three paragraphs that read as an attempt to justify the Liberal Democrats sell-out to the Conservatives. According to Nick Clegg, coalition governments are inherently progressive, whatever they do. Why? Because of pluralism. What might look like a calculated assault on public services, a callous betrayal of the vulnerable, and an extremely risky economic gamble is in fact a beautiful example of pluralism and compromise. So Mr. Clegg tells us.

I for one am not remotely convinced.

Reading between the lines, these so-called new progressives seem to think that a smaller state is inherently fairer. That giving people fair life chances means leaving the worst off to help themselves if they can. That markets will sort out poverty without the state bothering to get involved. All of this is in my view incorrect. Greater state intervention doesn't automatically reduce poverty and inequality unless it's done carefully, but without it inequalities just deepen and persist.

I don't know what the new progressives believe, but just look at who they are. Nick Clegg and at least another 17 of the 29 who comprise the coalition cabinet are millionaires; 23 if you believe The Daily Mail. George Osborne, a chancellor who takes pride in personifying the cuts, has an inherited trust fund and personal wealth of around four million pounds. 20 of the 29 cabinet members went to Oxford or Cambridge. 25 are male, 28 are white. Other than the royal family, can you think of any group in this country less qualified to lecture about fairness?

Starship Local Enterprise

With a new government comes a new vocabulary. 'Regional' becomes 'local', because regions were too large, arbitrary and undemocratic. 'Development' becomes 'enterprise', because development is too complicated and implies the improvement of many social outcomes whereas enterprise just means encouraging businesses to grow. 'Agency' becomes 'partnership' because an agency is a quango full of public sector non-jobs, whilst a partnership consists of local organisations doing important local things.

Thus the coalition has scrapped Regional Development Agencies (amongst other things) and replaced them with Local Enterprise Partnerships. One three letter acronym (LEPs) displaces another (RDAs). There is one very significant difference between the two, though. The budget from RDAs over the past three years was over £6 billion. The budget for LEPs over the next three years is zero. Yes, nothing at all.

The government announced Local Enterprise Partnerships in a great fanfare, and invited areas to bid for one. Many did with great enthusiasm, sixty-two in total. Twenty-four bids were recently announced to have succeeded, and told they could now go ahead and form their LEP. It's an interesting situation, really. The government made LEPs into a competition with no stated prize, but because areas are used to being given funding for doing as central government says, they went along with it expecting a prize later. Now is it clear that there will be no money from government to fund the running costs of these partnerships, and neither will they have any new kind of legal identity to let them raise their own funds. By this time, though, local areas have put work into LEPs, and in any event want something to replace Regional Development Agencies. They have acquired their own momentum.

Whether this momentum is enough to overcome the lack of funding or legal power is another question. Without government support, LEPs will rely on local authorities and businesses for their running costs. Local authorities are facing severe budget cuts and businesses won't put up money unless they can see a clear benefit to them. This makes it likely that LEPs will be either simple partnerships, which have a meeting every few months but otherwise do nothing, or a very small team. Such a structure could well be adequate for the purposes of some local areas, who don't feel that the regional organisations need a replacement. After all, most of the current regional functions are being centralised back into Whitehall.

I am nonetheless a little baffled by the sheer number of roles that the recent government White Paper on 'Local Growth' threw at Local Enterprise Partnerships. Apparently, they could get involved in transport planning, housing, spatial planning, economic development, local business regulation, bidding for national funding, bidding for European funding, support for new 'Growth Hubs', infrastructure planning, managing the Green New Deal, promoting renewable energy investment, ensuring business involvement in strategic planning applications, commenting on national planning policy, encouraging enterprise, providing business advice, leveraging private sector investment (not my phrase!), tackling climate change, enabling the timely processing of applications for strategic development and infrastructure, responding to economic shocks like floods, working with Jobcentre Plus to create jobs through the Work Programme, regeneration projects, improving skills, and encouraging inward investment.

You might observe that it's quite a long list. Some of the activities on it could be funded on a project-by-project basis, but there is no money to set up a Local Enterprise Partnership or employ people with the skills to actually do those things.

Ironically enough, the government has also set up a Regional Growth Fund, which is neither regional nor about growth. It could more accurately be termed the North-West Public Sector Cuts Rescue Fund, as Lord Heseltine has said that the South and East will struggle to get any of it. Despite this, I was very amused to find he then commented in a speech that 'I want this Fund to do exactly what it says on the tin'. He might need to relabel the tin in that case.

But why should we care about any of this? Because without any regional or Local Enterprise Partnership-type structures, local councils will fall into parochialism. Planning will stop at local borders, which is a real problem for infrastructure, especially transport. Because as well as funding vanishing, a lot of expertise will be lost from the public sector as a whole swathe of organisations end and their activities cease. Finally, because I think centralisation will increase rather than decrease. Without some co-operation, however loosely organised, how can local councils stand up to government? How can they make their voices heard when the current conduits to Whitehall, the Government Offices of the Regions, are vanishing? I'm starting to suspect that local authorities are being tricked. The fact that local councils are getting the worst of the cuts sends a stronger message about the importance of localism to our government than all their enthusiasm about Local Enterprise Partnerships.

Winter discontent

In addition to the major policy statements coming out on a weekly basis, promising radical change to avert a doomed debt-spiral, there are indications of the age of austerity closer to home.

Last week a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses handed me a leaflet about how Jesus can help you through unemployment. It contained an incongruous mixture of budgeting tips and bible quotes. My bank has ceased the barrage of letters begging me to take out a loan. I applaud the saving of paper, but assume that 25 year olds don't get loans anymore. My union dues have suddenly gone up. A recent update email from my alma mater dwelt at length on its financial position, relegating exam results and sports teams to short mentions at the end.

Students are protesting, rioting even, out of anger at the betrayal by the government of all that they held certain. I can well understand their rage. If tuition fees had been anything like £9,000 when I was a student, I would have been priced out of the better universities. Including the one I attended.

Conversations at work increasingly focus on what we plan to do after March 31st next year, when the funding for our jobs evaporates. We've been told that the redundancy 'consultation process' takes six months, and are therefore a little confused that it hasn't started yet. It's less than six months until the 31st March, after all. Be that as it may, we're all looking at our options. Some are considering teacher training, others opening a B&B, still others going over to the Dark Side (private sector consultancy). I am set on doing a Masters degree, and intend to bridge the gap between the end of my job and the start of a course with whatever work I can get, to keep me in rent and spaghetti. It seems clear that the longer I wait to go back to unversity, the more the cost will rise.

Everyone at work is reconsidering what they want from a career, what they enjoy, what they can afford, where they want their work-life balance to be. I'm very lucky to have no dependents or mortgage to support, and in any case would want to change jobs sooner or later in order to keep learning and climbing the ladder. It obviously concerns me how little work will be available before and after a Masters (during which I would rely on my savings, funding being non-existent). There just seems no point in worrying about it right now.

At the moment I'm young, well-educated, healthy, and living in an area of the country that's coped relatively well with the recession so far. Millions of people are going to be worse off when the cuts to tax credits, housing benefit, job seeker's allowance, and child benefit arrive. Never mind inflation on the rise, VAT rising to 20%, and public services being dismantled and sold off. When those millions start protesting, I'll be there too. Complete with a witty placard.

Tower Blocks

When I was about to fall asleep last night, it occurred to me that the best metaphor for the planning system is a game of jenga. (I can't recall my subsequent dreams, so can only hope that they were equally fascinating in content.) The UK planning system consists of multifarious and lengthy pieces of legislation, statutory instruments, and policy documents. Since planning began, a few of these have been removed but more piled on the top. The whole thing has therefore become increasingly voluminous, complex, and unstable.

This is due to the strange fact the governments are unable to leave planning well alone. Although widely ignored, misunderstood, and marginalised, planning is an important conduit of power between local and central government. Moreover, it has a not insignificant role - mediating between different interests to decide how land is used. During the Blair years, a whole regional layer of planning was added between the national and local, requiring decisions on each individual planning application to take account of a seemingly endless amount of policy.

The coalition government does not approve of the word 'regional', and to be quite honest I can see why. Regional planning suffered a democratic deficit, as John Prescott's regional assemblies never took off as they were meant to. It also spawned a horrifying level of jargon and TLAs (three letter acronyms). I once read a regional planning document that proposed to monitor 'synergy' and 'leverage' on an annual basis, which very nearly made me cry. That said, regional structures did bring a lot of funding into planning, infrastructure and economic development. And naturally the people working for these regional structures meant well and did their best with the powers and resources they had.

No longer, though. The abolition of Regional Development Agencies and their planning duties has been repeatedly announced since Eric Pickles become Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. This sudden wholesale removal of an entire tier of planning has caused considerable confusion, making the whole jenga stack wobble. However the government does not intend to leave planning with just local and national tiers. The recent CLG Business Plan confirmed the introduction of a new concept: the Neighbourhood Plan.

The idea of setting out planning policies, by each neighbourhood for each neighbourhood, comes from the Conservative planning Green Paper, titled Open Source Planning. This was released back in February, and at the time was widely derided by planners as unworkable, whilst horrified developers claimed it would end housebuilding. Apparently, the Conservatives didn't listen. I can see what they're trying to do: replace a distant and seemingly unaccountable layer of planning with a hyper-local and responsive one. That's laudible, until you consider the sheer magnitude of the problems that the planning system is expected to tackle. To name but the two I know most about:

The housing shortage; regional plans set targets for house-building, which often caused local controversy. Despite these targets, not enough homes were built. Thus, house prices remain stubbornly high despite the lack of first time buyers and the housing benefit bill climbed inexorably. The planning system is one of the biggest determinants of the quantity and quality of housing being built at any given time.

Environmental sustainability; the planning system must somehow reconcile interdependent and sometimes conflicting environmental objectives. Flood risk, air quality, biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, and waste reduction must all be considered and balanced when putting a plan together. Renewable energy is a particularly fraught topic - how can you reconcile national targets for renewable energy generation with rampant anti-wind turbine NIMBYism?

Both of these issues, and many others, are far, far bigger than a neighbourhood. I am all for people having a say in what happens where they live, but that isn't a new idea. Neighbourhoods elect local councillors, who decide whether or not to give planning permissions. Local councils put together local plans (noticing the many uses of the word 'local' here?), which people are encouraged to comment on. Most don't bother, unless something particularly controversial is at stake - like a wind turbine or a site for gypsies and travellers.

What the government's proposing is, like the Big Society, a much larger role for the community whether they like it or not. As the concept of neighbourhood plans remains hazy, I have a number of questions.

• What is a 'neighbourhood'? In rural areas, parishes are a helpful existing designation and have established Parish Councils to lead the process. But in towns and cities, is a neighbourhood a set area, a set population, or are the boundaries to be chosen by the inhabitants themselves?
  
  
• In order for a neighbourhood plan to have legitimacy, what proportion of the population need to be involved? Or indeed need to agree it? Will this agreement be through a mini referendum?
  
  
• Who will have the most influence over a neighbourhood plan? Will only those who have lived in the area for a certain period of time be able to speak up? Isn't it likely that those with the most time on their hands (the retired, I expect) will be most heavily involved?
  
  
• Regional and local plans were legally required to be consistent, or at least not conflict. Will it be the same for local and neighbourhood plans? If there is dissention between the two about how land is to be used, which would prevail?
  
  
• Local plans require a mass of evidence to back them up - data on infrastructure, housing need, and environmental constraints, for example. Will neighbourhood plans also need to be evidence-based? If not then they are bound to become unrealistic, but what safeguards will prevent this?
  
  
• A patchwork of neighbourhood plans, possibly overlapping and inevitably conflicting, will create huge complexity for the development industry. Will developers be given the chance to comment on neighbourhood plans? How will planning decisions be made when sites cross the boundary between two or more neighbourhoods?
  
  
• Neighbourhood plans will only be able to reflect the wishes of current residents of an area, not future generations or those wishing to move into the neighbourhood. How will the system safeguard against NIMBY enclaves, which further entrench inequality by safeguarding their patches against anyone new? What about often-excluded groups like the disabled and gypsies & travellers, how will their housing needs be taken into account?
  
  
• How will conflicts of interest be managed? Suppose someone with a large garden wants to put it in the plan for redevelopment but their neighbour objects. Who mediates in this situation?
  
  
• Putting together neighbourhood plans will require training, local government officer time and expertise, as well as funding. Local councils are facing 30% cuts over the next three years, how are they expected to cope with this additional resource-intensive requirement?
  
  
• What use will neighbourhood plans really be to communities? The frustrating nature of the planning system is that it only reacts; it can't proactively cause things to be built. Putting together a lovely plan for their neighbourhood will be a waste of people's time, if it is full of aspirations that will never be met as public funding is tightly squeezed.
  
  
• Let's be honest. Can you really imagine neighbourhood plans welcoming new housing and infrastructure like recycling centres and bus depots? These things are necessary, but will the vociferous members of communities really be able to make the most considered decisions about where they should go? What about the BANANAs*?
  

Funnily enough, planning is not a particularly popular or desirable profession. I toyed with and then decided against becoming a planner, on the grounds that the devil was in the really dull detail, like kerb heights and child yields. Being dragged into writing a plan for the community isn't terribly enticing when you've seen how difficult it can be. Moreover, the points in my Big Society post also apply here; the life of a private renter doesn't really encourage long-term thinking about where I live right now.

There are undoubtedly problems with the planning system, which I won't go into at length due to their utter tedium. Planning is in need of reform to address the challenges of climate change, housing shortage, and austerity. People are disconnected from planning, which I think is largely due to its over-complexity and incomprehensible language. There is a lot that could be done to simplify local plans and put them into plain English, without radically changing the whole system. That should at least be tried before putting precious time and money into more reorganisation. It strikes me that neighbourhood plans could be the final block that knocks the whole tower over into chaos.

* BANANA = Build Absolutely Nothing Absolutely Nowhere near Anything.

This society ain't big enough for both of us

The New Economics Foundation have just released an excellent report on the Big Society. After explaining what in fact the Big Society is, which is more than the government have managed, it comprehensively examines the aims, advantages, drawbacks, and risks involved. It's only 32 pages and a really good read - I thoroughly recommend it. There is no point in just restating the whole thing, so I'll give my personal perspective instead.

The NEF report identifies three key determinants of involvement in the Big Society: access, capacity, and time.

Access really depends on networks, and the strength of community bonds. I live in a rented house, in an urban neighbourhood that mixes student houseshares, young professional houseshares, and families. I've only lived in this house for a few months, don't know the names of my neighbours, and don't feel part of the community as such. The insecure nature of private renting means that I've lived in six different places since graduating four years ago, and thus not put down roots in any neighbourhood. I don't even know how I'd go about getting involved in the community; I don't go to church, have no children to take to playgroup/school, and don't belong to a political party or pressure group. I'm very familiar with and fond of where I live, but transient young professionals like me struggle to really engage with our communities. Apart from anything else, I don't know how long I'll be living in this house, but based on past experience, a few years at the very most.

The way around this might be to use the main community resource where all the young professionals can at some point be found - the local food shop. If you were going to pounce on me and ask if I'd like to get involved in the Big Society, it'd be easiest to do whilst I was staring at shelves of yogurt.

Capacity relates to what anyone can usefully do. Hopefully I've got some experience and skills that would be useful to the Big Society - like project management, diplomacy, and procurement. I'm also quite energetic and not easily bored. At risk of sounding like a CV, I think I've got things to offer. Most twentisomething graduate professionals would probably say the same.

The third factor is the one gives me the most pause: time. I work full-time, at least forty hours a week. Being single, I also do my own food-shopping, cooking, laundry, and housework (although the chore-sharing aspect of shared living is a great boon in this respect). This doesn't leave me with an awful lot of spare hours, or indeed a great deal of spare energy. Obviously there are weekends, but I probably spend less than half of them in Cambridge, as my family and plenty of my friends live elsewhere.

Thinking this through produces an ethical dilemma - assuming I continue to work full-time, in order to get involved in the Big Society I'd have to sacrifice seeing my friends and family so often. The selfish part of me resents that prospect. If I'm already working five days a week in the public sector, surely that's my bit done for society? Obviously I'm paid for that time, but I'm also paying taxes like everyone else. On the other hand, I think participation in society is really important and see the utopian appeal of local areas transforming themselves. What volunteering I've done has been really satisfying and rewarding, always temporary though.

I can't speak for anyone other than myself, but suspect that my generation have become accustomed to the simple social contract of paying taxes in return for having public services provided. The more complex level of involvement required by the Big Society is something I find hard to imagine fitting into my life. I was born in the eighties, and despite a left wing upbringing have internalised the individualist message that working is the most important thing. The current government is if anything strengthening that message, whilst stacking involvement with the Big Society on top of it. They have so far ignored that gap that this opens up between many people's expectations of society and the new reality. Whatever good intentions I might have towards the community, earning money to ensure my own independence and taking care of my family are my priorities.

On the other hand, if I was working three or four days a week, or even not at all, there wouldn't be a dilemma. I'd have spare time and energy to spend volunteering at a library, community centre, or similar. This assumes that I could earn enough to live on working part-time - which I'm certain I could, as my lifestyle isn't costly. That's the optimistic view, but at the moment wages are flat, inflation is rising, and jobs (full- or part-time) are scarce. Moreover, if unemployed you have to spend all your time searching for a full-time job in order to qualify for Job Seeker's Allowance.

I honestly don't know how lifestyles like mine can be reconciled with localism and the Big Society. I don't feel bound to my neighbourhood by residence (short-term renting), by employment (threatened by cuts), or by family (no relatives here, don't have children), or by friends (an urban tribe with much the same transience as me). I am accustomed to working five days a week then having total flexibility as to how I spend the rest of my time. I have the vague idea that I'd like to contribute to society, but no idea how to practically do so. And I very much doubt that I'm the only one who feels this way.

La Belle France

The unrelentingly grim tone of political and economic announcements recently led me to read about the French Revolution to cheer myself up. I've always had a fascination with the upheavals of 1789-94. In just five years (the usual gap between elections now) the whole country was turned upside down, torn apart, and built back up by war, terror, and astoundingly prescient ideas. Paris must have been a simultaneously horrifying and astonishing place to be during those years of upheaval.

The tenuous link that this has to UK housing policy is found in the demographic layout of Paris, focal point of the revolution centuries ago. Unlike London, which has pockets of social deprivation in close proximity to the richest areas of the central business district, Paris has a donut of deprived suburbs around a wealthy centre. With housing benefit cuts and changes to social housing, this structure will be rapidly replicated in London. Although given the scale of benefit cuts, those reliant on them in central London may need to move much further afield than the still-costly outskirts, and/or resort to deliberate overcrowding.

Minister of Decentralisation (surely one of the most oxymoronic titles ever) Greg Clark mentioned this in his recent speech to launch the government's White Paper on 'local growth'. He said:

'...even in the wealthiest areas, there remain significant pockets of unemployment and deprivation. Whatever the differences in economic performance between broadly defined parts of the country, the differences between different towns and neighbourhoods are also often great. Tower Hamlets, in the shadow of Canary Wharf, has three quarters of children growing up in low-income families.'

Mr Clark has successfully identified the problem of inequality, which has many complex economic & social causes, and without sustained and significant intervention perpetuates itself. However, he then veers into a character-assassination of Regional Development Agencies followed by a massive plug for their successors, the Local Enterprise Partnerships. Both RDAs and emerging LEPs focus on economic development, and I very much doubt that reducing poverty within areas the size of Tower Hamlets falls within their remit. Which is not to say that the government is doing nothing to tackle poverty in the shadow of Canary Wharf. The changes to benefits and social housing will move this poverty outside central London so that those working in the City won't have to look at it anymore.

You might wonder why London shouldn't become more like Paris. Unfortunately, confining poverty to the outskirts of the city hasn't always worked out well. The 2005 riots were centred on the poor suburbs of Paris, expressing frustration at high levels of unemployment, entrenched poverty, and racial tensions. That unrest had been simmering for decades before violence erupted. In London there will be huge internal migration of those in poverty over the next three years; the low-paid, unemployed, elderly, disabled and carers forced to uproot and resettle elsewhere. This will inevitably cause some tension, although historical comparison suggests that we have a much more sanguine approach to displeasure with the government on this side of the channel.

More seriously, the reason that housing benefit cuts will bite hardest in London is that it's disproportionately economically successful and lacking in housing supply, resulting in extremely high housing costs. The government's rhetoric is entirely focused on reducing the deficit, brushing aside the ideological questions at stake. Should the public sector subsidise people so that they can live in London, or let the market lock all except the highly paid out? What are the social benefits to communities with mixed levels of wealth; economic dynamism due to ease of recruiting for lower paid jobs, less wasted time and energy commuting, improved social cohesion as different groups mix? What are the disadvantages of London as it is; dissatisfaction stemming from the proximity of poverty and wealth, perceived unfairness of housing benefit, potential driving up of rents? Although replicating Paris' donut model would reduce housing benefit costs, would it increase public expenditure in other ways by moving people away from jobs, requiring greater spending on Job Seeker's Allowance and transport?

Have the government silently dropped their responsibility to try and alleviate poverty, or at least not make it worse? It really concerns me that they don't seem to be acknowledging any of these questions, let alone trying to answer them.

Strangely enough, given the choice I'd prefer to live in Paris than London. Not for any rational, statistically-supported reason - I just like it more.