The tragedy of welfare ghettoes

So, Tom Harris and I had our duel on Radio Scotland this morning. His line of attack was straightforward: that when I said “scummy estates” – a charge for which I’m being denounced in the Scottish Parliament – I could only be referring to the people who lived in those estates. I thought back to the Easterhouse estate I visited a few months back in the Glasgow East by-election (see it for yourself – 2’20 into the YouTube video). There were dead rats in the landing, evidence of drug abuse, children playing around broken vodka bottles in the park, a pub boarded up like a Balkan arms stash to save it from attack, hallways which smell of stale urine. If Tom lived in such a place, I wonder how he’d describe it to his friends? I also wondered: how, in 2009, can we condemn families to live in such places? Why is there not more outrage about the hideous inequality: not just of wealth, but of state school provision and protection from crime? The estates I’m talking about are known for violent crime and sink schools – making life even harder for those growing up in them.