In an interesting Guardian column, Jonathan Freedland takes issue with the super-rich... the handful of uber-bankers set to receive the kind of City bonuses that high-end estate agents have forecast will boost the top 10% of the London property market this year. He says something rarely heard since the 1970s... it's not fair... and compares the Notting Hill houses currently being converted back from up to half a dozen flats into single dwellings with a recent Shelter report pointing to half a million families living in cramped conditions, three-quarters of whom claimed their lifestyle was damaging their children's development and/or education. In the run up to a bonus season that has already, apparently, had one salivating London agent marketing a Kensington three-bedroom apartment (on the market at two and a quarter million pounds) as a "starter home", Freedland asks whether enough might finally be enough, and might it be time for a bit of old-fashioned taxation, before Labour's growing wealth gap leads to a civil dissatisfaction strong enough to express it itself? Read Freedland here.

Rich to get richer than Richie [November 8]