I had a discussion with a work colleague last week. It began with a newspaper headline about the situation in Egypt. Apparently, many years ago he had served in Egypt in the forces. He had been shocked at the level of poverty he observed there, and realised that things had probably not moved on much for many people. And so he could understand why there was an uprising there.

Then the discussion moved to the UK, and although I did not suggest a parity of conditions to him we did talk about areas of poverty in the UK, people loving in poor quality run down housing on low incomes etc.