Near me is an estate which is the classical tipping ground for those with no chance to become house-owning, Volvo-owning, blessed-with-2.4-children professional clones.

To be fair, there is the expected percentage of drug addicts, drunks, criminals of one sort or another (usually violent drunks or thieving addicts) and so on. However, there are as many marooned on the estate through personal tragedy.

At one time, I was nearly romantically involved with a girl on the estate. Her five children were a drawback. The children had four fathers. Before anyone condemns the girl as shiftless and amoral, I must point out that she has as many brain cells as I have, but far more problems in her upbringing. She was fostered through several cold institutions and then foster parents who mustered the correct number of points on the check sheet to become "carers", but appear to have lavished no more true affection on their foster daughter than they would on self-assembly furniture. As a result, the unfortunate girl fell prey to four plausible, predatory and worthless husbands or boyfriends.

The children by the way, are all of average intelligence or better. Apart from a tendency to swear constantly and meaninglessly, they seem to have few personal conflicts.

I know of several women in something like the same state of affairs. A very large proportion were raised in institutions such as Convent-sponsored orphanages, or council-run foster homes. Perhaps these institutions cannot be blamed for the tragedy or failings which cost these girls their natural families, but none of them seem to have replaced parental affection with anything worthwhile.

No doubt there are plenty of boys with the same upbringing, and whose lack of self-worth manifests itself in various anti-social ways.

While there are many people on estates I would not care to associate with (or with whom I would have no shared interests whatever), there are plenty of smug and selfish middle-class parasites whom I despise more, and have less in common.