The Estate Within

In a bold new initiative Tory leader David Cameron has proposed that inner-city sink estates should be transformed into 'gated communities'. "Decades of neglect have allowed these communities to become ghettos," Cameron told a press conference during a recent visit to a Leeds housing estate. "They’ve become havens for drug dealers and miscreants, no go areas for decent people. I believe that by putting them behind gates, we can begin to regenerate these areas." According to the Old Etonian, erecting twenty foot tall barbed wire-topped walls around housing estates, with a single set of huge steel gates as the only way in or out, will make them safe places for decent people to live. "The walls and gates are there to keep the criminal elements out," he contends. "Obviously, we'll have to institute some system of identity passes for residents, so that we know who has a right to be there, and who is just there to sell drugs or rob people." Such identity passes would be used in conjunction with private security patrols around the estates' perimeters and manned checkpoints at their gates. Indeed, under Cameron's proposals, these patrols might even extend to areas adjoining the estates. "The patrols would be able to return youths found outside the perimeter without the appropriate passes after dark to their estates," he claimed. "Imagine how grateful their parents would be to know that their children were safe at home, not wandering dangerous and unfamiliar streets where they might come to harm."

Although welcomed in many quarters - particularly by Daily Mail readers - Cameron's proposals have been condemned by the left, who claim that they would simply turn Britain's housing estates into apartheid-era South African townships. "It's nothing more than segregation on the basis of social class, rather than race," says labour backbencher Tom Bulgobb. "They're only allowed off the estates to go to their low-paid jobs, the rest of the time they're safely behind bars, so that the middle classes can sleep safe at night!" The Conservative Party rejects such claims, arguing that it is simply trying to improve the quality of life for estate dwellers. "Once the criminal elements are locked out, these estates will become crime free paradises," comments Cameron. "Consequently, it will be much easier to attract inward investment to them - we'll be able to build schools, pawn shops, off licences and all the other facilities these kind of people find essential, all within their perimeter fences! They'll only have to leave to go to work." In the interests of economy and reducing the UK's carbon footprint, Cameron is proposing the establishment of a special bus service to take the residents to and from work. "Why unnecessarily increase the number of private vehicles on the road?" he asks. "Especially the older, more polluting kind, that estate dwellers typically drive." The Tory leader believes that this so-called 'segregation' will actually benefit those living on estates. "We're doing them a favour, keeping them on the estates - they're far happier mixing with their own kind," he muses. "Contact with superior social classes only upsets them, making them feel inferior and giving them unrealistic expectations with regard to lifestyle and income. It's that kind of envy which fuels crime, you know."