This week, the papers and our TV screens are focused on two very different problems involving small groups of people. The problems have no obvious link but the likely outcomes show the great gulf that exists in our unequal society.

In Essex a group of 300 people have been told by the High Court that despite owning land which was previously a scrap metal site, that they cannot continue to live on it after 10 years of doing so in defiance of planning rules. The first irony is that this comes in the same week as Grant Shapps, the housing Minister has told us that he is ripping up planning regulation to enable housing to be created to relieve pressure on our housing lists. There is a genuine obstacle in the form of a small number of neighbours who not unreasonably feel their properties have been blighted by this misuse of the land (some observers might feel that travellers site or scrap metal site, the blight is not greatly different). Basildon Council are committed to spending some £18M to evict these 300 people and presumably if they committed public money to compulsory purchase the neighbours properties the cost would be a great deal lower than £18M. The second irony is that the constituency for the great proponent of localism, Eric Pickles is less than 10 miles away and one of the strengths of the Travelling community is their commitment to one another and concepts enshrined in the Big Society. 

In the Square Mile of London and beyond, a small group of Bankers are anticipating a report by Sir John Vickers (no Judge, but he has a similar standing in the context of this story) to be published within the next couple of weeks. The report is widely reported to be pressing for greater regulation for the way they work that will possibly reduce the risks for society at large from a re-run of the banking crisis of recent years and probably restrict the freedom for these bankers to carry on as they did before. The cost of getting this wrong previously already runs somewhere between £379Bn and £1.3Tn.

So we have two small groups of people who in the widest view of society have failed to abide by norms and the rules that most of us do follow. Neither are responsible for adding much to the GDP of society in absolute terms (neither manufacture things or sell things of any great worth). Both groups are easily recognisable and both are fashionable in certain sectors of society and reviled more widely. One group is being threatened with eviction from land they own, and some might argue are being forced to adopt a lifestyle their collective noun suggests is part of their raison d’ etre. The other is having the excesses of their lifestyles threatened (despite them being feted as great entrepreneurs who are renowned for their ability to turn every challenge into a great opportunity). Each group has its champions – one has Angela Knight (previously Economic Secretary to the Treasury) and John Cridland (Director General of the CBI). The other has Vanessa Redgrave and Amnesty International.

Both groups seem to affect us all – the Bankers who few know have apparently brought chaos to our nation, the Travellers whilst limited to a small part of Essex remind us of ‘people like them’ who irritate and disrupt communities across the country when they choose to move onto land which is not designated for living on.

The next few days will show if either group will be protected from the impact of the decisions made by their respective arbiters. I suggest that we could all predict which group is most likely to be protected (even at this late stage in the proceedings) and which will be expected to pay the penalty for failing to follow the rules!