He writes that when he was at Cambridge he smashed milk bottles and played a game of getting down a street by walking over cars. “No one gave a second thought to whether we were damaging them. We bent down car aerials . . . to make a hurdle course. We stood on the roof of the college and threw bicycles into the street so we could see what happened when cars collided with them.” He insists that this stuff is useful for “acquiring the moral sense you will later need” and records that his companions in criminal damage are now senior in “TV channels, accountancy firms, the law, City banks . . .” etc.

Well, of course they are, you prat! They were rich, protected, unlikely to get prison records because their families could smooth the feathers of those whose property and peace they destroy....[L]ike the underclass yob, who at least has the excuse of poverty, these rich boys cannot see outside their own rut. It is social autism. In past centuries they might be checked by rigid conventions and parental
severity. Now, they aren’t.