I found myself passing the BMW garage today. It’s crammed with new cars – they must expect to sell lots over the next few weeks. But who has the money – even in this solidly prosperous area? After all, the truly rich around here change their cars about as often as they buy new tweeds. On the other side of Perth, the vast new block at the prison takes shape. It will be a big improvement. But it will be filled, like all prisons, with young people, drug users, products of broken family relationships … all the things the Conservatives have been trying to talk about. And then there is the horror of the young prostitutes being murdered in Ipswich. For myself, I suspect that broken family relationships are as likely to be symptom of a dysfunctional society as cause of it. And, as I drove around Perth today, I was looking at a society which is not so much dysfunctional as just lacking in any significant connections at all.