 |
The Great Wealth Divide. Photo: BBC
World Service
|
Updated: 06/02/2012
Last week I had the good fortune to stumble across a great little two-part radio documentary on the BBC World Service called The Wealth Gap: The View from London. The programme vividly brought to life how our lives are shaped by inequality. It also succeeded in conveying the complex nature of inequality and the challenge it presents to policy-makers wishing to take steps to reduce it.
2012: a year defined by inequality?
Inequality and the widening gap between the richest and the poorest in our society has hardly been out headlines of late. Wherever you look, from the recent political jockeying over the size of Stephen Hester's bonus to the ongoing high-profile protests organisers by the likes of Occupy movement and UK Uncut, it seems, at a rhetorical level at least, everyone is agreed that 'something has to be done' about inequality.
Throw in some added economic gloom for good measure and the timing of The Wealth Gap's broadcast starts to look like an inspired move on the part of the BBC World Service (itself a victim of deep reductions in public funding).
