A couple of weeks ago, a certain Kevin McCloud decided that the secret to Britain’s housing problems might lie in the slums of Mumbai. In doing so, he conveniently overlooked horrendous poverty, disease and child labour, managing to elevate a living situation that no one would choose to an inspiration.

This week is even better. Homelessness – or at least looking like you sleep on the streets – is now fashionable. Vivienne Westwood, a designer who can charge thousands of pounds for a dress, produced a catwalk collection in Milan that emulated the scruffy appearance of the homeless. Male models pushed shopping trolleys, crawled out of cardboard boxes and had silver sprayed into their hair to make them look cold. Don’t even get me started on the fake blood.

Incidentally, Vivienne Westwood didn’t draw on a great deal of personal experience when she created her street chic designs. Westwood is quoted as saying: “The nearest I have come to it [homelessness] is going home and finding I don’t have my door key.” So not that near at all then?

Amongst the consumers who have everything, the appearance of having nothing may soon be de rigeur. It’s not limited to Vivienne Westwood anyway. The boots above cost $1974 (a staggering £1219) from brand Augusta. Seriously.

What the hell’s next? Catwalk models in Guantanamo-style boiler suits? Ooops, too late.

I was the first blog to make this information publicly available, but later that same day the Socialist Party came out with a statement on their involvement in an electoral coalition formed entirely behind doors…

There will definitely be a left coalition at the next general election. It’s going to be called the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition and these are the provisional policies:

Provisional Programme for General Election Coalition

The working class and peoples of Britain face a ruling class offensive which will intensify over the coming period.

It is an offensive against public services, incomes, living standards and trade union rights in order to boost monopoly profit. Not content with receiving the biggest bail-out in the history of British capitalism, big business aims to make workers and their families pay to serve the interests, first and foremost, of the City of London’s financial institutions.

It is also an offensive which will be stepped up regardless of which party wins the forthcoming General Election. The likelihood is that a Tory government will make earlier and deeper cuts in public spending than a New Labour one. A Labour government may also be more vulnerable to trade union pressure not to outlaw industrial action in ‘essential’ services.

But both main parties intend to prolong the imperialist occupation of Afghanistan and to maintain the expansion of nuclear power and a new generation of British nuclear weapons.

Therefore this coalition is contesting the General Election to show that there is a clear left-wing alternative to policies of public sector cuts, privatisation, militarism and environmental degradation.

We recognise that there will be Labour and non-Labour candidates who agree with our policies, who share our socialist aspirations and who will be supported by left and labour movement organisations participating in our coalition.

We also recognise that there are different strategic views about the way forward for the left in Britain, whether the Labour Party can be reclaimed by the labour movement, or whether a new workers’ party needs to be established.

But our coalition is united on the need for mass resistance to the ruling class offensive, and for an alternative programme of left-wing policies to help inspire and direct such resistance. These are the policies which we therefore propose to put before the people:

PUBLIC OWNERSHIP, NOT PRIVATISED PROFIT

Stop all privatisation, including “PFI” & “PPP” – privatisation just rakes off our money into their pockets, for worse services.

Bring public services and utilities back into public ownership under democratic control.

NO CUTS – QUALITY PUBLIC SERVICES

Take rail back into public ownership and build integrated, low-pollution public transport.

Quality, free National Health Service under democratic public ownership and control.

Stop council house sell-offs and build eco-friendly, affordable public housing.

Good, free education for all under democratic local control, plus student grants not fees.

Keep Royal Mail as a publicly owned service, not a privatised cash cow.

STOP GLOBAL WARMING

Deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions – otherwise climate change, caused by capitalism, will destroy us.

Invest in publicly owned and controlled renewable energy – not nuclear or dirty fossil fuel.

JOBS, NOT HANDOUTS TO BANKERS & BILLIONAIRES

Bring banks and finance into true public ownership and democratic control, instead of huge handouts to the very capitalists who caused the crisis.

Tax the rich. Progressive tax on rich corporations and individuals, with a crackdown on tax avoidance.

Massive investment in environmental projects, for jobs and survival.

EMPLOYMENT & TRADE UNION RIGHTS

Repeal Thatcher’s and the EU’s anti-trade union laws.

A minimum wage, for all, set at half average adult male earnings.

Invest to create and protect jobs, especially for young people.

Solidarity with workers taking action to defend jobs, conditions, pensions, public services and trade unions.

PROTECT OUR ENVIRONMENT

Recognise that we depend on our environment for survival.

Move to sustainable, low-pollution industry & farming – stop the pollution that is destroying our environment.

Recognise that many of our planet’s resources are limited and that capitalism fritters them away for profit.

Produce for need, not profit, and design goods for reuse and recycling.

DECENT PENSIONS & BENEFITS

Restore the pre-Thatcher real value of pensions and link them to the higher of wages & earnings.

Protect entitlement to benefits and their value; end child poverty.

DEMOCRACY, DIVERSITY & JUSTICE

Welcome diversity and oppose racism, fascism and discrimination.

Ensure women have genuinely equal rights and pay.

Defend our liberties and make police and security democratically accountable.

For a democratic socialist society run in the interests of people not millionaires. For bringing into democratic public ownership the major companies and banks that dominate the economy, so that production and services can be planned to meet the needs of all and to protect the environment.

SOLIDARITY NOT WAR

Bring home all British troops from Afghanistan immediately – no more wars for resources.

No more spending on a new generation of nuclear weapons, huge aircraft carriers or irrelevant eurofighters – convert arms spending to socially useful products and services.

An independent foreign policy, based on international solidarity – no more US poodle, no moves to a capitalist, militarist United States of Europe, no Lisbon Treaty.

I don’t think I could manage a regular "idiot of the week" type post (or what Stroppy at Stroppyblog would call a Friday Fuckwit). There are too many idiots/fuckwits in the world. Far too much choice.

This week, however, a certain Kevin McCloud would undoubtedly be a finalist in any stupidity contest. The smug advert for his upcoming show Kevin McCloud: Slumming It has been showing on TV all week, with Kevin’s beaming facing espousing the virtues of slumming it (literally). 

In a companion piece in The Telegraph, the Grand Designs host argues that the government should "look to the Mumbai slums" for housing inspiration. You might be forgiven for thinking that disease-ridden imoverished slums are exactly what Britain does not need, but McCloud has a different take: "If I have one message for developers and the Government, it’s to focus less on eco-housing and green buildings – because, frankly, we know how to do that. Let’s start focusing on the social stuff, on how we can make people happier."

You know what won’t make people happier, Mr McCloud? 1 toilet for every 1400 people. No hospitals or public sanitation programmes. Typhoid, maleria and cholera.

McCloud also brings women’s oppression into his praise of the slums: "Because women don’t have huge kitchens, they rinse their pots in the street. That has to be the most civilised, sociable way of doing the washing-up – outside in the sun, chatting to your neighbours." Women engaging in arduous domestic labour in the streets; what a pretty picture indeed!

McCloud’s big thing is sharing possessions. He believes that those living in slums have an "elastic attitude to what is theirs", but apparently forgets that this might arise from having next to nothing. All this does seem a bit rich – excuse the pun! - coming from a guy with a posh 16th-century house in Somerset, complete with £75,000 biomass boiler.

McCloud isn’t the first person to get excited about the slums. A couple of years ago, a spokesperson for Greenpeace argued that "in the UK we could do worse than looking to the recycling endeavour of slum-dwellers in places like Dharavi for inspiration… There is a lot to learn from the developing world, where a scavenger mentality, grass roots recycling and sheer necessity can lead to imaginative leaps in redeploying waste.” No mention of the fact that many of the recyclers are child labourers, or indeed of the small problem that none of these workers have rights enshrined in law, of course.

Poverty is not something that people choose and it’s certainly not a state of being that should ever be elevated to an aspiration.