Got a good mortgage? Just don’t be so smug

This is the latest division between the middle-class haves and have-nots. Anyone who was clever enough to grab themselves a tracker in the past few years is currently lording it over those of us stupid enough to get lumbered with a fixed rate. "Have you got a tracker?"

No, I haven't. And don't I bloody know it.

We bought our house in Teddington in 2005. Long enough ago to avoid tipping headlong into negative equity immediately (although I'm not holding my breath). But not, it seems, at the right time mortgage-wise.

Now, not only are we are saddled with a debt we probably shouldn't have taken on, we also have the added insult of feeling like mortgage morons. We don't get any trickle-down extras every month like Team Tracker. No, instead we are doomed to fixed-rate hell.

Forget Helen Fielding's "smug marrieds". Now it's all about whether you are smugly mortgaged.

This is a nauseating trend. But it's hardly surprising when most people still believe - wrongly - that we are in a "white collar recession". London's middle classes feel bruised and targeted - so you can't really blame them for loving their little tracker gains. But the reality of this recession is very different to what was predicted last year and it's about time we woke up to this. The capital's middle classes will not emerge unscathed, but in the long term they're unlikely to be the worst off.

The latest unemployment figures show the downturn will hit the weakest and the poorest hardest. This week's statistics show that at 6.6 per cent Birmingham has double London's 3.3 per cent unemployment. Glasgow (4.7 per cent), Manchester (4.6 per cent) and Newcastle (4.4 per cent) all have it far worse than we do. London gained 33,000 jobs in last year's final quarter.

In this climate there's something tasteless about congratulating yourself on your "great" mortgage deal. After all, we all got into this mess by embracing smugness in the first place and it has been our collective undoing. Everyone was so busy patting themselves on the back about the mounting value of their house that they were blind to the truth: they were investing in a house of cards. The tracker obsession just perpetuates the myth that there is a way to beat the system. But it's the system which is rotten. Haven't we learned anything?

The tracker one-upmanship game is a remnant of the old era, when it was still OK to crow about property. It's no longer appropriate.

So, please, if you've got a good deal, I don't want to know. And if you insist on counting your blessings, let it be that you live in one of the areas least blighted by the recession - London.

Size, the measure of America

John McCain's allegedly "plus-sized" daughter Meghan has started an almighty bitchfest, hitting out against Republican pundits who dislike her and who, she says, destroyed her father's chances of winning the election. Who can blame her? In the US she has been vilified and mocked for her size, which in real life you would not cast a second glance at. One report, seemingly shocked, described her as "stretching to 10 during the election". (Quick, starve her!) Hitting back at the wall-to-wall coverage she had to put up with for months, 24-year-old Meghan sensibly told her critics they could "kiss my fat ass". Quite right. It doesn't matter what Meghan looks like but one spectacle is good to see: Republicans eating each other alive.

Please let us catch Ken's train

Top marks to train fan Ken Livingstone for travelling ticket-free in style. On arriving in Slough from Paddington, Ken was allowed to buy a £7.50 ticket instead of stumping up a £20 fine.
As a regular guest in the "fare amnesty" queue near the stairs to Platform 3 at Vauxhall, I applaud the concept of reprieve for ticketless suburban commuters. It's a lifesaver if you're running late for a train or if you have spent 20 minutes frantically stabbing the ticket machine's frozen computer screen only to give up in frustration.

The fairness Ken encountered is rail travel as it should be. A belated payment is not the same as fare-dodging. Honest, guv'nor.