There are many reasons to pray for a revolution: the heat; the passport queues at Heathrow; the line-up of the latest Celebrity Big Brother. I also wonder whether leading a pitchfork-carrying mob through Canary Wharf would be the simplest way to reset my telephone banking pin.
But there is another significant upside to a potential breakdown in the social order. It would give us a chance to see whether the Silicon Valley billionaires’ plan to escape to New Zealand could actually work.
For a few years, tech visionaries have been buying land and bunkers as “apocalypse insurance”. This week New Zealand tried to stop the practice — and cool its housing market — by banning foreigners from buying most residential property. (Australians and Singaporeans are exempt due to trade deals.)