Let's stop pretending that a shanty town in London is a big surprise Late on Thursday evening, I sat in the warmth outside King's Cross station, waiting for my train with a Caffe Nero latte. I'd been invited to a "political do" in Westminster (not a frequent occurrence), a drinks party with some Real, Live Politicians. I'd enjoyed the sense of urgent complicity in their talk ("We must achieve A, in order to deliver B"), the mischief that lay not far beneath the surface. Anyway, that was my night. Time for the train home. Sure, the Spanish boy might be lonely, and God alone knows how anyone lives in London on the minimum wage (we used to save the cheap housing for teachers, not the people who migrate to Britain in order to clean our schools), but, you know (as Mr Blair would say), that's the price of globalisation. This we are told, repeatedly. We were told it by the Labour government. Our Conservative mayor subscribes to the same theory. As, presumably, did the 70 Romanian migrants, cleared this week from a former football ground in Hendon. For the past two years they'd lived in what looked like a shanty town, no doubt working illegally. This is suburban London and several residents have raised the issue of the squatters with me. This is knocked-together accommodation with no sanitation and the inherent health risks that brings," said a local councillor. Our London home is in this borough: I don't disagree with the councillor. On Rick Stein's India on BBC2 this week, the chef visited the shanty town in Mumbai, and expressed wonder at the fact that inside the maze of grotty shacks, families were living, working, succeeding. But Rick didn't have to travel to Mumbai to uncover this side to human nature: the northern line runs to Hendon. Each Romanian cleared away for the benefit of us tidy suburbanites no doubt longs for his home as much as the boy at King's Cross. No doubt he wears the same mask of "I'm fine" as he installs your new bathroom, before returning to his squat. Some problems (and this is why I find the "We must achieve A, in order to deliver B" talk of politicians to be ultimately unsatisfying) don't have solutions: we want economic growth, but we don't want immigration. We want young people to have the chance to succeed, but not to see a young man's heart breaking with loneliness. I want to retire to Spain (so many people do that the Chancellor can make a significant saving by ending their winter fuel allowance) but I don't want London to be swamped with immigrants. Mind the gap. I don't think we should lock down our borders (not the same as managing them properly) or turn a blind eye to insanitary squats. But could we at least stop pretending to be surprised by shanty towns in Hendon? The creative destruction of capitalism doesn't apply only to failing businesses, and its mess spreads further than a disused football pitch in a north London suburb. Look your barista in the eye next time, when he smiles and asks "To stay, or to go?"