France today resembles Britain circa 1981 when nightly towns blazed with the rage of an underclass as the harsh Thatcherite revolution began to cut. It fears mass unrest as its so-called “social model” is gradually phased out. Unemployment and poverty have risen sharply.

The French would surely spit that they need no lessons from this nation of shopkeepers on how to run a good riot: they can point to 1789, 1830, 1848 and 1968, like World Cup victories for the proud holders of the tricolour.

But these were largely radical chic, middle-class affairs, fought to an agenda. Paris 2005 is more Brixton 1981 than Bastille 1789. It started when a gang, peacefully nicking stuff, was rudely disturbed by French rozzers. On the Left Bank some academic is surely arguing that the youths were demonstrating their liberté to liberate private property. More plausible is the idea that the rioters were roughs with nowt to do.

Yet the French and British riots differ in one key regard: ours were in more visible, if raffish districts. Brixton was an inner-city riot, Paris is a very suburban affair.

It was Peter Mandelson’s grandfather, Herbert Morrison, later assisted by Adolf Hitler’s Luftwaffe, who made the difference: he ensured council housing was built in the heart of London. It kept the city Labour but also ensured the rich could not ignore the poor for long.

In Paris Napoleon III economically cleansed the great unwashed — or rather the even less washed — to a shanty-town periphery. It allowed France to contrast our “cardboard city” with gay Paris. And it did shame us: the sight of the homeless hordes forced us to question the morality of Thatcherism, and so we tackled “social exclusion”.

But because you don’t trip over tramps in the Tuileries you can kid yourself the French poor have been cured of their poverty. Manhattan once so edgy, is equally sanitised. But alas, as New Orleans showed, poverty in America still flourishes.

Perhaps we should be grateful here — for our daily reminders that the poor will always be with us.

• It is an odd test: no matter how often you fail, you can try again. But then that’s true of the political career of its sponsor, David Blunkett. If giving endless chances to cabinet ministers is okay then why not immigrants who fail the Britishness test?

  The test has been called too difficult and too easy. I tilt towards too difficult, having been almost stumped by the question “What should you do if you spill someone’s pint in the pub: Offer to buy the person another pint? Dry their wet shirt with your own? Prepare for a fight in the car park?” Well, obviously a true Brit takes them outside and thumps them, but it was cunning to suggest buying them another pint: that should catch out teetotal Muslim fundamentalists.

  ()The bigger objection is not that the test is hard or soft, but banal: is the mark of Britishness really at what age you can buy a lottery ticket or whether you need a TV licence for each set you might own? Who knows the answer, who cares? You could pass this and still become a suicide bomber: nothing in the test suggests why you should respect British values. Oh, and there is no history — as there is “a lot” of it. Did the Romans look back on their empire and sigh “I ain’t learning ’bout that. Went on too bleedin’ long”?

  Nice call girls keep their aitches on

  It gives a whole new meaning to oral sex. Wartime prostitutes were graded by Scotland Yard, not according to how delicately they dropped their drawers, but how coarsely they dropped their aitches.

  Newly released papers show the authorities fretted about “Piccadilly commandos” undertaking raids on American GIs in London. Far from welcoming reverse lend-lease, giving relief to the balance of payments, a senior officer classified tarts by social desirability. Soho had the “lowest type of all drabs”; Burlington Belindas in Burlington Gardens seemed positively posh, or at least expensive and semi-clean; the French “colony” in Maddox Street won gold stars; but in rough old Piccadilly you might catch a bad dose of working-class claptrap. Perhaps the Establishment was just jealous that tarts were no longer lingering outside its nearby Naval & Military club, the In & Out.

  Fifties official papers are no better. One says of Joe Coral: “For a bookmaker in Stoke Newington he is not a bad sort of fellow.” Oh, the joys of our class system. 

  Wise up, Davis – smarm wins

  It was good to see David Davis give a truer account of himself in the Tory leadership debate on Question Time; he is a likeable fellow wrongly cast as a Tebbit-type bovver boy. But I fear he is wrong when he says that at the very time the public is tiring of Tone it would be wrong for Tories to offer a pale blue imitation, a Tory Blair.

  David Cameron may indeed be a tricksy, public relations smoothie, but that is precisely why Davis has been unable, so far, to land a killer blow. When Cameron is attacked he just flashes his expensive dentistry and adjusts his position; just like the early Blair. If you only half believe in everything you are hardly going to die for anything.

  We fell out of love with Blair as we saw through his smarm. But we could be seduced all over again by another sweet talker. There is scant enthusiasm for a real leader; they seem stolid, harrumphing about white papers. Alas, statesmanship is all showbiz now; he who realises that, wins.

• Betting is to be available on Ryanair, as if flying by such an unfancied, moody nag of an airline were not already enough of a flutter. So how will it work?

  Perhaps stewardesses will gallop up aisles, ridden by cabin crew. Pilots might announce: “Any takers at a 100-1 for a near-miss? Or can I tempt you with 40-1 on your cases ending up at the wrong airport? Ah, now this has to be worth a punt: 20-1 on there being a terrorist on board. Or if you are feeling really lucky, how about 1,000-1 that there’s something edible in the in-flight nosh?” Endless fun.

  It might do little for cautious Brits, but the Irish, with their fabled fondness for a flutter, might feel they have flown to heaven.