As it happens, I do not normally have to drive into Cambridge at rush hour, but tens of thousands of less fortunate folk do, and they endure interminable traffic jams and pump out unconscionable amounts of pollutants in the process. Cambridge is choking on prosperity. It has the heaviest concentration of high-technology companies, venture capital and ancillary services of any town in Europe, perhaps of any town outside North America. Every shop in the centre has signs advertising vacancies. One cannot enter a supermarket without running into posters advertising for, nay, begging for, workers.
Unemployment is, to all intents and purposes, zero.
Across the road the St John's Innovation Centre, a nursery for start-ups, is filled to the rafters with new companies. The old Cambridge City football ground has been turned into a huge office complex. Ditto the old council offices on the top of Castle Hill. Ditto the old Chivers jam factory in Histon, and the suburban gardens at Mount Pleasant. A few miles out of town a new 'research park' has risen from a gravel pit, and its first units were let before the water had been drained from the site.