Janet Street-Porter: The obscene wealth that's ruining London

We're now the nation with the biggest personal debt in the Western world, and experts predict that, by 2011, the number of us who will be turned down by major lenders because of our poor credit rating will soar to one in six. Students are completing university studies owing the state £9,000 and hoping to get a job in a society where the rich are paying less tax than ever and the gap between the haves and have-nots is getting wider.

Against this background, the news that city bonuses may be cut because of the bashing that stocks and shares have taken over the past couple of weeks, won't make most of us lose any sleep. The obscene amount of money washing around in London these days has resulted in ludicrous property prices, a booming art market and a record number of restaurants opening.

I'd like to think that overpaid traders and bankers spending huge sums of money on toys like cars, jewellery, clothes and hi-fi equipment is good news for London, but I don't think that's true. I loathe these new Londoners – brash, arrogant, vulgar, loud and tasteless. I don't care if they have charity auctions at their parties and give money to good causes. They add absolutely nothing to the quality of life in London. They exist in little gold-lined bubbles, rising at dawn, staring at computer screens all day, going to a sterile gym and eating a delivered meal most nights.

They have no concept of culture or community unless it impinges on their ability to make even more money. They accumulate wealth by trading with money. How repulsive is that? Instead of Ken's increased taxes on 4x4 gas guzzlers, he should consider a wealth tax, whereby any Londoner with an address in the congestion zone has to pay a tithe of 1 per cent of their earnings over £500,000 a year into schemes funding youth workers and practical training for the teenagers who hang around doing very little night after night. Kids Company, for example.

The news this week that a millionaire banker "forgot" that his £80,000 Maserati had been towed away three months earlier, and had been languishing in a car pound in west London, running up £5,000 in fines, is another example of the kind of resident we can do without. Bertrand Des Paillieres left Deutsche Bank this year to set up his own investment firm, and didn't have the time to remember what had happened to his car. Unrepentant, he claimed that the parking fines "weren't that expensive" compared to parking locally in Knightsbridge. In which case, I hope the car pound triples its daily rate immediately.

At the bank Mr Des Paillieres had a PA to sort out "domestic matters", and without this support, his life has become disorganised. It's time for this character to enter the real world, where most Londoners can't afford residents' parking permits, millions of commuters use public transport every day and spend hours travelling – because there's nowhere affordable to live within the M25.

The first step in this man's rehabilitation will be to survive without a PA. I've finally managed it and my life is vastly improved. I go to the cleaners, the laundry, the newsagents and the supermarket. I buy my own train tickets and fill my own car with petrol. I write my own cheques and I pay my own bills. I bought my own railcard and use the Underground. Using a PA just makes your brain atrophy and allows you to pretend you are more important than everyone else. Grow up, Bertrand.

Why keep arresting this sad man?

Arriving in Yorkshire, I picked up the local paper, and whose picture should be gracing the front page but Pete Doherty – spending a week at a rehab clinic in Harrogate. That mini-break was one of the conditions of a recent court appearance, where the magistrate uttered the words we find so entertaining when applied to Cocaine Pete: "Stop doing drugs or face a jail sentence." Doherty must have the thickest police file in central London, and his court appearances seem to occur on a weekly basis.

The Harrogate sojourn had little impact, because this week police arrested him again, planning to charge him with breaching bail conditions before the case was dropped on a technicality. Why bother to keep arresting this sad specimen? The police are always moaning about paperwork – they should just let Pete go down the dumper all by himself, and get on with solving some real crimes.

* John Prescott has been holidaying in the Lake District, trying to remember the story of his life for Headline books, aided by ghostwriter Hunter Davies. Of the £300,000 reported advance, smaller than sums paid for other "celebrity" memoirs over the past few years, I bet half will be going to Hunter. The months spent turning the incoherent grunts which emanate from Paul Gascoigne's mouth into a No.1 bestseller a couple of years back will stand Hunter in good stead, but I fear for his sanity trapped in a luxury self-catering cottage with Prezza during the rainy weather we've been having up north.

I love the way celebs delude themselves that they are writing their life stories all by themselves, as indeed Prezza let slip to curious locals. Then there's the question of Prezza's protection. He has been accompanied by no fewer than four police minders – why?

Tracey Temple must warrant a whole chapter if this tome stands any chance of emulating Gascoigne's sales figures, both in cost and social terms.