But the Big Society has come up against the rough business of cuts: to shrink Britain's gaping fiscal deficit, the government is implementing drastic reductions in public spending.

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Yet there is also one hurdle for Vodafone: the PrimeCo joint venture, if Bell cuts up rough.

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And though his sharp suits and cosmopolitan approach may charm outsiders, he cuts an awkward figure in the rough-and-tumble of the townships.

ECONOMIST: South Africa

The IFS then goes on to make rough estimates of the distributional impact of all the cuts and shows an ever stepper regressive curve.

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Frazer Robson, of Shelter Housing Aid and Research Project (SHARP), said the proposed cuts could force more people to sleep rough on the streets.

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It starts as an exit off the Dumbarton Bridge, which cuts across the southern edge of San Francisco Bay, runs though rough-and-tumble East Palo Alto, then tree-lined stretches dotted with multimillion-dollar mansions, and eventually hits, as the name implies, the Stanford campus.

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