As for the ice-cream it was vanilla (with yellow colouring) – nowadays I’d prefer it without the colouring in a more naturalistic cream colour, with perhaps some chopped nuts, sprinkled chocolate and a golden lemon and honey syrup topping for texture and contrast. Although I do like a bit of rum and raisin now and again.

Maybe the LibDems could go for something similar – artificial colouring and plain vanilla is a bit of a turn-off these days, even if it is the only thing going on a steamy day.

Why is it the party is full of geeks? Are they attracted to the yellow? Geekery aside, the yellow really needs to go… not sure what colour would replace it but it’s just not good.

For every geek question, somewhere there is a Liberal Democrat who knows the answer…

Matt, you’re wasting your time with ejh, he obviously hasn’t read “The Welfare State We’re In” by James Bartholomew – which explains eloquently what you are trying to tell him.

“Can you really not see the difference between claiming what is your legal right and begging?”

ejh, the above sentance is the exact meaning of the culture of entitlement that people in Britain are so pissed of about. If everyone had to stand up for their legal right to free housing, healthcare and food – who would do any work?

I thought your argument was in favour of eradicating poverty, not just reducing to tolerable levels (whatever that may be, to who’s standards?).

On tied houses, my first political experience I remember was as a 6-yr-old to convince my 80-yr-old neighbour to go and vote for the first time in their life.

Old Sam (that’s what we called him) was afraid that he would be forced into an alms house if he didn’t do as the baronet told him and vote Labour(!) (Yeah, I know, feudalism in the twentieth century). I precociously told him he could always lie if he was asked how he voted and because it was a secret they could never prove what he had actually decided. I saw him an hour or so later and he was handing out ice-creams door-to-door with a big smile on his face encouraging everyone else in the village to go out and vote too.

Similarly, anyone opposed to the “diversity agenda” must be a paid up member of combat 18……..

The state cannot know who is in poverty. Someone on 12k, living at home with their parents is relatively comfortable, a single parent on the same money with 4 kids is not.

What does it mean? What’s it supposed to mean? To what does it relate?”

What I’m trying to say is; Universal welfare entitlement depends on people all having the same “needs” which will be met in the same way, and therefore require the same amount of money. Yes, there are some crude discriminators in welfare entitlements (parents get more than non-parents, people over 21 more than people under 21 etc) but the welfare state cannot take account of (which is what I meant by “Know”) the diversity of life situations, there are just too many variables meaning that some people get more than they need and some get less. In management jargon the welfare system is sub-optimal.

The Labour party manages to stifle debate outside the party by a number of means:

A media strategy that values effectiveness more highly than honesty. If you don’t think that Campbell was supressing debate by intimidating journalists, tightly controlling access to Ministers and generally throwing his weight around then I am, frankly, surprised. You can argue that the ends may justify the means but I think you would struggle to deny that it happened and continues to do so.

The use of “independent” reviews where complex issues are concerned; followed by highly tendentious references to “the science.” As in, we effectively farm policy formulation out to a supposedly independent commission with a highly selective brief (airports, GM, climate change, Iraq, expenses) the Inquiry returns the anticipated result and then opponents of the new policy can be described as ignoring “the science/evidence”. For example, the state can now wade in, decide whether your children are too fat or not and then label you a bad parent because “the science” tells us that letting your children get fat will kill them (a few years earlier assuming that they stay fat all their lives). It is sort of true but it ignores a central political point that it is arguably more important – that parents (rather than the state) have responsibility for their children. The real debate is not whether mars bars are bad for kids but whether porky kids is a reasonable price to pay for the presumption that parents retain responsibility for their kids. This – you will notice – is not about “the science” at all. You can think that Mars bars are bad and still think that teachers should teach rather than compiling reports on their pupils’ BMI scores and sending them off to social services.

Massive obfuscation in the national accounts. Want to know what the PSBR is? Tough, the off-balance sheet nature of PFI (as well as its complexity) means that we can no longer compare the level of historic borrowing with the current level. So even when Gordon said he was keeping net debt below 40% of GDP, he wasn’t comparing like with like because his gigantic infrastructure improvements were being funnelled into a wasteful delivery model merely to keep them off the books.

Massive fiddling of other statistics. If educational performance is getting better and better, how come we keep falling behind other OECD nations and universities increasingly complain (as they did not hitherto) that their students cannot spell or punctuate? Because they are gaining emotional literacy not taught hitherto or elsewhere? Then why do the poor blighters claim to be so much more miserable than kids elsewhere?

And, finally through the creation of spurious “agendas” like the Child poverty agenda which confuse objectives with outcomes. The government announces a set of policies to combat child poverty and calls it the poverty agenda. Presto! Anyone who wants to attack the policies for being rubbish policies can be attacked on the basis that, because they are opposed to the “poverty agenda” they must be in favour of child poverty. If you haven’t seen that one done about a million times then you haven’t been paying attention.

For an example, look no further than the crapulous bilge about how the Tories want to make cuts in the middle of a recession in order to provide tax breaks for millionaires. You will recall that the basis of this is the Tories proposed change to the Death Duties threshold – a policy which Labour rushed to emulate as soon as it was announced and whose cost runs to the, ooh tens of millions. This is now being used by the Government to avoid answering questions about its determination to keep raising “investment” at a time when it is borrowing 25p in every single pound it spends.

Does that answer the question?

Incidentally, can anybody pick any sense out of this:

The state cannot know who is in poverty. Someone on 12k, living at home with their parents is relatively comfortable, a single parent on the same money with 4 kids is not.

What does it mean? What’s it supposed to mean? To what does it relate?

Unlike social housing ? how many notorious social housing estates do we have – Easterhouse, Tower hamlets, etc etc. Social housing is not a panacea however you look at it.

Housing – Personally I’m in favour of putting money in peoples pockets via higher tax thresholds and letting them make their own housing choices. This could mean a better match between “need” and provision and would dicourage dysfuntional behaviour by developers and property owners (e.g empty housing)

Child poverty. It’s quite obvious that one of the reasons child poverty has not reduced in proprtion to money spent on it is that a lot of the money is not spent, by parents, on things that alleviate child poverty. “Controversial” measures here might include vouchers or the direct provision of whatever is deemed to alleviate poverty rather than cash to parents.

Tax credits. Abolish, replace with tax breaks if in work and welfare adjustments if not. Even if you agree with the aim of them, tax credits are an expensive and inefficient way to redistribute. Rather than taking and then giving back, don’t take in the first place

Gawd, tied cottages. You do know that they were notorious, don’t you? That people were often thrown out of their homes for disagreeing with the landlord, for going on strike, for ceasing to be economically productive, for – in much of Scotland – being human rather than being sheep? You think that tied cottages were like some sort of big extended family arrangement?

At the end of the day you are still asking someone for money, can’t see that it matters who it is

Can you not? Can you really not see the difference between claiming what is your legal right and begging? If you can not, given how basic that is, why should anybody think you can see anything more difficult?

Happy to hear what this new progressive consensus should be though. Any ideas folks?

Ok, some definitions:

“Dogma driven bureacrat” as in agent of the state who inculcates the values of the state whenther conscious of it or not.

“Very expensive” as in the welfare state costs money, billions, and is hugely expensive to administer – i.e money that could be spent on welfare payments is instead spend on administering the system. Even it’s most ardent supporters will concede this is a problem

“Entitlement” vs begging – no offence but to me “entitlement” is just institutionalised, state sanctioned begging. At the end of the day you are still asking someone for money, can’t see that it matters who it is, if you perceive begging as demeaning it’s still demeaning.

“because people had accmmodation they could rely on and money they didn’t have to beg for”.

Hmmm. The house I live in was once provided for employees of the local factory, free, for life. Tied cottages were the same, churches and philanthropists built what would now be called social housing. Most of the poorest people stayed in the home of the extended family for life, it’s only (largely left wing) social policy that has driven current, unsustainable, demand for social housing. Many people who can’t get social housing would diagree that it’s “reliable”.

I’m not decrying welfare per se. I just question the assumption that the state is effective at delivering it.

Do you? I’ve been on unemployment benefits (and other welfare benfits) a number of times in my life, including, as it happenbs, right now.

By your own admission, all that’s happened is they’ve been “Liberated” them from one form of dependency to another.

No, by my own admission it liberated them from dependency, because people had accmmodation they could rely on and money they didn’t have to beg for.

I’d rather be reliant on my local vicar who probably knew me and my family all his life than some faceless (and very expensive) dogma driven bureacrat on a job centre plus helpline.

You might think that, but then again you don’t know anything about it, do you? Because you’re never going to be in that position. People who have tend to prefer the route of entitlements, rather than begging, be that either on the streets on on the steps of a charity.

And I wonder….what is a “dogma driven bureaucrat” here? And it what sense are they “very expensive”? Is there any sense in which you have any idea what you’re talking about?

The state replaced the previous social systems, yes, but where is the evidence that they are more effective i.e if that amount of money had been spent by bodies other than the state would they have been more efficient at using it ?

By your own admission, all that’s happened is they’ve been “Liberated” them from one form of dependency to another. I’d rather be reliant on my local vicar who probably knew me and my family all his life than some faceless (and very expensive) dogma driven bureacrat on a job centre plus helpline.

I’ll ignore the ad hom, I somehow doubt you have any first hand experience of poverty either…..

Interestingly, this is precisely what was said at a north west region third sector bods meeting I sat in about two months ago, expressed if anything even better – something like: “a touching belief that a 60 page PDF fixes the problem all by itself.”

How would they have achieved the latter?