Generally all good requests, though can I please ask for your evidence as to how the M6 has “cleared” congestion? Taxing people to use motorways will only make them use a cost-benefit analysis of other non-motorway routes. I opposed this when the Lib Dem’s announced similar as it is not the right way around to tackle either congestion or climate change.

Also, with 11, don’t we have a problem enough with police chiefs acting as politicians? Ask police officers up and down the country and I’ll be amazed if, certainly from those with a few years under their belt, that they aren’t sceptical about why their boses make decisions and why forces go through cyclical periods of policy because lessons aren’t learned in favour of making a new (and political) solution for all ills?

Define yourself as progressive, and then say what is progressive, and shout down anyone who challenges your self appointed title.

“progressive” is just a meaningless word assigned to policies that self appointed “liberals” deem to be their policies. By yelling PROGRESSIVE as loud as possible, perhaps no one will challenge whether the policies themselves are up to snuff.

Some of the above might pass muster in an actual debate, some are odious, but the word “progressive” assigns no value to them in their own right. Nor does listing them add value to the word “progressive”.

Twelve threads, each debating a single bullet from the above would be interesting. Each tested on its own merits. Each having to show whether it could be considered as contribution towards progress.

But that would be debate, and it is rather less than obvious that the author is interested in that.

2. God forbid you should actually start any kind of debate here rather than mudslinging though, eh?

Hmm. I would, on balance, be happier with the Conservatives if they implemented all 12 rather than none, but that doesn’t mean that they’re all good.

– 3 seems rather anti-progressive, in that it leaves the motorways for those with the money to spare (who can both afford the toll and to buy a modern exempt car), while the less rich get to take a longer and slower route on A roads, possibly using more fuel. I don’t drive: I’m lucky enough to have a bus route that goes pretty much from my doorstep to my workplace. Investment in public transport so that more people could do the same seems a better policy, but if you must do the tolls with exemptions, then the toll income needs to be recycled into subsidising the purchase of exempt cars.

– 9 I don’t like either. Firstly, £50k seems an extremely arbitrary limit. Tie it to some percentage of median household income instead. Secondly, as a proportion of the population, households with children and an income greater than £50k (you don’t say if this is net income or gross income, which makes a huge difference; did I mention “arbitrary number”?) it’s really not that many households. There was a good case for maintaining universal benefits made at LC not long ago.

– 11 worries me. Why should police commissioners and not other civil servants be elected? What safeguard against someone like the USA’s Sheriff Arpaio would there be? Wouldn’t this, in most regions, just end up requiring police commissioners to be either Labour or Conservative candidates? How is this an improvement?

3.

My mud is progressive mud, and as such is not really mud at all. Therefore I have not slung mud, but invoked progressivism, so you should apologise for even thinking to question that which is progressive, even when it might have appeared to you as mud.

Indeed 5. Thanks for continued non-engagement. Good to see you have nothing to bring to the table.

4. I think you’ve got good points, glad to see someone else agrees about 11 and 3. Hadn’t really considered the cut off of child benefits issue, but you have a really good point about linking it to an actual median income value rather than an arbitrary one.

“Inheritance tax affects only Britain’s richest. It recycles cash through the economy and prevents the entrenchment of enormous privilege.”

Snigger. Anyone who believes that is smoking some serious shit.

One of the problems with inheritance tax as it is is that it doesn’t touch the rich at all. Anyone seriously think that the next Duke of Westminster is going to see his inheritance affected? The big estates simply don’t pay it as it’s simple enough to avoid if you’ve got enough money to pay to do so.

“The A-level ‘brand’ has been contaminated. Every year concerns are raised about their value, the quality of assessment and the ‘dumbing down’ of content. Meanwhile, in many elite private schools and for children in countries across the world, students are being given a leg-up over ordinary British sixth-formers in the form of the International Baccalaureate. A progressive Government should extend the International Baccalaureate to all sixth-form students, abolishing A-levels.”

Not just a snigger here but a full on belly laugh.

The argument is actually that the progressive education movement has so fucked up the system that we’ve got to take it out of their hands and place it in those of foreigners. Quite why this is considered a progressive venture is difficult to identify.

Oh OK Lee, I will engage

1) IHT is anti democratic and morally wrong in my view. However there is no suggestion that IHT will go under George Osbourne. Just because some have proposed it many times does not mean the next Tory government will do that. All the evidence is that IHT will stay, albeit with different thresholds.

2) I dont buy this money-is-the-answer argument. Social attitudes amongst the poor are in my view the single largest barrier to educational attainment. Throw an extra £2,500 at a pupil who does not want to /want to be seen to learn then you may as well throw a match at the money for all the good it will do. I speak from personal experience here. The key is not +- some cash, it is whether the community in general are willing to accept low ambitions for their children. Motivated parents, translating that motivation to their children are what we should be striving for.

3) Pay as you go motorways – fine by me. Of course poor people would be most disincentivised to travel on them, and least able to switch to eco-cars. If thats progressive then must me more progressive than I thought.

4) This really is to small an arena to debate this one, since to go through it in detail would mean looking at the entire tax-benefit-work issue for low wage families. In principle it may be a good idea, but only if every other part of the tax and benefit system is working to the same goal. Right now it isnt.

5) We must as I believe DC said, stop treating children like adults and adults like children. I dont know many people who if they look back at where they were at 16 and think, ‘yes I was politically mature enough to vote then’. Just because you can proficiently bonk at 16, does not mean you can think through the pros and cons of, well 1-12 above. Different parts of our person mature at different rates. It is not illogical at all to reflect this in differing ‘age-of-permission’ thresholds. 18 year olds dont vote, not because they were denied the vote at 16, but that they cant see very easily why it will make a difference to them at 18. Perhaps they would if had been better educated by the communities from where they come (see 1)

6) When something gets dirty you clean it. The A Level was a fine examination and a tough test. It only needs to be cleaned (the politicial element to be removed) and it can be fine again. A IB can become politically corrupted too. The problem that needs to be fixed is the politics of exams in general.

7) Could not agree more. Tell it to the French.

Yep tick. I am not quite so sure it will have the effect the author claims. But it is a good pro democratic idea in its own right regardless of that.

9) Yep Ok with this one. Means tested benefits. I must be much more progressive than i thought

10) Again I dont know that is what would happen in practice. I really would like to see evidence that in a UK context this would incentivise the poor, rather than be a subsidy for the merely-not-well-off who were always going to find a way to buy a house anyway.

11) I am very much for elected police commissioners. Yes I see the problems, but afer the Ian Blair years, politisization of the police can happen with or without elections. Elections I believe willmake the police more likely to remember the ethos of “of the community from the community”.

12) This one I could not disagree with more. The benefit system should not prefer one arrangement over another I agree on that princilple. However it should at all times seek to minimise the burden on the taxpayer by making each pound have maximum effect. To that extent the evidence that cohabitation should be less costly to the state that single living, is in my view rather convincing. That is not expressing a moral view, rather it is an accounting one.

Still it would be much better if all these were debated separately

Hmm I did not know that was the result of 8 and )

Cheers for engaging Actually your response is why I think initial articles like this are good. I think that both the right and left wings of politics can agree on a lot of these issues, with some obvious variations on the fringes.

What’s interesting is that despite all the talk of economy from the leaders (as is natural) the most interesting policy discussions seem to be coming out of education… more because neither party seems to really get what is wrong with education right now and isn’t offering any real solution to make it better.

But alongside the education issue it’s clear that the votes at 16 debate still needs to be had, and I really can’t understand how you can dislike the Ian Blair situation and then wish to require more police bosses to act like him!

But you’re right, discussing these in more depth here would dilute it, perhaps we do need a series of education policy based posts, along with votes at 16 and elected police commissioners. I’ve no doubt that tax policy debates will occur without any push from anyone, but these other ones we can do something about…it’d be good to have a proper discussion about them with all sides.

Police chiefs are problematic – brilliant on paper but could be used as a protest vote and could be co-opted by bullshitters who make grandiose claims. What powers would they have? Equivalent to CCs? The Tories have proposed having elected mayors in the largest 12 cities but Manc told them to stuff it. Would it be mandatory? Would all powers be the same? What checks and balances? Would there be a duty to promote community cohesion or would they just chase/keep their own power base sorted? I don’t think its either progressive or regressive just complicated and untested. Bit risky. The other stuff seems fairly reasonable I guess.

11. It seems to be some kind of ill-judged co-opting of the American DA system as far as I’m concerned. At the minute our police are both to close to politics and not accountable enough to the public. While electing police chiefs may make them more accountable, it also brings them MUCH closer to politics (as you say, what happens in protest votes, etc?)

We need to find a way to make the police force a body more for the public good…a body the public trusts to look after them rather than oversee them, but not in a way that makes politics the order of the day.

@12 – also, it would be perfectly legitimate for a political police chief to direct resources and initiatives to their party’s voters. Nothing rude, nothing sinister but the natural job of any/every politician. This is before the BNP get a win. Then also there’s the possibility of quick win operations – bang curfews out over problematic estates, lock up priority and prolific offenders in election campaigns, etc etc. More I think about it the more half arsed back of a fag packet it seems really.

Ok, I see what they are doing there, but could someone please explain how taxing motorways is going to be a ‘progressive’ thing to do?

As everyone, rich or poor, will pay a set rate it immediately follows that the tax will affect the poorest the most. If we also assume that a number of the rich people who currently use the motorways to commute to work decide to move closer to their place of work to avoid paying hundreds or thousands of pounds a year in motorway tax then it means that most of the tax money raised from this will be from the lower/middle income earners who commute to work and cannot afford to move closer.

As with all indirect taxes, this will be a regressive tax.

How can you judge how progressive someone is by whether they implement a regressive tax?

Demos Think-tank:

Alan Milburn
Demos Advisory Council

George Osborne
Demos Advisory Council

Gillian Tett
Demos Advisory Council

David Willetts
Demos Advisory Council

Jon Cruddas
Demos Advisory Council

And Purnell has some input doesn’t he?

So 1 to 12 is all pretty much bollox.

Can I add number 13?

13. Guarantee the (inexpensive) infrastructure to allow citizens to develop their own online democratic and scrutiny services.

As a start, make postcodes freely available for anyone to use as part of online services, so preventing e.g., MySociety type services being closed down by the copyright which currently exists on the postcode system.

#freeourpostcodes

There’s nothying progressive about expanding the means test, why do people keep insisting that there is?

If child benefit is to exist, & whether or not you think it’s a good idea there is no realistic chance of it being abolished so we might as well treat it as permanent, it should be universal.

Do we not realise that the means test is expensive to administer, creates disincentives to work, & leads to people not bothering to claim at all? After 12 fucking years of New Labour, you think their tax credits system is something to emulate?

Yes, it’s silly that payments like winter fuel payment, old age pensions, child benefit etc. go to the affluent. But it’s sillier to needlessly employ a load of admin staff & introduce a whole load of unintended consequences.

You’re right about 1 anyway. It was always dubious & regressive to cut taxes on inhritance while leaving them intact on work & consumption. But this is true now more than ever.

Finally some people are realising that this is not 2007.

@17 – Good man.

On point 6, while I accept that there may be some concerns over ‘dumbing down’ of A-levels (although I think this can be to an extent over-hyped – A-levels ARE still difficult, but as an A-level student my experience has been that the difficulty comes from the fact that so much at a high level is based on exam technique. If you want to truly ‘fix’ the A-level, you need to find a way to move the focus away from exam technique – bugger knows HOW you’d do that, I certainly don’t know, but that’s what you have to target), suggesting their abolition is bloody ridiculous.

Why? Several points. Firstly, the IB is stupendously difficult and it’s utterly unfair on lower-performing students to force them to take it. While the IB is very effective at differentiating between high-level students (and I will hazard to add here that the IB only really MATTERS in that regard possibly if you’re applying for one of the top two or three universities in your chosen field – and even then, it’s doubtful), it’s not so good for low-end students

Secondly, the IB REQUIRES students to tackle six very separate subjects. This is one of its biggest flaws – it doesn’t allow students to specialise AT ALL at the sixth-form level, not to mention it makes them invest considerable time in subjects they have no interest in and will have no real use for. One of the strengths of the A-level system right now is that for example if you’re intending to take a science degree, you don’t have to take A-levels in English or Music; under the IB system, you HAVE to take such subjects, and you don’t even have a chance to specialise because the IB system is very clear that you have to take six distinct subjects (you couldn’t for instance take Chemistry and Biology).

For students who aren’t going on to university, this is completely ridiculous; for those who ARE, it’s still daft because it denies them the chance to specialise and focus their knowledge on areas that will actually help them in higher education (let’s take medical students – IB forces them to weaken their pre-university studies by making them pick between Chemistry and Biology). Not to mention, even if the IB was opened up so you didn’t have to go ‘pick one’ for the six fields, you’re still forcing students to learn much less of a subject before university.

And, of course, there’s the problem that students’ aptitude in different areas isn’t even. A-levels can take account for the fact that a student may be better in, say, the humanities than in practical sciences by letting them FOCUS on the humanities – they shouldn’t NEED to be good at sciences if they’re aiming to study the humanities at university. Yet, the IB simply says “to hell with the fact that this subject is irrelevant to their studies. They’ll do it and they’ll like it!”. Is this really sensible?

The International Baccalaureate, frankly, has a deity-like status that really isn’t deserved. Practically speaking, it isn’t usually going to give students a leg-up over A-level even at the highest level, and there are so many weaknesses in the system that to force students to take it would just not work.

On point 12 – there is consistent evidence that marriage does have a positive child outcome:

4thly – Michael J. Rosenfeld, Associate Professor ept. Sociology, Stanford University in his article “Nontraditional Families and Childhood Progress through School” writes:
““Studies of family structure and children’s outcomes nearly universally find at least a
modest advantage for children raised by their married biological parents. The question which has bedeviled researchers, and which remains essentially unresolved, is why”.
http://www.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Rosenfeld_Nontraditional_Families_Children.pdf

20/Just Visiting: Not quite. There’s consistent evidence of a correlation between positive outcomes and marriage, but that doesn’t imply that there is any causation from one to the other (which Rosenfeld acknowledges in noting that the big question is “why”).

It’s commonly claimed that marriage causes positive outcomes, but it could quite plausibly go the other way – couples with children who do well, in situations that are going well, and with a stable relationship, are less likely to get divorced.

There are also other factors, such as these studies being performed in countries that provide tax or other financial benefits to married couples, and/or in countries where single parents – especially single mothers – are negatively stereotyped, and/or in countries that either forbid or until recently forbade same-sex marriage, or have significant continuing homophobia. With those factors, I think it’s hard to argue that you’re even measuring the correlation with the institution of marriage as opposed to optional social effects around marriage and stereotypes of what a “proper” family looks like.

@16,

Freeing postcodes is an obvious thing to do, a no brainer. So I doubt if the Tories will go for it, any more than Labour will.

If you care about issues of digital rights in the internet age, your best best is to vote for the Pirate Party.

“The Conservative party should grab the real electoral reform issue and extend the franchise to sixteen year olds.”

The “real electoral reform issue”? Please. How is quibbling about the voting age a concern even on par with the very real democratic deficiencies of the current voting system?

“Elect police commissioners.”

Disastrously bad idea — presidential in politics and the best route towards creating a politicised police force. If you want to improve local accountability, devolve more power to local government.