I’ll do my best to reply after Conference, but two thoughts strike me on the tax paper, as you’ve drawn attention to its impact in Wales. With 90% of the population getting tax cuts, are you saying all of Wales are in the richest 10% not to benefit? And does Wales have, you know, any coastline at all, with communities that might be under threat from global warming?

The tax paper, incidentally, went through unamended after a lively debate in a packed hall, and I think it’s an impressive set of proposals; the paper at which I directed my opprobrium above stirred little opposition, but then, it stirred hardly anyone’s interest enough to turn up for it. Which says it all, really.

Yes I know Arnie. I wpould think he will know that many of the plans to “hit the super rich” will fail to deliver the amount of revenue predicted although I would happily support many of them.

I have not read all the details in the appendix. However its a simple fact of life that raising indirect taxation hits the least well off the most. I dont mind paying higher fuel bills to combat global warming. I object to paying them to give someone on £50k per annum a massive tax cut. The six pounds a week the “millions who will be lifted out of income tax” will receive may be enough to pay the extra taxes however the current proposals will widen the gap in our society between the well off and everyone else.

I think these might not be bad policies for England in many ways but they are a potential disaster for Wales.

If you are at party conference go along to the ALDC AGM where they are launching the new edition of “Theory and Practice of community politics”if only to heckle my former landlord Bernard Greaves!

Incidentally, Arnie Gibbons (whom I believe you know from Leicester days) was one of the authors of the tax commission paper, so can’t be all bad, eh?

This is a very thoughtful and well written article which made this opponent of the lib dems pause for thought.

Clearly other forms of inequality exist other than financial. Its true that many of these inequalities have actually been reduced over the last 20 years. However the financial inequalities have in fact got worse. Sadly the Lib dem tax proposals, if ever implemented, would make this inequality worse. Under the current proposals an individual earning £50,000 pa will get a tax cut worth £70 per week. An individual on national minimum wage (full time) will get £7.50 per week. The “spin” of taking millions out of income tax sounds nice. However given the increases in domestic fuel bills petrol etc proposed its clear that those on low incomes will hardly benefit at all. The other inequality, which you do not mention, is more complex. The concentration of wealth, high earning jobs etc in just two or three areas of the UK is a “spatial” form of inequality. The old argument that house prices are higher in the South of england thus justifying higher wages etc, has become redundant since house prices in many areas are now beyond the reach of people on average or just below average wages (for their region). Again Lib dem tax proposals will further widen this gap between regions of the UK .

As a nationalist who might welcome the break up of the uk perhaps I should be happy about this however its hard to see why lib dems in Wales should support this policy.

‘Green Switch’ goes so far but, with 4p LIT hanging round our necks still, a 2p cut in national income tax isn’t far enough. And there’s nothing in our tax plans to solve generational inequity either. We pander to pensioners ‘cos they bother to vote, but fairness has to apply across the generations too – or it simply ain’t fair! Roll on ‘Green Switch 2′…

One danger of just looking at money is that, for example, the difference between a household income of, say, £25,000 and £30,000 may not look that huge, but in reality can make a huge difference in terms of the amount of money you actually have to play with.

In my experince there is a much wider gap in social terms, family aspirations, access to culture, facilities, take up of local services, transport. This is much more difficult to measure but is very apparent within local communities.

As far as conference is concerned the big issues are whether we want to define ourselves as a party that a) sees the tax system as a key tool to reducing climate change and b) wants to shift the burden of taxation from low and average income households to high income households.

Personally I answer both of these questions with a resounding YES and am far less concenred about what actual rate of income tax we levy on higher earners. I guess am happy for us to be seen as ‘fairer but not punative’.

If or when conference agrees then we have to work out exactly how to then turn the policy into a clear message and how we get it across.

I may have a go. If I do,I promise to mention the economy at some point.

I tried to think of a ‘killer soundbite’ as reply. But I didn’t get where I am today by speaking in soundbites…

Good piece, by the way. But do you have a ’140 words’?

Anyway I have responded to some of the ideas in your article on Liberal Review.

And if you think there’s no difference between marriage and a civil partnership, try telling a mixed-sex couple, especially a religious one, that they can keep just about the same rights but that, because the word’s a bit touchy, they’re not ‘married’. I can imagine my parents’ reaction, and they wouldn’t be alone; any party proposing ‘equality’ by taking it down to what same-sex couples are supposed to accept would be annihilated at the ballot box. And can anyone who witnessed the treatment of two ‘suddenly bisexual’ Leadership candidates earlier in the year think there’s ‘equality’ of treatment for people who aren’t heterosexual?

Of course you have a point. I’d completely agree that economic inequality is the most major source of inequality; in fact, I said so above (“The Liberal Democrats have often failed to pay enough attention to economic concerns,” “…money is the biggest single cause of inequality”). The paper, however, leaps from that not just to your apparent position, that if there’s one obvious major inequality then everything else must therefore be hunky-dory, to suggesting that it’s the only type of equality that matters and the only one that’s counted for at least a quarter of a century. That so contradicts real life that I don’t see how anyone without the most amazing ideological bias can accept it.

When you say “we have equality now,” well, not yet, but you’re right that a whole lot of things have got a whole lot better since 1980. Gay life in particular has been transformed. So why airbrush that from history in saying – as the chapter unequivocally does – that everything has been gloom and doom? It’s just downright wrong, and no definition of ‘Fairness’ that refuses to admit how much fairer some things are can be taken seriously. And if I’m suspicious of a policy paper (particularly the one on ‘Families’, which I quote above) that implies we don’t exist, do you not feel the same wariness when the law officially stated that our families were ‘pretend’ up until only a couple of years ago? Even as a view of people’s economic status, it’s very narrow; the current government has made progress on reducing poverty, though not inequality. So why does the chapter conflate the two, and where is its justification for changing our emphasis from poverty, where it’s always been, to relative economic inequality? I’m willing to listen to the arguments on that – but it doesn’t make them.

I suspect there are three reasons for the narrow focus on only one area of inequality. First, that it’s the most major – I don’t argue with that. Second, an attempt to shift the Lib Dems ideologically – which I think is a terrible mistake. But it’s also because a big, easily measurable problem looks like it can have a big, mechanically implemented solution, and all policymakers like to be able to say “This is the problem, and we can fix it!” But continuing problems of prejudice and discrimination aren’t as simple to deal with. The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society in which no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity; I don’t doubt this paper’s commitment against poverty, but it can’t be ‘Free’ and ‘Fair’ by condoning conformity.

How do you ‘fix’ remaining issues around aspects of life like gender, age, race, disability or religion, or, yes, sexual orientation, when a lot of the problems are not in ‘the system’ but in people’s behaviour and ideas? I don’t know how to ‘fix’ that – even after having been out for over half my life – there are places I’m afraid to ‘be gay’, and wouldn’t show affection to Richard for fear of being queerbashed. I don’t know the best way to tackle people kicking out against Muslims out of fear and prejudice; I don’t know how to persuade all sorts of religions to stop wanting to reduce my legal and social status because of who I fall in love with. There are many complex issues that are part of ‘Fairness’ that this paper refuses to admit even exist. Do we really believe none of these are major problems in society? Do we really want to let bigots off the hook as they say ‘I don’t know what you’re complaining about, you’ve got all these rights now’ while, for example, figures just in the last week are showing a surge in anti-Semitic attacks? I don’t know the answers; but if the Liberal Democrats say even the questions are out of bounds, whether it’s because they’re ideologically incorrect or simply too difficult, how will we ever ‘Make Britain Fairer’?