All disagreement stems from confusion and all confusion stems from ignorance.

The ignorance stems in this discussion not from any lack of understanding, but from the implicit understanding of the comments on wither side. If we had each been more explicit in describing our specific criticisms in the first place then I think we would see that we are all arguing at crossed purposes.

I find it easy to sympathise with the views on each side because they each address different parts of the policies proposed by the party, whereas I think if we looked at the totality of what is being proposed in the round then we find we offer a balanced approach which satisfies all.

Which is why I return to the dual approach of these ‘tax-cuts’ together with better enforcement of the regulations to prevent distortions prejudiced most against the least wealthy.

Reducing what was previously described as tax evasion and fraud (though these are now largely grey areas with the volume of new and conflicting regulations which can be applied) is the major means by which the Treasury can boost its income without raising taxes.

So, simply put, it is possible to balance the books and make society fairer by cutting taxes without necessarily also having to cut spending.

It is possible to make all of the people happy all of the time, but only if you can corerctly answer all of the correct questions.

If the Liberal Democrats are truly keen to redistribute income, they could always help us to leave the EU and the CAP.

At least they talk of redistributing income. I don’t seem to hear much about redistributing wealth, though, except when wealth gets muddled up with income.

Why do Liberal Democrats never talk of the need to redistribute the inheritance of wealth and the receipt of capital gifts in each new generation?

How come Liberal Democrats still go on as if vast differences of inheritance – from zero to billions – make no difference to social mobility and equality of opportunity?

Presumably it must have something to do with the make up of the party, with people not wishing to see the obvious for some reason.

Dane Clouston

Do you never read any of the stuff you hold forth on?

Alix has claimed (repeatedly) that I and others are saying that the poor will get no benefit from the tax cuts.

That is the misrepresentation.

And as for “inaccurate enough to argue against” and so on and so forth, kindly just read the fifth and sixth paragraphs of my post again.

Of course the bulk of any savings will go in that direction, but that still doesn’t mean the poorest in society won’t see a greater relative benefit to their finances. Nor does it mean that anyone has misrepresented your claims – perhaps you are misrepresenting yourself in that you may think we should be doing more to help those in greater need without actually disagreeing that the claims made by Clegg are still a good thing.

Like you say, it is simple arithmatic. In which case these proposals ARE a good thing, but they are only a start and we could still do more.

Under ‘more’ we are proposing additional help to the poor by equalising access to social justice across all classes by tightening up the tax loopholes available to those with the means to exploit them. Such loopholes are a greater barrier to social mobility than any lack of positive discrimination it is possible to effect through changes in the tax system.

I’m not _assuming_ anything. Alix has repeatedly misrepresented what I and others have said. That must be beyond dispute among people who can read and understand English.

I don’t know why she keeps doing that. I would like to think it is not deliberate but at the moment I cannot understand how that could be. I have asked her a couple of times why she keep doing it. If she responds things may become clearer.

As for my “critique” of Clegg’s speech and “unfair disproportionality”, I think you are reading more into my posts than is there.

Obviously I don’t agree with what is being proposed, but I recognise that people have different political opinions and that there is no “right” answer (no pun intended). If the majority of the party wishes to support this scheme, that is the right of the majority.

But what I strongly object to is the dishonesty of selling these tax cuts primarily as a means of helping the poor. If the proposal is to combine a reduction in the basic rate of income tax with an increase in personal allowances, as Cable has indicated is likely, then the majority of the money would inevitable go to the middle class, not the poor. That is a matter of simple arithmetic.

[Memo to Alix, before she does it again. That last bit doesn't mean that none of the money will go to the poor!]

If you automatically rule out any responsibility for creating or controlling the situation in which you percieve (rightly or wrongly) your opponents mistakes, then you refuse to consider any possibility of mistakes on your own behalf.

But we can all make mistakes even when we act in good faith. The road to hell is paved etc…

So when building a critique of Clegg’s speech it is necessary to define the disputable terms (middle class, aren’t we all middle class now?) before raising questions arising from your judgement of any unfair disproportionality.

I agree that your interpretation of this tax proposal is possible, but it is clear some clarification is necessary before we can say so with certainty.

At this point it would be helpful to resort to some sums to work through different examples of what different people understand. We may then finally reach agreement on how best this new approach would best balance the concerns we wish to address, then we can argue over whether we think this is what Clegg actually meant.

Well, there’s nothing at all strange about that – it’s because in a lot of these debates the other person has failed to understand, or has misrepresented what I have said.

If you think that’s noteworthy, you can’t have read many Internet discussions. Misrepresentation of an opposing argument is one of the oldest and commonest tricks in the book.

No, it’s not funny. It makes a mockery of any attempt at serious discussion.

You can see for yourself that I did not say what Alix claimed I had said. So why are you pretending it’s somehow my fault?

“Children don’t have the capacity to learn if their brains are not structured in the right way through their early life experience. If they have suffered abuse or neglect, or been brought up in households with alcoholism or domestic violence, it has actually been shown [that] the structure of their brain is different. Their ability to learn is severely impaired. So if we don’t first address the creation of healthy brains in the children, there’s no point in favouring them afterwards.”

No point? I find this quite chilling. It’s a sort of genetic determinism, but shifted forwards by three years. Because that’s the theory: that we must invest in the first three years via “early prevention schemes” or all is lost. Admittedly Hosking doesn’t make Lib Dem policy, but these ideas have fed into our policy which includes a £500 million investment in early years education. Of course if it works I’m all in favour of it, but I remain sceptical.

It is all meant to be annual. £20bn annual savings, some undisclosed percentage of that annual tax cuts.

” Is the £20 billion a one off saving or an annual saving ever after? Are the income tax cuts a one off affair or an annual affair ever after? Do the two match up as time goes by?”

Dane Clouston

Look at what I said:
“Obviously the bulk of the tax cuts will go to the middle class, not to “those who really need it”.”

I didn’t say it would _not_ benefit lower earners. I said that the bulk of it would go to the middle class.

This is literally about the fifth or sixth time you have misrepresented precisely the same point. It has been explained to you time and time again, and still you keep doing it.

Why are you doing this?

I think that what matters here may be more than fighting ‘anti-social’ behaviour; we need arrangements that promote ‘pro-social’ behaviour such as trust, cooperation and mutually advantageous trades. A less atomised society where people interact more would promote better behaviour overall and lead to a more pleasant environment for everyone.

I think Labour’s approach has been counter-productive because it isolates and stigmatises, thus making it harder for individuals to live as cooperative members of society. The whole ASB agenda is predicated on the basis that there are some people who are essentially toxic to the rest of us and they must be isolated and restricted, beginning at a very early age. I’m not ready to give up on people like that, and history does, I believe, show that it is possible over time to build better societies and reduce violence at the same time as increasing prosperity and liberty. I think Nick’s view is basically compatible with mine, so I’m happy for him to have said it.

I recall the judge saying “Had this not been manslaughter, it would have been a very brutal murder”. I thought it was unfair. It was a brutal act, out of character for me, I don’t attempt to justify or excuse what I did only explain the events as I saw them. Nobody appeared to be able to understand why it happened. The prison doctor (no psychiatric or psychology qualifications) opined that I was akin to the Wild Man of Borneo who has to take a head back to the tribe to prove manhood. There was no decapitation, I used the blunt end of the axe. All were agreed I was suffering from such abnormality of the mind at the time that it diminished responsibility. The sentence did not reflect this. I felt I was being punished for being mentally ill. That struck me as being somewhat barbaric. It wasn’t a fair hearing because a trial within a trial took place within the judge’s chamber. The Detective Chief Inspector submitted a report which only the judge and prosecution were allowed to read. My counsel was not allowed to challenge its contents. The gist of the report was that the DCI thought I was a serial killer. There were three medical reports. Two recommended that I never be released, the other that I only be released with the utmost caution.

I had two prison records. One kept at the jail where I served the sentence and went with me around the system. The other, with the secret report, kept in the Home Office. In this sense I was a political prisoner. Although the act was criminal to the extent of responsibility which remained less the reduction for being off mental balance, how I was treated by the authorities was political in nature. The punishment and treatment stages were no different. This I feel was an injustice. The sense of injustice led me to challenge the rules. Some claim that as a result the system made me pay the price of an extra 10 years. Even though manslaughter is a lesser offence than murder, I served longer than most murderers. The authorities state it was because I was deemed a psychopath (the prison doctor again) and believed to be dangerous. After 23 years they decided to test me for psychopathy, and found out that I wasn’t one after all. It was said that I was semi-illiterate, and below average intelligence. In fact I have Aspergers Syndrome. I am almost totally innumerate and quite literate. I have an IQ of 155. Albeit a flawed genius.

I recall my first oral Parole Board hearing. The psychologist had written that I was institutionalised and therefore needed to spend longer in an institutional setting to deinstitutionalise me. Circular reasoning. The psychiatrist on the panel who’s task it was to assess whether I was an acceptable risk to the public to be released, fell asleep after having a liquid lunch. When the judge saw me point this out to my character witnesses, he half-turned his back on the psychiatrist when the nudge in his ribs failed to wake him. Talk about justice being blind. The Parole Board did not direct my release, even though only the psychologist’s report was the only one not recommending release. It carries the most weight. The psychiatrist was later removed from the Parole Board list of members. Private Eye reported on the case.

It is doubtful I would have sued you as I can see a judge only awarding nominal damages. It is bad enough as it is without someone adding the necessary intent for murder which the law has stated did not exist. It is not much to salvage from two wrecked lives.

I went to the funeral of my personal officer, Trevor Drewery, who was very supportive towards me in Hull Prison Special Unit. I thought I had forgotten how to cry. If there is such a thing as the inherent goodness of human nature Trevor had this in his soul. The other side of the coin was the welfare officer who wrote me a stinking report. When I pulled him over it, he said: “I have to make you look worse than you are, then when I write the next report I can write better things to show that there has been an improvement in your behaviour”. I was transferred before he was able to rectify the inaccurate report. I could quite happily urinate on his grave if he kicked the bucket before me. Some might say that is the inherent badness of human nature. I will let the jury decide on that issue.

How does one attack Cameron, when the media support him and pump out his propaganda 24 hours a day? We’re not the Obama campaign, who can blitz TV channels with attack ads. We don’t need to go for Brown, of course, because he’s on the floor already. It is Cameron we have to puncture. But how?

I somehow suspect we won’t be able to rise in the polls until the GE comes along and the media are forced to give us fair coverage.

Nick Clegg is doing a decent, workmanlike job. He’s not as good as Chris Huhne would have been, but he outshines CK with a better grasp of language (the “in terms of” count) and by staying sober.

But I have to say, for the humpteenth time, that Nick is not going to convince the sceptical that the Lib Dems are truly the party of civil liberties until he deals with Julia Goldsworthy – and makes it clear that behaviour of that kind will not be tolerated.

BTW, did any of our leaders, at Conference, allow the name “Gary McKinnnon” to pass their lips?