Antonia (and Ed, Joe and Laurence) elsewhere
One minute, you’re sat in the pub with your mates and this guy you vaguely recognise from the telly talking about the Labour party, in the way that activists from all over the country do all the time over a pint. Then, somehow, it ends up in the paper. How did that happen?!
Funny though, CPAG have just got in touch to say they’d like me to go along to meetings with them because of the good stuff I wrote in their survey of candidates about inclusion and child poverty, starting with better ways of developing affordable housing (better, that is, that plonking another great estate on the edge of the least well off estate in the city), and partnership ways of getting less well off kids into sports and leisure.
By the way, there is no way you can end child poverty permanently unless you do something about land. When Labour was invented they knew this and have signally failed to do anything about it since then! More tinkering, more stealing from Peter to pay Paula, will never sustainably and permanently end anything. Sticking plasters!
Can’t argue with your conclusions, though Andrea. Ending child poverty is a huge challenge, but there’s no other party holding that as a central policy. We may not even get there, but that’s a cracking banner to march behind.
Wow! The Santa Claus 4 Party!
Pah! Child poverty? You lot are so lacking in ambition! I want to eradicate poverty, period, and have the advantage of knowing how it can be done. And it’s not by taking ever bigger slices of our national income, but by creating “free land” via LVT so that the least well off are on a more even playing field and costs are reduced. You WILL NOT eradicate any poverty sustainably by continuing to subsidise the well off as well! The last century has been a disaster really in that both Labour and Liberal knew this and could have achieved it a hundred years ago if the sort of protectionist redistributive socialism had not taken hold in the second third of the twentieth century.
Besides, what’s all this about being the only party committed to it. Clegg has made child poverty and opportunity a central theme of his platform with things like topping up school funding for the poorest households and so on.
Jock - CPAG got in touch with everyone who responded to them, so don’t feel too special.
And if you think my party are lacking in ambition, go and ask Nick Clegg why his lily-livered “Freedom From Poverty” policy paper passed at your conference last year didn’t even contain policies to halve child poverty by 2010, let alone abolish it by 2020.
“Yours was particularly extensive and we appreciated the thought and time you had put it into it”
That’s good enough for me, especially as a loser!
You’ll note also that I wrote that “*I* want to eradicate poverty, period, and have the advantage of knowing how it can be done”. I did not say that I had even persuaded the Lib Dems as a whole to accept that solution, and, as you will realize perhaps from my own latest blog post, if I and colleagues do not achieve that first step relatively soon I suspect I for one am likely to be on the lookout for some other fertile ground on which to sow that seed.
Of course, I also keep in touch with the Labour Land Campaign and Dave Wetzel in particular. I do believe that John McDonnell as well as a number of folk who call themselves “left libertarians” in your party have clicked, but as with the Lib Dems it is a very small though committed minority.
I rather suspect we should all go off together and found a specifically Georgist, or mutualist perhaps, party that can get out from under the petticoats of these tired old parties.
Nonetheless, I don’t recognize your characterization of the “Freedom from poverty” policy paper. Its first sentence states its aim of eradicating child p[overty by 2020, and has policies throughout intended to do just that - though personally as I say, they, like Labour, largely still miss the “:root causes” of all poverty.
If you are not already a member, mighht I suggest you also join the LLC and find out more if you need to. Dave Wetzel is a particularly good advocate and explains it better than anyone I know.
I’m pretty sure John McDonnell and others on the Labour Left don’t think that abolishing poverty can be done by LVT alone. We need massive increases in child benefit and child tax credit to beat child poverty, for example.
Also, do you realise how silly you sound when saying “and could have achieved it a hundred years ago if the sort of protectionist redistributive socialism had not taken hold in the second third of the twentieth century.”
Please explain how something taking place 100 years ago can be dependent on something happening 60-70 years later, without invoking Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
I also find it incredible that you advocate leaving a party you’ve just stood in an election for. I imagine Oxford Lib Dems won’t be very happy with that kind of disloyalty.
Hi Jock,
I’m interested in having a discussion about LVT and its role in poverty reduction (like any good leftie, I’ve never seen a new tax I didn’t like).
It’s a bit cheeky to hijack Antonia’s blog which was on something completely different, so I’ll put something on my blog and you and others can continue there. I’ve looked at the Labour Land Campaign’s website - is there anything else you would particularly recommend?
You forgot the Lidos!
it’s a fucking disgrace
You can end child poverty now, first of all stop giving child allowance to people who earn £55,000 a year they do not need it, and double the child allowance for each child, anyone who has more then three children gets nothing, otherwise we will end up like the twit on TV this week with twenty kids. Double tax credits and again make those who earn £55,000 a year thats not both parents but the main earner get sod all, this will give the poor kids money.
Stop giving the rich money make it the poor, and then dam well find jobs for people, and stop lying through your teeth(Labour) about jobs locally.
I have been disabled now for eighteen years lost my legs, and I’ve spent years trying to find a job once they see the wheelchair they run a mile.
But before we do anything we have to get rid of Brown simple really