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They want 'help-to-change' charities to receive more resources but they fear that they will lose their salty distinctiveness if they become too close to government. The most dynamic charities have always feared becoming dependent on a funding stream that is controlled by a bureaucracy. Experience teaches that the money may come with few strings in the first year but by years three, four and five, the conditions have begun to re-shape the charity's original mission. Catholic Chareities USA is held up as an example of a religious charity that has become little more than a 'government programme wearing a clerical collar'.

This is from Whatever happened to compassionate conservatism? by Tim Montgomerie, published by the Centre for Social Justice.

The corruption of charities by the state is something that has happened in a big way in Britain. The state originally was going to fund church schools but leave them pretty independent. That independence has since been so thoroughly eroded that there is not much left. Charitable hospitals were simply expropriated by the state in 1948. The King's Fund was meant to fund charitable hospitals. But after the charitable hospitals were taken over by the state, the King's Fund became a think-tank for the NHS. It receives government funding and generally takes a pro-NHS line. An organisation that was meant to fund charitable hospitals, now does not do so. I know of no reason why it should not, even now, help to establish and then support charitable hospitals.

Tim Montgomerie edits his own website now called conservativehome.com.

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George Bush in a speech to students at Notre Dame University in 2001. The passage is quoted admiringly in Tim Montgomerie's pamphlet Whatever happened to compassionate conservatism? published by the Centre for Social Justice. It is an interesting read for anyone concerned with public policy on welfare and other related matters.

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Let's recall what has been done to grammar schools. In the 1960s, Tony Crosland, the then Education Secretary, famously - and obscenely - declared, "If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to destroy every f****** grammar school in England and Wales and Northern Ireland."

The grammar schools were founded well before the state took over British education. Most were created in the 19th century and before. Rich people endowed them with land and money to subsidise the education of poor children.

Then the state took control of most grammar - and religious - schools. For a long time, they held onto the standards of behaviour and academic excellence which they had developed over decades and centuries. They continued to do well for their children.

My uncle, now retired, came from a family of modest means. He attended one and went on to Oxford University and a top job in the civil service. A friend went to a grammar school and then to Cambridge and a fortune in investment management. Grammar schools were often more academically intense than private schools.

But three things happened. First, successive Labour governments, led by Tony Crosland, closed down as many grammar schools as they could. Second, their independence - and the independence of the religious schools too - was gradually undermined by governments of both colours. And third, because there were fewer top schools within the state system, the middle and upper classes struggled ever more determinedly to get their children into them. As a result, the poor got squeezed out.

Tony Blair, for example, found a way to get his boys into the London Oratory - one of the best state schools in London. At the London Oratory in 2002, nine of ten children got five or more good GCSE grades. Nearby, meanwhile, at another state school called Phoenix High, barely more than a fifth of the children managed the same. And who went there? The poor, including 18 per cent asylum-seekers.

Richer people move houses to get in the catchment areas of better schools. A house within the catchment area of a good primary school can cost as much as a third more than a similar home in the next street. Richer people have their children tutored to get into the grammar schools. The system is now manipulated for the benefit of the better off, leaving the poor with the 'bog-standard comprehensives", as Alastair Campbell, the Labour party spin-doctor once called them. It is not surprising, therefore, that among the lowest socio-economic group, a mere 1.7 per cent go on to receive a full university degree - a twentieth of the proportion among the top group.

It is an enormous contrast with what happened to one boy, brought up by his uncle, a cobbler, in a remote part of North-West Wales. While at his local school, he read Thomas Macaulay's History of England, Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and classic fiction including novels by Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo. He learned Latin and knew his bible so well that he was able to quote from it at will for the rest of this life. He became a successful lawyer and eventually Prime Minister. David Lloyd George went to a Church of England school before such schools were controlled by the state. What chance would a boy in such circumstances now have of achieving the same? Precious little. The average standard of schooling has deteriorated.

The best result would be achieved by a return to the independent system of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For those who think that is 'politically impossible', there is another alternative. The recent report says that the opportunities for the poor in Britain are worse than in certain Nordic countries including Sweden and Denmark. These have less monolithic state education structures than we do. In Denmark, parents can take the money provided by the state and use it to send their children to independent schools. They can even start up new, independent schools. Parents, including the poor, have real choice.

Sweden, in 1992, allowed parents to take 85 per cent of the cost of state schooling and spend it at any kind of school they like. Grades have improved significantly.

We need to face the fact that our state education system is failing the poor. It is only through radical change in the structure that we will enable the poor of the future to have a better chance of success.

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One of them, Jodie Gange, 23, has resigned as a junior staff nurse at St Thomas's Hospital, London.

She says:

I wouldn't mind if the job itself was rewarding, but it's not. Basic nursing, which I was trained to do, is being squeezed out by bureaucracy. At the end of each shift, I have to write out a nursing evaluation and patient assessment forms. That can take up to three hours of the shift. It seems as if we have to write down everything we ever do to cover our backs, just in case someone makes a complaint.

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The reason he was willing to make his criticisms of the NHS was that he was trying to justify to British orthopaedic surgeons the Government's drive towards contracting out operations - mainly hip and knee replacements - to Independent Treatment Centres (reported in the Daily Telegraph today).

Immediately after his remark on "very, very long" waiting lists for the past 50 years, he said, "...we are talking about a Government that does not accept that. I realise that may be uncomfortable to people who have grown to love waiting lists."

Some the assembled surgeons booed and hissed. That was probably because of the apparent implication that these surgeons actually wanted people to wait and suffer on the lists in order for the richer and more desperate among them to pay the surgeons for private operations instead. In other words, Lord Warner may have been portraying the surgeons as greedy people unconcerned with the speedy curing of ill people. (Those among the surgeons even more wedded to the old NHS model than the Labour minister might have also been angered by the idea of undermining it by contracting-out operations. Some of them certainly also have believed that the contracting-out operations does not serve patients well.)

The sight of a Labour minister insulting doctors is a bit of a change from 1943, when the Labour Party produced its original pamphlet calling for a National Service for Health. The pamphlet is generally flattering to doctors and included these words: "The Voluntary Hospitals have rendered great service, and have been maintained by devoted effort, much of it unpaid."

But even then, there was a subtle sneer at the motives and backgrounds of doctors soon after: "Much of the medical work in these hospitals is done by "honorary staff" who receive no monetary payment, but who may thus gain prestige and reputation: generally it is those who can afford to take this road who find their way to Harley Street and to highly-paid consultant practices."

Not the use of the words "may" and "generally" to cover over the fact that this assertion (that the top doctors were greedy toffs) was far from universally true. Note, too, the way in which the pamphlet entirely glossed over the fact that through this system, poor people were seen by the best doctors in the world at no charge - and, of course, without the long waiting which the Labour minister now, 50 years later, admits.

And note, too, the way that it is suggested that an advantage through family wealth and education is wrong and that seeking to be well-paid is wrong. We have since seen dynasties of Labour politicians - the Benns and the Morrisons (Peter Mandelson is the grandson of Herbert Morrison). Mandelson is also someone who has become rich out of his politics, being handed a high-paying job at the European Commission by his friend and patron Tony Blair, who himself has been the recipient of many free, luxurious holidays and can expect a huge income from speaking engagements and his auto-biography. If family advantage and seeking financial gain is evil, what does that make the modern Labour Party?

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The figures include National Insurance but not, I believe, the taxation of dividends within pension funds. In any case, the figures suggest that Mr Brown's self-praise over his treatment of the poor is much exaggerated.

It also suggests that the bulk of his tax-raising has been focused elsewhere.

How, one might wonder, does he manage to extract such a large proportion of the incomes of the poor? Through indirect taxation -VAT, duties on cigarettes, alcohol, petrol and so on. These are taxes which the Labour Party used to decry as 'regressive' because they take up a higher proportion of the incomes of the poor than the rich. But now that Mr Brown relies on these 'regressive' taxes to remove income from the poor, the Labour Party seems to find nothing objectionable about them at all.

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Further on:

She added: "This study certainly raises a number of questions about how time targets contribute to the quality of patient care."

It also 'raises questions' about discrimination against the elderly and the mentally ill in the NHS. (The subjection of discrimination against the elderly is discussed in chapter 3 of The Welfare State We're In.)

The full article cited above is the Daily Telegraph.

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Charter Schools did not exist at all prior to the 1990s:

Since Minnesota enacted the first charter school law in 1991, over 3,000 independent public schools of choice have opened their doors. A charter school is a public school sponsored by a local school board, university, state board of education, or other state governing body and operated by groups of parents, teachers, other individuals, or private organizations. Charter schools are granted more autonomy than district-run public schools and are held accountable for student performance. Because of the flexibility granted to them, charter schools may differentiate themselves by employing a curriculum that is different from the district’s, having a thematic approach, instituting a longer school day, requiring parental involvement, or using innovative technology. Like other public schools, charter schools are open to all students and are funded through tax receipts.

I was surprised to read that 11 per cent of American school children go to private schools:

According to U.S. Department of Education statistics, 11 percent of students are enrolled in private schools.

The source for this is a here but I have not found the precise reference in the document to check that the figure is not at all misleading. I had previously been told that Americans did not bother with private education except at university.

At any rate, it does seem as though school choice is a growing phenomenon in the USA. It would be good to understand it more fully mand discover, in Britain, what is the extent of the growth of fee-paying faith schools and of home-schooling.

These are examples of people fleeing the unsatisfactory welfare state delivery of services.

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This is from Guardian Online:

The number of part-time undergraduate students leapt by more than 80% last year, according to the first official figures detailing who went to university in 2003. Numbers of part-time students increased from 13.1% of all undergraduates in 2002 to 23.2% in 2003, today's figures reveal.

In total, there were 188,360 part-timers studying for first degrees in 2003 compared with just 103,545 in 2002.

and again,

Today's figures show that 41.7% of all students in higher education now study part-time. And, while the number doing postgraduate courses has remained static at 31.2%, the bulk of those studying on a part-time basis are working to secure programmes for sub-degree courses, such as foundation degrees and higher national diplomas.

Part-time students are more likely to be women (62.4%) and are expected to be aged 30-plus (71.1%).

Previous studies have shown that more than half of part-time students chose to study that way so they can continue their careers, or advance their career prospects.

It could be that the sudden growth in part-time courses is a response to tuition fees. However, part-time further education was clearly a major part of further education even before that.

It seems that people who either never had further education, or else had what was prescribed by the Government and found it did not achieve what they wanted, now increasingly use education for something that they do really want: getting a better job. They may well be finding that when they choose the course themselves with a specific purpose in mind, that they get more out of it.

They are therefore, it seems, more willing to pay:

Part-time students' fees are already deregulated

This phenomenon, incidentally, of people fending for themselves and being prepared to make sacrifices for what they really want, suggests part of the answer to the paradox noted in a previous posting: that now the government controls the training and employment of doctors, there is a shortage, yet when doctors had to finance their own training (aided to some extent by donations) and they were employed by charitable and other hospitals, there was no shortage.

(The Guardian article, of course, is phrased in terms of how universities want more government subsidies but that could well damage the flexibility and quality of the courses and the commitment of the students.)

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This waiting for diagnostic tests is one of the reasons why the government's boasts about reduced waiting lists are wholly misleading.

The wait that people have between being seen by a GP and getting a diagnostic test is not included in the official figures. As Mr Burstow explains:

The government's waiting list figures neglect a major part of the patient journey - the time in between referral from a family doctor and diagnosis. The government's waiting times figures are calculated only, in terms of inpatient waitis, from the time a decision is taken to admit a patient to hospitals to the date the patient is admitted for treatment

This hidden waiting is just as dangerous to a patient's well-being and, indeed, life, as any other waiting that causes a delay in appropriate treatment. MRI and CT scans are used in the investigation of serious and life-threatening conditions such as cancer and heart disease. Inevitably there will be people suffering and dying because of these waits.

A fortune in extra money has been spent on the NHS over the past few years. The service it provides should now, if the NHS is a good model, should be up to international standards. The government boasts that the waiting lists have been reduced and that more doctors and nurses have been recruited. Most of the media is happy to accept the story.

It would be surprising if there had not been some improvement at least. But the money has been directed at the measures of performance which have become politically sensitive. Important areas of performance, as far as patients arem concerned, have received less money. Their performance is still very bad by international standards.

Mr Burstow's paper is here.

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...general election news conferences are curious animals, much removed from ordinary journalism, not least because they are a televised showcase not only for the politicians but also for the star political journalists.

Sound-bite quality

It is almost as if they run to a pre-prepared script. The first question always goes to the political editors of either the BBC or ITV. Then it is the turn of their counterparts on Sky News, Channel Four News or Five News.

They ask good, tough questions - although sometimes the question is as much honed for its sound-bite quality as the answers are - but it is a badge of journalistic independence that they almost always ask about an agenda which is quite different to the theme of the news conference.

Of course, there are usually specialist journalists (education, health, or home affairs correspondents) at these events too. But they rarely get a look in as they are not regulars in this Westminster circus.

Indeed the specialist correspondents sometimes feel they are intruding on a private show. A specialist question, seeking clarification on policy, often brings a collective sigh of annoyance from the political journalists who, perhaps, see it as playing into the hands of the politicians.

In case this is sounding sanctimonious, let me add that I was certainly guilty of the same sort of thing

The trouble is that these daily news conference have become theatre. A gaffe here, a momentary loss of memory there, and that becomes the "story".

That is fair enough, up to a point, but the whole event often becomes little more than a jousting match between political correspondents and politicians.

In case this is sounding sanctimonious, let me add that I was certainly guilty of the same sort of thing when I was a political correspondent.

The truth is that Westminster-based correspondents do not know the ins and outs of policy in areas as diverse as education, health, and welfare. But tax and spend, and political personalities, are their bread and butter.

Clear choices

The only way issues such as health or education ever get to dominate these events is when there is the emotional appeal of a dramatic case study - a child denied an operation, a patient left on a trolley in a hospital corridor, or a parent facing the closure of their child's special school.

Yet surely issues such as classroom discipline, class sizes, and tuition fees are very important to many voters? There are clear choices on offer between the parties on each of these, and other, education issues.

Of course, voters can read the manifestos themselves. But the role of the media is not just to try to trip up weary or unprepared politicians but also to explain, compare and contrast policy issues.

One of the worst aspects of journalism is the pack mentality - it is safer to hunt together than to rove independently. If the big beasts of the journalistic jungle are going on one issue, others will follow.

And even the big beasts must feel constrained. They usually only get one question at these events (although they are usually canny enough to say "my question is in two parts...").

So, while they might like to test out the details of the class size policy, they dare not miss their one chance to try to wrong-foot the politicians on an issue that has cropped up elsewhere.

Many commentators are concerned by the public's lack of interest in the election campaign

I fear, and I speak as a television journalist, that this problem is largely the consequence of the daily news conferences being broadcast live on 24-hour news media. Journalists like to get their questions on the air almost as much as they want to hear the answers.

Indeed one or two political journalists, not necessarily broadcasters, produce long-winded statements as preambles to their questions. It is almost as if they are standing for election, not the politicians.

They are often witty, and occasionally they land a metaphorical punch on the politicians, but - call me old-fashioned - I thought the point of news conferences was for journalists to ask questions about the issues being presented to them, not to inject their comments into a memorable sound-bite question.

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So assumptions about what level of care can reasonably be expected can strongly affect the result. Also, patients often do not really know whether they are getting good care. They often don't know what drugs, treatment, advice or operations they should be offered. So they don't know when they are not getting them. In view of these factors, the most valuable parts of these patient surveys are the ones in which a patient is asked more precise questions like "Did the doctor give you full advice about what you should do at home to minimise the chances of your medical problem recurring?". A further degree more reliable are factual questions like, "How soon after you first contacted the medical services, did you see a specialist?"

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The initial consultation cost Maltese pounds 15 (equivalent to about £24) and the operation, including both consultant's time and the use of the hospital, was Maltese pounds 100 (equivalent to about £160). Total overall cost, £184.

I wonder how much it would have been in Britain or elsewhere?

Incidentally, in some other respects, Britain and Malta are similar. Malta, too, has a kind of National Health Service. Despite this free medical service, private, paid-for care is thriving and appears to be growing in size? One hospital and clinic group, St James, has grown to the point where it operates from five different locations on these small islands.Why?

I asked a relative of mine who lives in Malta. He told me that he was told by his doctor that he was gong to need a lens for his eye. The doctor said he had better put my relative on the waiting list straight away because it was three and a half years' long.

Of course, if my relative was willing to pay, the lens could be supplied as soon as he liked.

Another reason is the usual incompetence and waste that take place when the state runs healthcare: a large new replacement hospital is being built in Malta called Mater Dei. The cost was originally estimated to be 80 million Maltese pounds. It is now expected to cost 200 Maltese pounds. (That sort of thing used to happen a lot in Britain. But the Private Finance Initiative, though it doubtless has some serious faults, does appear to have reduced that kind of overrun. The financial risks are run by the private company, rather than the government. I was recently told by someone involved in PFIs that the private companies involved make only modest profits out of them.)

Another reason for the modest cost of private healthcare here is that wages generally here are lower than in Britain. Also there is no shortage of doctors, as in Britain. Britain has had government planning of doctor numbers for decades and the training is paid for the government. As a result, instead of having a sufficiency, we have a chronic shortage. Why this is not also the case in Malta I am not sure.

But it is an interesting paradox. When doctor numbers were unplanned and the training had to be paid for and worked for, Britain had no shortage of doctors. It is only post-NHS, when there is planning and training is free that we have a shortage.

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"The patients were moved out by 4 pm but the bay couldn't be used until it was disinfected on orders from the microbiology department."

Word about the danger to women about to give birth spread so that the department was taking calls from concerned pregnant women, working in the hospital trust, who had heard about it on the grapevine.

"The phone calls were naturally responded to in a downplaying way as it is natural to try and calm troubled waters. Explicit orders were not given, nor had to be as one tries not to upset the boat. Any midwife who blurts out the truth loses her job/prospects fast - it's a true culture of fear."

"All this came about because of the four hour rule."

My informant urges me to maintain strict confidentiality. The story has been told to me because of concern for patient safety. But this sort of thing is normally kept quiet. Those who know what has happened fear for their jobs if they tell the press. This is an occasion when a member of the medical profession has felt strongly enough pass on the story. As my informant concludes,

"These things need to be told."

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Of course, the railways were not and are not a part of the welfare state. Nevertheless, the more general point might be that private or market provision does not work.

In which case, presumably those who say 'what about the railways?' can think mainly, or only, of the railways as an example of private supply 'not working'. They appear to accept that the vast array of other products and services provided by the private sector are fine (to just start a very long list: house-building, supermarkets, manufacture of computers, manufacture of digital cameras, clothes shops, development and printing of photographs...). Presumably they also accept that the many other industries that were privatised have gone well, such as provision of gas, electricity and water, air transport, telephone services and road haulage.

If so, their argument must consist of saying, "Look, out of hundreds of industries, here is one which did not go well. That proves that private supply is no good." The argument only needs to be stated to demonstrate its absurdity.

They would also have to go on to argue that state provision, in contrast, has never gone wrong. They would have to maintain that - in admirable contrast to private provision - there is not a single state-supplied service which has failed. They would therefore have to say that state provision of dental services, council housing, care for those with cancer, postal services and, in the days, the state provided them, telephone, gas, electricity and water services, are and were absolutely fine. In fact, of course, all those services are or were bad.

So the mention of railways by no means invalidates the argument that private, charitable and market provision of services and products has a vastly better record than that of the state. Private provision is not perfect. Marks and Spencer is not perfect. Privately manufactured computers are not perfect. It is folly to to expect perfection in human affairs. But private provision is demonstrably much better than state provision.

All the above is without even beginning to contest the assumption that privatisation of the railways was an unarguable example of a privatisation failing. It is indeed possible to contest that assumption. I won't put the argument here at full length, but here are a few points:

First and most important, the railways were never fully privatised. They were only semi-privatised. This mattered in certain important ways. One was that the contracts with the train operating companies were for a maximum of seven years at the outset. This was too short a period to make it clearly worth the while of the companies to make major capital investment in new trains and other capital equipment. In Sweden, of all places, where I understand a more wholesale privatisation of rail took place, the record of the privatisation has been far better. In Switzerland, where there are some private railways, they work very well and reliably. In Norway, recently, I travelled on a superb private railway line.

Second, even the semi-privatisation of British Rail resulted in massive investment and many improvements such as far better provision of booking services. I remember in the days of British Rail, one could spend half an hour trying to get through to an office which would tell you the times of trains. After privatisation the information service become very fast and efficient. It is true there were some serious and fatal accidents in the semi-privatised years, but the safety record - as measured in the way most used in the industry - was better than previously. Fatal accidents in rail travel - measured over one or even five years - do not happen in a consistent way that accurately reflects the underlying safety level.

Look at the semi-privatised years from another angle, it was a curious kind of 'failure' that resulted in an increase of passenger numbers of some 27 per cent, if memory serves. That was unprecedented in the post-war years. During the decades in which British Rail operated the railways, there was a steady trend of falling passenger numbers.

With best wishes, James Bartholomew

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There are private postal services. In education, the money follows the student, so that there is competition among schools. Electricity production is largely privatised.

There is also some private provision of healthcare (see some details of 'the Stockholm experiment' in the chapter on the NHS in The Welfare State We're In)

So there are two strands here:

1. Sweden is not quite as socialist as people think.
2. Sweden is not as successful as people think.

One other element of the latter is that crime rose very substantially in Sweden after it became a socialist paradise.

Sweden was once an outstandingly law-abiding place. It has witnessed "a widespread increase in law-breaking". Also, "in 1987, the underground economy was estimated to make up 20 per cent of Sweden's gross national product". There has also been an "enormous increase in juvenile delinquency". These quotations are from Disturbing the Nest, by David Popenoe, an excellent book mainly about family breakdown but with a special emphasis on the Swedish example. (If you are interested to buy it, try Abebooks.com. Unfortunately Amazon.co.uk does not have it at a good price.)

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"I am increasingly dismayed and terrified by current political targets - I am worried because the four-hour A&E wait is used as a way to maintain and increase funding. This is affecting patient safety, especially in some trusts.

"I have just finished working in ********* Hospital and the situation there is dangerous and intolerable. The trust is under-bedded and has a substantial number of blocked beds. A&E will not breach the four-hour targets under any circumstances - when a patient gets to three hours they must be moved to hit target. As a result, A&E patients are poorly assessed and then sent to the MAU [Medical Assessment Unit] to sit in the corridor or day room. Since Christmas, there have been more than 10 extra patients on the corridor on a regular basis. I have, over the past two months, had a patient with severe DKA [out-of-control diabetes requiring emergency treatment] sent up and admitted to ICU [Intensive Care Unit] from a chair in the day room. I have a dossier of cases not fit for the corridor [these include heart failure, severe pneumonia, a heroin overdose and an epileptic fit lasting at least 30 minutes]. The wait for a bed is then often more than four hours. A&E remains empty.

"They cannot be cared for safely and it is only a matter of time before someone dies. I am not advocating a return to the old days with massive A&E waits but don't see why patients should move from an acute area to an unstaffed corridor to hit targets. I can even tolerate 'well' patients sat in a corridor but some of these are critically ill." The registrar's words, and in particular the example of a patient with life-threatening, out-of-control diabetes sent from casualty to sit in a day room to meet a target, and then admitted to intensive care, are shocking.

There are three key points from this story:

1. The statistics on waiting should not be trusted. Just because you are moved to a corridor, does not mean you have stopped waiting. The statistics are useless as a measure of performance because they are being manipulated.

2. The Government's use of targets can actually endanger life. It certainly causes a lower standard of care. Leaving seriously ill patients in unstaffed corridors, is a reckless, ruthless, uncaring way of looking after them.

3. There is a culture of fear now in the NHS. This registrar did not want to be named. For more evidence of this culture of fear, see chapter three of The Welfare State We're In.

The registrar's testimony appeared in The Sunday Telegraph.

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It is a curious thing that the prevalence of these two conditions - that cannot readily be disproved - has soared over the past generation. Meanwhile conditions which are easily verifiable, such as ear infections, have shown relatively little change.

See the chapter on social security in The Welfare State We're In for other evidence - circumstantial and otherwise - for believing that a large proportion of those claiming incapacity benefit are not genuinely incapable of work. Even the government has recently recognised this.

Strange, then, that this BBC report does not even mention the possibility and, instead, concentrates entirely on the idea that employers are at fault and should improve counselling for their workers. When the BBC - and perhaps the BMJ writers on whose work the BBC was reporting - appear to be so naive, there is little hope for realistic discussion.

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One of the claims I make in The Welfare State We're In is that the welfare state has reduced the natural incentives for married couples to stay together.

I attempt to substantiate this by citing figures suggesting that divorce and separation is far more common among the poor - the ones most affection by welfare benefits - than among the rich - who are not entitled to most benefits and therefore are not influenced by them.

One of the difficulties I encountered was that the research tended to be pretty old. This is one of several things that the government does not measure because, one suspects, it does not want to know the answer.

The low divorce rate among the relatively rich parents at my daughters' private school does not constitute heavyweight, serious evidence such as I would quote in a book. But it is nonetheless supportive, anecdotal evidence that the rich don't divorce as much as the poor. The poor are the ones whose judgements have been interfered with by the welfare state. Their children are the ones who suffer most from 'broken parenting'.

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Joe, Take an objective view for a moment - the left have set the terms of the debate on education and social provision more or less unchecked since the war. During this time, Britain's educational performance has declined by all international standards regardless of which party has been in power. The answer is obviously not to do more of the same thing - it clearly is not working.

It is time for the left to move out of the way and let the whole system be opened up to new providers coming in, and (shock horror!) giving the parents what they want.
Trust the people, not the system.

and HJHJ added,

Joe,

In Germany you have a constitutional right to choose an independent school and have the state handing over same the funding as for the state sector.

In France, similar arrangements apply. In Sweden they have introduced freedom for practically anyone to set up a new school and to have the funding follow the pupil.

All these factors keep state schools on their toes, albeit perhaps not to a sufficient extent, but still better than here.

The problem here is that the government not only funds the schools, it insists on running them on a monopoly basis. When the government hugely increased funding a couple of years ago, did it get through to pupils? No - over three quarters of it went into teachers salaries and pension plans and higher national insurance - a clear case of producer interest.

There is a debate to be had about whether schools should be state funded (James Bartholomew believes other arrangements would be better) but social justice is not furthered by having a monopoly supplier and giving the disadvantaged no choice. If you really had the interests of the poorest and most disadvantaged at heart you would want to make sure that they had the same choice as the richest - they're just as capable of making such choices, they presently just lack the opportunity.

The original posting was:

The facts on social mobility are depressing. As the middle classes expanded after the war, there was considerable movement. But since the early 60s academic surveys tell us that mobility has declined. Studies show that for people in their 30s, the social class of their parents matters more than it did in the past.

Who said that?

Ruth Kelly in an article in today's Guardian.

Does she therefore conclude that state education, far from having improved social mobility, has damaged it and should be abandoned. Of course not, she concludes that she is capable of making changes that will reverse the course of the past 50 years and make state education a success.

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The Financial Times today has a Mori poll which says Labour...

...has a 38 per cent share of the vote, a five point lead over the Conservatives on 33 per cent, with the Liberal Democrats on 23 per cent. MORI says this result would give Mr Blair an overall majority of 114 seats on election day.

So Labour is well ahead. But then again,

The survey of those who describe themselves as “absolutely certain” to vote puts Michael Howard's party on 39 per cent, Labour on 34 per cent, and Charles Kennedy and the Liberal Democrats on 21 per cent.

So the Conservatives could easily win the popular vote if it is a rainy day that keeps away the uncommitted. But then again...

If this result were replicated on election day, MORI says it would result in a hung parliament, with Labour as the biggest party in the Commons having 27 seats more than the Conservatives.

The explanation for this - at least partly - is that the electoral boundaries desperately need re-drawing. People have moved to Conservative supporting areas over the years, so, typically, when a Conservative wins a seat, he or she has a few tens of thousands of more people voting than when a Labour candidate wins. That means the popular vote will not be reflected at all accurately in the result. It will take particularly few voters in Labour-supporting Scotland to put an MP in parliament.

It is unfair for sure. What I don't know is whether the slowness of the government to re-draw the electoral boundaries is due to incompetence or corruption. Cheating on postal voting in Birmingham reported today is a local matter and may not reflect a similar level of cheating and cynicism in the Labour leadership. On the other hand, Mr Blair and his colleagues have shown plenty of cynicism and improper political manipulation (of the civil service for example) to make one perfectly open to the idea that the unfairness of the electoral boundaries is not unintentional.

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How it came to happen:

An investigation by either the FA or Newcastle may also establish why frustration over a non-pass late in a game already lost generated such an extreme action, principally from Bowyer.

Any existing tension between the England internationals had not manifested itself previously, though there was a minor disagreement over a non-pass from Dyer in the first half of this match. Bowyer made his feelings known then and would use statistics showing Dyer made 36 passes on Saturday with only one going to Bowyer, to illustrate a pattern.

When the same thing happened in the 82nd minute Bowyer began haranguing Dyer. As the two converged Dyer stood his ground and Bowyer led with the forehead, then started punching.

How the incident breaks new ground in British incivility. Remember, these two players were on the same tearm. This is a quote from the manager of the club, Souness,

'It's a first for me. I have never witnessed that before. Harsh words between players occur in every game, but it's very unusual for it to lead to what happened today. 'There are always arguments on the training pitch when players stand up to each other, but that's as far as it goes. This is something completely new to me.'

Football provides a metaphor for how civility in Britain has dramatically declined over the past century. See chapter one of The Welfare State We're In for statistics showing the astonishing rise in the number of sendings off over that period. The chapter also makes in clear that a player with an appalling record such as Lee Bowyer's would have been banned for the game for life by now if he had been playing in the 1950s.

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One possible answer may be that American laws - particular tax laws - incentivise people to have company healthcare plans which apply to everyone in the company in similar ways, regardless of their lifestyles and obesity. So although American healthcare is mostly privately paid-for, it is far from operating in a free market. In a free market, health insurance premiums would be lower for those who were not fat and so being thin would be financially rewarded. The same would go for those who have no insurance and pay for healthcare as and when they need it. On this basis, people are still perfectly rational. Their behaviour has just been distorted by government interference.

A second possible answer is that people just can't help themselves. The lure of salt, sugar and fat are just too great for human beings after millions of years of evolution in which our bodies were trained to go for sweetness and fat at any opportunity.

I have not done enough work on this to have a strong view and would welcome comments on this and also other areas in which individuals have or have not shown themselves to be capable of looking after themselves.

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It is true that early on he halved the starting rate of income tax and reduced the basic rate by one per cent. But this has been cancelled out by the fact that he makes us pay income tax on a bigger a proportion of the money we earn. At present, most of us pay tax on every pound above £4,745. It is called the 'tax threshold'. If this had been increased in line with earnings since Mr Brown's first year as Chancellor, it would now be considerably higher, at about £5,384. So we pay tax on £640 of our earnings that we would not have done, if Gordon Brown had never existed.

The most fortunate, high-earning ones among us now pay tax at the top rate of 40 per cent on every pound above £36,146. They include people like senior policemen, doctors and head teachers. Where would they be if Gordon Brown had never existed? They would not be paying the top rate of tax at all unless they earn over £40,120. Someone earning that sum or more, pays top rate tax on an extra £3,974 because of Gordon Brown's eight years.

National insurance is now levied at 11 per cent whereas it would only be 10 per cent, if Gordon Brown had not increased it. And there would be no special one per cent national insurance levied on those who earn above the upper limit. Someone on the average income of £21,900 pays an extra £136.

Mr Brown has also increased the taxes we pay when we spend our money. The duty on a packet of cigarettes has soared under his rule. If it had risen in line with earnings, it would be £3.00. But as result of his increases, it has risen to a whopping £3.85. Someone who smokes 10 a day, pays an extra £155 a year in duty than would be the case without Gordon Brown.

If we decide to move house, he gets us again. If stamp duty had been increased in line with house prices, it would only be payable on houses and flats worth over £143,000. For seven long years, Mr Brown kept the threshold down at £60,000 and only, now, just before the election, has he increased the threshold to £120,000. That still means that someone buying a modest new home for, say, £140,000 pays £1,400 more than would have been the case if Mr Brown had not been in charge. Someone buying something bigger faces a much heftier bill because of the new, higher rates. Someone paying £260,000 for a place to live, pays £7,800, whereas he or she would have paid only £2,600, if Mr Brown had not had his way.

And so the list goes on. It would be a big exercise to take in all the increases including easy-to-overlook measures such as the increase in duty on insurance policies. One of the biggest levies has been the £5 billion a year tax on pension funds. That was a clever - or rather a cynical - move. We don't much notice it during our working lives. It will only be when we retire that we might, perhaps, recall that it was because of Gordon Brown we can't afford to be a member of a golf club or go to the theatre as before.

Even when we die, our inheritors will be worse off . The inheritance tax threshold now is £263,000. But if it had been increased in line with house prices, it would be vastly higher at £512,000. That means tax of nearly £100,000 payable on an estate of that higher amount, because of Mr Brown's presence.

Mr Brown could argue that it has all been in a good cause. It has been spent to bring state education and the NHS up to new high standards. There may indeed have been some modest improvement in the NHS although it is probably still the least effective medical system in the advanced world. Independent analysis of reading ability suggests that there has been precious little improvement in education.

Independent analysts reckon that there is more tax to come, too. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says an extra £11 billion will have to be raised after the next election - equivalent to 3.5p on income tax.

On Mr Brown's side, you can say that he has given money back in the form of tax credits. But the tax credits only go to those people he had chosen to select. Generally they do not go to people without children below pensionable age. They also have to be applied for and many people - often the poorest and most vulnerable - fail to go through the form-filling required.

More than half of pensioners are now entitled to means-tested benefits. He has gradually been turning us into a nation of supplicants, applying to him to get back a little of the money we have previously paid. He is creating dependancy Britain which, he hopes, will vote for his party to keep the payments flowing.

We would not just be richer, we would have more dignity and independence, if Gordon Brown had never existed.

An edited version of the above appeared in the Daily Express today. One major area of tax increases I failed to mention was council tax, which, according to estimates by the Conservatives, has risen on average by over 70 per cent since Labour came to power.

The Reform website is here. It is well worth signing up to be emailed the excellent daily media review.

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