Since World War I only five girls' names and twenty four boys' names have remained in their respective lists of the top hundred names registered in the UK each year. They are, for the girls:

• Sarah
• Elizabeth
• Catherine
• Helen
• Maria

And for the boys:

• Thomas
• James
• Daniel
• Michael
• Alexander
• Christopher
• Joseph
• William
• Andrew
• George
• David
• Robert
• John
• Mohammed
• Charles
• Edward
• Stephen
• Richard
• Peter
• Anthony
• Paul
• Patrick
• Philip
• Martin

Some remarkable ommisions in both lists.

Source: Top 100 baby names. - Office for National Statistics.

Recently there has been considerable focus on the increasing inequality between those on middle incomes and the the most wealthy, the so-called 'one percent', however let's take a look at the at the other end of the scale.

Agricultural workers have, for centuries, been amongst the lowest paid, full time, adult workers in the country; this has been consistent enough that they can be considered an archetype for the low income earner. Indeed their wages have been so low that there has been an Agricultural Minimum Wage (AMW) since WWI, this provides good series of incomes for low paid workers. In 1950 the AMW for an ordinary worker on basic hours was £4 14s, today it is £237.90.

In 1948 the National Assistance Act was passed to provide an absolute minimum income for those not entitled to other benefits, and, despite subsequent name changes, this safety net remains in place as Income Support. In 1950 this was £1 10s for a single person and today's equivalent is £67.50, both amounts usually supplemented by an amount equal to their rent.

Data on wages data has been collected since the late 19th century and from this we see that median earnings have increased from £7 1s 8d to £498.80.

To compare all these figures and see how they have increased or declined relative to one another it is useful to select one series as a base and calculate the others as percentages of it, in this case we will use AMW.

From this we can see that low paid workers, represented by agricultural labourers, have seen their wages decline compared to median wage earners, whereas they were receiving 2/3rds of that of those on middle incomes, now they are getting less than half.

The very poorest, those collected in the safety net of what was National Assistance and is now Income Support have faired even worse, their income has declined even compared to the low paid; we can see that the value of their income has declined by a third when compared to average earnings.

It is difficult to see how we can tolerate an income structure where the lowest paid are being systematically left behind and those unable to fend for themselves have been all but abandoned by successive governments desperate to secure the votes of Middle England. I believe the time has come for a national discussion about what the minimum standard of living should be for anyone,  about the morality of relative poverty and how large or small these gaps should be, and what we are going to do about it.

On 7th September, 2011, Foreign Policy published a piece by Katherine Hawkins titled "Return of the Renditioned" examining the fate of some of those subject to the CIA's programme of 'extraordinary rendition', on the face of it this was a neutral article however a few things  caused me to think about the language used and how it influences the reader. I had intended to respon with just a couple of tweets though it ended up taking a lot more than that to express myself.

The following is my largely unedited response at the time:

I have some basic issues with this piece, Return of the Renditioned, by Katherine Hawkins in Foreign Policy.

There is, in a number of cases, the small matter of presumption of guilt; none of these detainees has been convicted in a proper court. Indeed in many cases the evidence amounts to suspicion reinforced by confessions coerced under torture, or being named by others, also under torture.

Then we come to the symbology used.

Firstly, arrest. The word arrest implies legal detention. The CIA, a foreign intelligence service, cannot detain citizens of another country, on the territory of a third, and then transfer them elsewhere; they do not have international jurisdiction despite what internal legal justifications are made by their government. These detentions were abduction, pure and simple.

Secondly, rendition. The use of the word, rendition, without explanation is also problematic. What does it mean? It is used in a technical way as if it was some formal process yet it is no such thing; it is the transfer, in contravention of fundamental legal protections, extradition treaties and border control laws, of those abductees.

The third symbol is one that is absent, all these detainees are the victims of multiple crimes: abduction, unlawful imprisonment, torture and, in some cases, murder. And it is that symbol, victim of crime, that is missing. Our societies have become steadily more attuned to the rights of victims of crime and so, by refusing to use that symbol for these people, this article, like many others, excludes them from being assigned the response we give to victims of crime.

Without understanding the symbols these detainees are being made to wear and which are denied to them we cannot learn the lessons nor make the decisions required both to deal justly with the errors of the past and to prevent repetition of those follies in the future.

Dear Mr Cameron and Mr Hunt,

Media control is already over-concentrated in this country already without allowing News Corporation to acquire all of BSkyB. This concentration of editorial control threatens our democracy and mere undertakings do nothing to protect  the public.

Given the the latest revelations it seems clear that there are executives of News Corporation who cannot be trusted to tell the truth or to keep their word.

Therefore I call upon you:

1. to reconsider any proposed agreement with News Corporation,

2. to refuse to grant News Corporation, its owners executives and associates, any further control of British media until the deal has been reviewed by the competition commission and a full judicial inquiry into the hacking scandal is conducted and completed,

3. to review the state of competition in British media and to reconsider the law governing cross-media ownership.

Yours sincerely

etc.

There is no denying that the proposal to move to AV has been well and truly defeated for a variety of reasons and we reformers must consider why if we are to move forward.

"AV, not for me"
Firstly, there are those who looked genuinely at the proposal, did not like what they saw and voted against. If these people are to be convinced, if that is at all possible, then the proposal must be one they can support. We should not be fooled into thinking that voters make up their minds solely on the facts, however, most do not want to go back to school and be educated about the merits of various systems.

"A miserable little compromise"
There is no doubt that Nick Clegg description of AV damaged the Liberal Democrat campaign for a yes vot. As with tuition fees those of us who are Lib Dems were hoodwinked into supporting something to which we, not only did not support but, had actively exprssed our oppostion.

"AV, is that the same as Fair Votes?"
We all remember the movement and its public protests captured the media's attention and the public's imagination. We did not sustain that momentum and failed to connect Fair Votes to AV.

"The Daily Mail says vote No"
The Daily Mail was always likely tosay that, however we should no beforehand who our friends and enemies are likely to be in the media. We must ensure we set the ground rules beforehand and not be blindsided by attitudes such as the BBC's very partial version of impartality.

"So who's your leader?"
We did not have an obvious figurehead and, as a cosequence, our campaign was disorganised. The No campaign did, voters saw David Cameron as its leader even though that position was nominally held by Margaret Beckett and as a consequence most Conservative voters lined up squarely behind it to tick No. As expected Lib Dems were behind Yes2AV and probably brought many of their voters with them. Labour however were ambivalent though it has to be said those who were opposed campaigned more actively than those in favour. In the future we must present a united front with a clear leader and a clear message.

These are solely my thoughts and no doubt readers will have their own, I invite your contributions.

I hate to say this but if Qaddafi is using his military to suppress an armed rebellion in Libya then he probably has a legal right to so do however if he is is wilfully destroying property, causing suffering or civilian loss of life out of proportion to any military necessity then we, principally through the UNSC, have a right and, maybe, an obligation to intervene to stop such activities. Where our moral authority is suspect, however, is down to the various in all the inter- and intra-state conflicts in which we remain silent or do nothing.

This article in the Huffington Post about President Obama’s Christianity being a lifestyle choice got me thinking; if someone were to claim that ones faith is a ‘lifestyle choice’ and thus the state should not recognise church weddings there would be an outcry, yet it is the same people who would likely raise Cain over such a statement are those who seek to oppose same sex weddings using the same justification.

Now is not the time for ideologically motivated cuts and changes but effective ones, we must bear in mind the effect that measures have on the economy.

We know that households with the lowest income spend the highest proportion of that income and spend it locally. This argument, aside from any moral one, demonstrates that it is good economics to minimise such cuts. Money spent locally serves to keep local businesses afloat, this in turn, maintains income for local authorities that they raise through business rates that can then be spent on local services, a lot of which will be in the form of wages, a virtuous circle. This also helps to prevent whole areas from slipping into decline and becoming more than just a local problem.

Conversely we should be looking to cut programmes that provide little reinvestment and little recycling of the money spent. Does this include Trident? I don’t know, I’d like to think so but may be that’s my heart ruling my head. I remain morally opposed to the possession of nuclear weapons under any circumstances. Careful analysis of every spending programme should be undertaken before deciding what to cut.

The other side of the coin is taxation. Where is there room to raise revenue without damaging the economy? Again, we should be careful not to overtax small employers, they tend to employ locally and keep money within the community. However measures should also be taken to encourage them to pay more than the bare minimum as lower wages require government subsidies in benefits and taxation to turn them into living incomes. Taxation may have a part to play in this and should not be ignored.

There is a national sense of moral indignation that the very industries that helped to get us into this mess are the ones that are seen to be profiting most. Should the government take advantage of this to raise money with a punitive levy? I argue that it should not, such a levy should only be imposed if there are sound reasons for doing so.

We should ask whether it would damage the national economy. There is no reason to believe that it should provided the institutions involved are not taxed out of existence. We should ask whether it will raise a sufficient amount of money to make it worthwhile. If the Financial sector can afford to pay £10bn in bonuses, presumably as a reward for increasing profitability, the it seems likely that a not inconsiderable sum can be raised. Finally we should ask whether a scheme can be devised that taxes firms fairly and leaves little wriggle room so that those firms behave the least responsibly and those who have profited the most from recent troubles are those that pay the most. I believe such a scheme can be devised however that should be left to hard-headed experts not hot-headed political types.

We should also look to use the taxation scheme to prevent our national economy becoming over dependent on certain large sectors that, despite their seeming solidity, may become unstable leading to another crisis. It cannot be healthy that 23% of the invested capital in the UK is tied up in the financial sector (or any other sector for that matter), taxation could be used to push markets into investing in different sectors.

We should be aiming to come out of this period with a more balanced economy and one that is agile and able to take advantage of new and as yet unrecognised industries as well as those we have already identified as emergent sectors.