Tories Fail New Mathematics: Sad Sums, Sets and Syllogisms

Iain Dale links to a silly Times expose of some Ministers maintaining good relations with Lobbyists HERE, DizzyThinks' predictable analysis of the story, and to a Sunday Telegraph Story about one particular supporter and to these eyes at least worthy appointee to public service at the highest levels.

Stephen Ladyman MP and Gerry Sutcliffe MP could be consulting M'Learned Friends on this as The Times piece is subtitled Ministers mired in ‘cash-for-access’ but shows absolutely no cash going to anyone - except their salaries - and being anecdotal and partial doesn't even stack up the idea of preferential access as there is no investigation into whether other lobbyists and contractors also enjoy cordial working relations.


Iain's analysis gets this comment from me. The diagram above has been photoshopped at great expense "cash-for-set-diagrams" to assist in Mr Dale's puny analysis :

What a load of nonsense Iain. Do you remember those New Mathematics your were probably taught at school? Nuffield Maths perhaps? Didn't they do something about "Sets"? Here are some sets you surely learned about earlier :

- Clever academic people who have made a contribution to the sum of human knowledge and could make a contribution to national life chairing reports, as advisors, or even as peers;

- Clever business people who have made a contribution to the wealth and happiness of themselves and perhaps if they're not scumbags to the wealth and happiness of their people and the nation ... and who could etc;

- Clever people in other walks of life - unions, local government, charities, house of commons, medicine, law, even sport ... etc;

- People who have personal wealth and political interests that lead them to support parties of all stripes and in various ways;

Someone can of course be in more than one set. While the last one alone should not be enough to get a P or a K - let's say they are a money launderer or a criminal.

But membership of one of the three sets that does qualify does not and should not disqualify citizens from becoming Ps and Ks under the existing system, even if they've got a bit of money and have given some to a political party.

Your whole case is illogical. Following it through (other than in stopping all honours and scrapping the Lords) is not in the national interest.

In a 100% elected system I would also not want to disqualify people who had lent or given money to pollies, even to your party!

So long as that isn't how they get elected e.g. by being in a place on a party's list that they don't deserve on merit which is one reason (along with the MEP experience) that I don't much like lists.