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I don't believe that it is the place of the state to encourage or discourage any particular family arrangement . I declare an interest as a long time (and in all likelihood now permanently) single person, but I utterly resent the suggestion that the state should somehow reward those who are fortunate enough to have found their significant other by discriminating against singles.

I do accept, however, that the theoretical permanency of a marriage or civil partnership commitment may provide some benefits of stability in the lives of children of the union at important stages of their development. And I also recognize that virtually any interdependent personal relationship has the potential to take some of the onus off the state for support services and the like. So, how to reconcile these positions?

The answer seems obvious - Citizens' Income. Quite apart from such a system's ability to address the problems of benefits withdrawal creating excessive marginal rates of taxation for those trying to get off benefits and into work, if every individual were entitled to an unconditional and non-withdrawable basic income as of right as a citizen, those who choose, or are lucky enough, to live with another (or others), would be able to pool such incomes and no doubt make savings on the costs of procuring essential goods and services.

Food is generally cheaper when you are buying for more than one person. Family health insurance seems cheaper than the sum of the same number of individuals' insurance. In a Land Value Tax regime it is likely that multiple member households would be paying less tax per person anyway than singles simply by virtue of sharing space - making more efficient use of land by and large. Housing costs per person are likely to be lower.

So, give more of our money back to us for us to decide how to spend ourselves, and these family relationships will prove themselves by dint of domestic economic efficiencies. No need for more central tinkering.

Such is the difference, in my mind, between a moralising, authoritarian and protectionist view of human relationships and a liberal view.

All this rumpus (quite rightly I might add) about the UK->US->? extradition treaty puts me in mind of something an American acquaintance said way back when cartoonists favourite image of our Tone was as Dubbya's pussy, oops, puppy, no, try again....poodle, that was it - remember all that?

I don't remember whether he was in favour of the Iraq war or not (I suspect so - he was of the US libertarian right persuasion) but when he saw George and Tony doing their "shoulder to shoulder" tango he thought that Tony had rescued George. The "coalition of the willing" was, for a while it seemed, a partnership of two. And he felt Britain should deserve some reward, indeed that the British government should press for some reward.

His suggestion was that Britain should push, in the spirit of free trade/movement in goods and people, that Tony should press for British citizens to be given special status to come and go much more freely to America, to work there without green cards and so on.

I don't suppose he for one minute thought that Tony would do the selection of who would get special free flights and all-expenses paid accommodation personally. I always think that if you are going to lobby someone for something, you should make a positive alternative suggestion to go with it - so, when you do as young Nick here says, perhaps you should suggest more freedom of movement for British folks into and around the US too.

There's often talk about the "younger generation" who have only ever known Tony Blair in charge in their political memories. Well, in a way that applies to me too. Of course at forty, I have more political memories than that (including writing, at age 11, to someone called Williams who was in charge of schools at the time, or so I thought, to complain about the discipline regime at my private preparatory school!), but I only really got involved in party politics after the 1997 General Election.

So far as I am aware my family had always voted Liberal. They were part of that Scottish cohort who were not in the Kirk (Tory party at prayer) and were not Catholic (who it was always said were instructed by their bishops to vote Labour), but Gospel Hall Brethren and so in that non-conformist set that gravitated in Scotland to the Liberals.

But, at public school, self interest put me off ever wanting to vote Labour (who would, we were all told, close down private schools) and, whilst my early career in the City was unashamedly inspired by the Thatcherite loads-a-money era, I could not stomach voting for a party that treated me as a gay man as inferior (don't argue with me here, they did, and as recent opinion polling amongst their members shows still do at heart). I had the great misfortune, at my second voting General Election, to live in the constituency of that odious woman woman Jill, now Baroness, Knight, author of the hated Section 28.

Despite all the promise of equality from Labour, I actually contacted Millbank during the 1997 campaign, the first in which I had gone so far as to actually read party manifestos, to ask whether Labour party policy of repeal of section 28 and equalisation of the age of consent were specific first term promises and was told they were not. So that settled me on joining the Lib Dems. And for a year and a half I was just that, a "sleeping" member, paying my dues (albeit at the rate of the minimum annual subscription per month in order to salve my conscience at not actually doing anything active!).

Whilst there was a certain feeling of relief that Labour had routed what had become a moribund and corrupt government, and some smiles at the "New Labour, New Britain" agenda, little did I know that the reign of Tony Blair would lead me to a deep loathing of national politics, the notion of the nation state even and crucially the role of an individual claiming to "lead" and "speak for" an entire nation of sixty million different opinions. The size of that first, and indeed second, majority, silenced real political debate as surely as a one party state would have done. Only the House of Lords, which I loathe as an institution, seemed willing and capable of opposing anything, and their days were numbered.

I am hard pressed to name anything I think Blair has done in his ten years that was done voluntarily and with good grace and for the better. Age of Consent and Section 28 were both changed in the end, but reluctantly, after European Court intervention in the case of the former and after unnecessary delay in the case of the latter. Devolution for Scotland and Wales was good, but in reality all but predated Blair in the form of the Scottish Constitutional Convention. Wealth inequality has been up and down, the Big Brother state has moved on apace, there feels like there has been just as much massaging of figures, and certainly more spin than ever before, and little if any feeling of a real ideology behind it all. I've never felt before that politics was merely a cynical exercise in winning elections to perpetuate one's own power at almost any cost.

At the same time I have flirted with Trots, and then "seen the cat", respectively looking for the small government option - either anarchist in the former case or "geo-libertarian" once I had had my eyes opened, precisely because, like nobody else before him, the smarmy, spinning, unassailable man at number ten had put me off government entirely. Two books that kicked off that search for a personal ideology are "An Intelligent Person's Guide to Liberalism (Intelligent Person's Guide Series)" (Conrad Russell) and "The Grip of Death: A Study of Modern Money, Debt Slavery and Destructive Economics" (Michael Rowbotham). And now not even the Lib Dems can adequately express my radicalism for economic and constitutional reform, to end protectionist monopoly and elected dictatorship respectively.

So it's good bye and good riddance Mr Blair. I'd rather you didn't take any international man of mystery jobs that would mean me continuing to see your smarmy git face on my television or newspapers ever again. In fact, maybe you'd consider going to Mars for a while. Thank goodness nothing, not even conversion to Rome, can bring you a plenary indulgence any more, and there remains a chance that you will be brought before some authority you might recognize at some point in your future, to answer for your actions.

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