"How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?" - Julia Child

There is an advert on the tv for Center Parcs at the moment, that starts with something like:

“What would you like your children to inherit?”

“A house? Or…good memories?”

Their implication being that the logical choice is, for some reason, good memories.

Apart from the fact that you can’t inherit memories, which is a bit weird, you can almost hear under-35s around the country screaming the words: “A HOUSE! A HOUSE!” at the tv.

But anyway…

Recently a minister compared our housing market to bread. If the cost of a loaf of bread had risen in line with the cost of a house, a loaf of bread would cost….well, a lot, is his point: 50 quid-ish, some say, depending on your time frame.

That would be bad, correct?

Except that he left it there. But it is logical to extend that analogy a little bit…

…imagine that a loaf of bread does cost 50 quid, but two thirds of the population already have bread-making machines. And that one third have to buy bread at 50 quid.

Suddenly, this is only a problem for some people – most people don’t care. Now imagine that people with bread making machines are more likely to vote than non-bread-machine owners, and you are a politician in charge of bread-making policy.

Would you change anything?

No, of course not. Except then your children have to start buying their own bread for 50 quid, and come and keep nicking your machine, so you might make some noise about it but not really do anything. Why?

Well, I would leave the analogy there, only to add that non-machine owners (renters, keep up Nick Clegg) are even less likely to vote because they have to re-register constantly as they move around, so politicians will not start trying to win their votes any time soon, as even if they did wield electoral power, they’d still be in the minority.

So the pain continues.