That is an arithmetical measure of inequality; in order to reduce the numbers of families on incomes below that level, the distribution of incomes will have to become more equal. The size of the gap between rich and poor will have to be squeezed. That was a message that did full justice to the setting in which Mr Blair delivered his speech, that temple of British socialism, Toynbee Hall in east London.Nor is this mere rhetoric, even if it is set against a timetable for which Mr Blair himself is unlikely to be held personally accountable. Many of Mr Blair's critics on the left accuse him of cherry-picking the feel-good language of social justice while shying away from the radical policies needed to ensure that power, wealth and opportunity end up in the hands of the many, not the few, in the words of New Labour's constitution. But the impact of Gordon Brown's three budgets so far has been to shift the tax and benefit system in precisely this egalitarian direction, and with hardly a squeak from the pips. After 20 more budgets like that, who is to say that child poverty, as defined, cannot be abolished?So it would be a mistake to dismiss Mr Blair's ambitions as just sound- balm for the ears of the well-meaning electorate.

The question is how the "quiet revolution" of which he spoke will be brought about.And here we come to a less convincing part of Mr Blair's speech, in which he set out his desire to make "the welfare state" popular again As he pointed out, welfare has become a term of abuse. "It became associated with fraud, abuse, laziness, a dependency culture." And, as he pointed out, this is dangerous, because "if people lose faith in welfare's ability to deliver, then politicians have an impossible job persuading hard-pressed taxpayers that their money should go on a system that is not working".Let us recall, however, that it was the New Labour import of New Democrat language from America that reinforced the use of welfare in this negative sense, as in the mantra "welfare to work".Mr Blair's attempt to invoke the folk-memory of the saintly William Beveridge, architect of "the welfare state" when it was popular, is similarly unconvincing. The point about the Beveridge reforms is that they applied the social values forged in war to the problems of the Thirties. The idea of cradle- to-grave state support, backed up by universal state benefits, is unsupported and insupportable now. Both the values and the problems are different.Mr Blair should drop the notion of restoring some kind of golden age of the welfare state and stick to convincing the cynics that ending child poverty - in new ways - is a realisable goal.. YOU DID not have to be a visitor from Mars to be puzzled by the prominence given by some of the press to a very small story this week. Apparently, a private school in Sevenoaks, Kent, is going to stop teaching a mixture of A-levels and the international baccalaureate, and drop the A-levels.

The school's motive, and that of the newspapers that reported it, is ideological. It and they oppose the Government's reforms of A-levels, which will allow sixth-formers to study a wider range of subjects. Educational conservatives complain that the reforms will devalue the A-level "gold standard" - part of the wider "dumbing down" of exam standards that has already, according to the reactionaries, rendered GCSEs worthless This is nonsense. The reforms will retain the value of the core A-levels, while adding a new "silver standard" to broaden the base of the sixth- form curriculum. What the conservatives will not accept is that exams need to change to reflect changing needs. But the reputation of academic qualifications is immensely important, and so the Government was right to proceed with caution - thus offending the educational liberals on its other flank, who wanted David Blunkett to go further. What Mr Blunkett has done is essentially to add to the existing A-level system, and to allow schools and pupils to decide how much of the new flexibility they want to use. Pupils will be able to study four or five subjects in their first year in the sixth form and then to specialise in their second year if they want to.