A minister brought in later to clear up the mess (which included the removal of the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher) commented on the other-worldly intellectualism of the ministers and officials responsible for the debacle: “It needed exceptionally clever people to produce anything so stupid.” The best anecdote (surely apocryphal) concerns the late Nicholas Ridley, scion of the aristocratic Northumberland family. When it was pointed out that an elderly couple might have difficulty paying the poll tax, he is said to have remarked: “Well, they could always sell a picture.” It is hard to believe that story; but it is emblematic of the cultural divide that is often at the heart of these blunders.