Monday 6 May 2013

Don't judge my family

I've just signed the petition against the Conservatives' proposed Marriage Tax Allowance, which they want to push through before the end of this parliament in 2015.

This allowance would pay £3 a week to people who are married, where one partner doesn't go out to work - regardless of whether or not they have dependent children.

Julianne Marriott, Campaign Director of Don’t Judge My Family, persuasively argues that only one in three of the families who would gain from this policy have children, and fewer than one in five have children under five years of age.

The main beneficiaries will be people who are both fortunate enough to (still) be married and rich enough that they can afford for one of them not to work - in other words, the already affluent and comfortable.

Those who pay for it will be those on lower incomes who both have to work to make ends meet; the divorced (whether or not they wished their partner to leave them - I certainly didn't); and the struggling single parents. 

As Oscar Wilde said: "What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing". For David Cameron and his cynical Conservatives, the price of marriage is £3 a week, and they have no idea of the value of real families, in all their shapes and sizes.

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