Worsley Watch - David Cameron and his band of Flagellating Zealots.

Another classic from Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, Donald Worsley. While this post is essentially given over to an irate letter of the highest order, there is a counterpoint from Damian Collins at the end. Not a traditional article but frankly it's too late and I need to get to bed!

Get me to the Tax Collector

The Tories' proposals to lavish £5 billion in tax relief on married couples just shows how out of touch they are with social reality.Marriage may have been the Holy Grail of social harmony in the days of Prince Bishops and the Divine Rights of Kings, but no longer.
Happy contented families is and should be the Holy Grail of the 21st Century.

It’s families with young children we should focus our tax relief and our tax credits upon regardless of whether the children are brought up in single parent families, extended families or a same sex family environment.

Child benefit, working families tax credit and Sure Start Children’s Centres are much more deserving when it comes to spending huge amounts of public money than subsidising childless married couples for the sake of political dogma.

Telling a young mother that she should stay married to a violent husband or lose tax relief is adding insult to injury. Telling a war widow she should remarry or lose tax benefits for her family is worse than blasphemy.

And giving tax relief to married couples when in some areas of the country over 50% of children are born out of wedlock is just a cruel and shameless indictment on unmarried mothers by any other label.

Supporting families with young children must be our priority. Persuading people of the virtues of marriage is best left to the Archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster and others; not sanctimonious politicians.

Marriage should be because you truly love someone not because it comes with a tax free dowry courtesy of David Cameron and his band of flagellating zealots.

Ends
 
'nuff said. Damian Collins, in comments made in a *shameless plug* soon to be published interview with yours truly, disputed that the Conservative proposals on tax breaks for married or civil partnership couples  were unfair saying 'Current Labour policies offer a financial incentive to couples to split up. These proposals are seeking to correct a distortion.'