Tuesday 8 December 2009

Everyone's a winner with Dave Cameron

From a delightfully garbled article in The Soaraway Sun:

DAVID Cameron yesterday denied he was out to clobber single mums by offering tax breaks to married couples. The Tory leader was heckled as he outlined his plans to supporters of lone parents' charity Gingerbread.

Angry mums accused him of discriminating against 4.5million kids. Mr Cameron vowed that a future Tory government would never ignore problems faced by single parents. But he insisted his party was not "neutral" on the issue and wants to encourage marriage by loading the tax system in favour of couples.


So with typical Nulabour gusto, he's going to "do more" for married couples and "do more" for single parents at the same time. Hooray! The irony in all this is that:

1. Even the Tories suggested tax-break will amount to about ten pounds a week, once you do the maths, nowhere near enough to combat the £200-per-week couple penalty embedded in the tax/benefits system. See e.g. Shannon Matthew's mum's former partner's sister's benefit fraud.

2. The real villains of the piece are single-mothers-on-welfare, and not single mothers in work, but as they don't pay income tax, they won't be affected by changes to the tax system; the largest single group who'd lose out will be single, working adults who don't have children, and cohabiting couples will lose twice as much.

But the best bit is this, perhaps somebody can explain it to me:

Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman has branded his idea a "philanderer's charter", allowing men who walk out on their wives to benefit from pro-marriage tax reforms.

PS, Gingerbread is a fakecharity, of course.

5 comments:

AntiCitizenOne said...

The villains are those who use their children like a kidnapper does to their victim.

Pay up or the child gets harmed!

James Higham said...

Harriet the economics major.

RantinRab said...

Round my way, the vast majority of 'couples' who live together and do not work are claiming seperate.

How else can they afford the lifestyle they have, which is better than average salary mine.

Nick39 said...

"the largest single group who'd lose out will be single, working adults who don't have children"

But isn't that the point. Pretty much the entirety of Western culture is now set up to bilk this group, especially the male part of it.

AntiCitizenOne said...

Krauser, they're also the most mobile. I can't see many staying when they don't have to be punished for working so much abroad.