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Taxes 'should recognise marriage'

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Andy Burnham [...] said there was a "moral case" for using tax to promote the traditional family unit.

I don't get it. Why is there a moral case at all, and even if there is, what the fuck has tax got to do with it?

I appreciate that we need to be taxed so that our esteemed leaders can go on fact-finding tours to Tahiti and bomb the shit out of TPLACs. What I don't get is why they have to raise tax by charging money for completely unrelated things. The dark days of Window Tax and Wig Tax and Beard Tax may have gone, but now, as well as the privilege of being charged money when our relatives die, we get to pay a premium for living in a manner which is considered to be less moral than some other manner, according to some arbitrary standard.

Another thing I don't get is how, exactly, you get tax breaks if you're married. Do shopkeepers knock the VAT off if you're wearing a ring? Is there a button on the till marked looks like a respectable citizen?

(Actually, now I'm warming to it, this sounds like a great idea. We could have a complete sliding scale of tax based on moral standards. Twenty pence for every dropped aitch. Ankle tax, knee tax, and Wears Hat Indoors tax. Pink Shirt Tax (because seriously, those bloody things are never appropriate). Drunken Moron Tax: a tenner per decibel. Asks Stupid Questions Tax, levied by customer service staff at the till. I'm in favour of a Fails To Grasp The Concept Of The Weights And Measures Act tax, but that would just be discriminating against Americans, so perhaps not.)

Returning to mawwiage, which was the topic under notional discussion, where do these bastards get off, deciding what is moral and what isn't, and then enforcing it by means of basic unavoidable living expenses?

Why does the question of who I'm sleeping with have any impact on the value of my contribution towards the upkeep of society?

And where does Gordon get off, quoting a two-thousand-year-old work of fiction as justification for the policy he intends to apply to the entire multicultural nation for which he's allegedly responsible?

In summary: taxes don't make a lot of sense. Hmm. Not one of my more insightful posts, then.

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Family wants plastic pen tops ban

The parents of a County Durham schoolboy, who choked to death on a plastic pen top, are stepping up their campaign to get them banned.

Dear Nathalie and David Hodgson: sorry your son died. Everyone else in the country knows not to eat the pen lids. We also prefer to have a mechanism for keeping the ink inside the pen until we need it. Shut up now, kthx.

Personally I find more uses for the spike on the biro cap than I do for the biro. They're brilliant if you have an itch inside your ear. I realize that by saying that I've just prevented anyone from ever borrowing a pen off me again, so: added bonus.

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And the postal strikes are off. Personally I haven't noticed any change in the level of service whether they've been allegedly at work or not. A slight but insignificant drop in the number of we couldn't be arsed to deliver your stuff despite the fact that someone has already paid us to do so cards dropped through the letterbox, perhaps.

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Back to mawwiage. All of my friends seem to be getting married, and I don't understand why. What, exactly, does one gain by blowing ten grand on a massive party and exchanging tiny hoops of metal? What can you do now that you couldn't do before? Why do you need an excuse for a party?

All of the girls I used to fancy at school have got married as well, so Friends Reunited tells me—or, as I like to call it, Teenage Dreams Shattered Dot Com.

I mentioned this to salchichaastuta, who's younger than me, so I thought she'd understand. Turns out all of her friends are getting married too. Now I really do feel old.

Perhaps it's just me, trying to keep 'avin' it laaarge with the student lifestyle, and the late nights and the drinking, while all my peers are settling down and checking their mortgage repayments. Maybe they're right and I'm wrong. I already have the ponytail and the spreading waistline to match it. When my denial stretches to hanging around with nineteen-year-olds who call me the creepy guy who buys us drinks behind my back, I promise to do something about it.

I just don't see what you gain from voluntarily becoming boring.