Can we have a stronger line against marriage tax breaks, please?

I am very pleased to see that Nick Clegg has spoken out about how stupid the Tories' plans for marriage tax breaks are. He's done that consistently over the last 3 years, most recently on last week's Call Clegg LBC show. 

What I'm not so chuffed about is the line put about by a "senior Liberal Democrat source" in today's Times  (£) which says that the Government couldn't introduce a marriage tax break before we got to a tax threshold of £10,000.

Well, it's guaranteed we're going to get there anyway, as I showed way back in December. The legislation already exists to make sure it'll happen without George Osborne's help.

When our people are briefing the press on this issue, they need to reinforce Nick's points about how silly it is to put up taxes for single people and people who aren't married.

And, anyway, if the Government's got half a billion a year going begging, then, I would suggest, there are plenty better uses for it. Sorting out the bedroom tax fiasco for a start.....

But, seriously, Nick has made a good case against marriage tax breaks. Let's just stick with what he says without appearing to negotiate on the pages of the Times.

You don’t need the taxman to tell you whether you should get married or not,“And you certainly, I don’t think, need the taxman to tell you that you’re going to pay higher taxes because either you’re not in a relationship or you’re not married.

£8 minimum monthly charge for web access to Times

This morning News International uveiled its plans to charge for access to its Times and Sunday Times websites. I hope it's not the beginning of the end of free access to news media online. Under the News International plans, you would either pay £1 a day or £2 for a week's access.

I won't be paying. If I'm going to buy news, I'd prefer to actually have a paper to flick through because it's just a pleasurable experience. Even if I did pay, I wouldn't link to a Times source because I wouldn't expect my readers to pay. That wouldn't stop me commenting on their stories, or highlighting when they, or any other paper, is talking rubbish.

News International has clearly decided that because it doesn't really understand the internet, it's just going to try and restrict and control it. It's not surprising that they've done this and they've gone for the maximum money option to really tie people down.

I will maybe look at one or two pages on any given day from the Times website, whereas if I have the paper I'll read the whole thing. If you subscribe online, they, I presume, hope, that people will look at their pages alone to get their fix of news. There are only so many hours in the day so it's likely that subscribers will only pay to access one site which is to my mind a retrograde step.

I wonder if this will prove an opportunity for bloggers to become more prominent - I mean, you can read our sites for free and a lot of the stuff bloggers produce is as interesting and original a commentary on life as you'd find in a newspaper if not more so. Blogs also cover a much more diverse range of opinion and experience too.

One of the attractive features of the internet is its diversity. I wonder how internet users round the world will take to News International's attempts to control them.