Cameron’s Christian Country
David Cameron has been talking recently about how Britain is a Christian country and that we get a lot of our morals from the Bible. I don’t want to get into this too much other than to say that I disagree about the moral aspect. I subscribe to the argument that we have our morals and those who are religious imprint this onto their reading of whatever religious text they happen to believe is right. In terms of it being a Christian country I would say that I agree that it’s certainly a culturally Christian country but looking at the British Attitudes Survey 2010 actually puts those of no religion in a majority of 51%.
The other thing is his tax breaks for married couples. I can ignore a bit of rhetoric about Christianity and he’s perfectly entitled to the view but when it comes to adding incentives to the tax system I find I can’t agree at all. This is an area where I believe state intervention is both wrong and ineffective. When the state starts making judgement on what people do in their private lives it crosses a line. If Mr. Cameron wants to promote marriage through the tax system he is, firstly, alienating those who are together in a stable relationship but don’t want to get married for whatever reason and, secondly, he is putting single parent families at a disadvantage in the tax system.
I understand that he wants to enshrine marriage as something that’s a good thing but his assumption seems to be that if you are in a single parent family you are doing something wrong, but what of all the single parent families where the second parent has died or is otherwise no longer around? It must be some kick in the teeth to have your partner die and then to be told by the state that you’re going to be financially worse off in the tax system. Nick Clegg was right to speak up against it.
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