Breaking News: £1000 married tax allowance

TruckerT

LydiaJ wrote: »

Adultery as a grounds for divorce and non-consummation as a grounds for annulment are being abolished, I think. At least, I'm sure I read that was what would have to happen if the bill went through, so I imagine that they have been, or are being, now that it has. People whose spouses do these things will be able to divorce by citing them as "unreasonable behaviour", which is an abbreviation for "behaviour that would make it unreasonable to expect the other spouse to continue living with the person behaving that way".

Likewise, the type of crime you describe is, I think, legally defined by the catch-all term of "indecent assault", although media reporting things don't always use legally accurate terms, do they? Otherwise we wouldn't have all these headlines about a bedroom tax.

If anyone with proper legal knowledge wants to correct me, please do. I am only basing what I say on what I've read and heard, and make no guarantees that it's accurate.

I'd forgotten about the word 'annulment'! But it reminds me that a 'marriage' is/was not regarded as being complete until sexual intercourse has taken place. The ceremony and/or the piece of paper are/were not sufficient (on their own) as evidence of a marriage having taken place.

The traditional family values which D.Cameron wishes to promote are based entirely on the possibility of sexual reproduction. If legal definitions have been changed in order to accommodate the biological impossibility of a same-sex 'marriage', then there is no longer any such thing as a traditional family value.

TruckerT

chewmylegoff

I'm not sure that David Cameron was advocating a return to medieval family values.

TruckerT

chewmylegoff wrote: »

I'm not sure that David Cameron was advocating a return to medieval family values.

I would say that he is trying to 'redefine' family values, in order to come up with some kind of fudge which might reconcile his gut feelings about the issue with the political pressure to embrace homosexuality.

TruckerT

Percy1983

Well it makes sense to reward those who are together and if have children are are bringing them up with 2 parents (scary but it seems children with mum and dad still together seem to be a minority now).

I will agree there is couple who are as good as married and are doing the same, the problem is if you just give it to couples everybody will be a couple all the sudden, where as getting married just to get this isn't going to happen unless you actually want to get married anyway.

Maybe we are doing it wrong, buying a house and then getting married before considering having children.

Loughton_Monkey

chewmylegoff wrote: »

I'm not sure that David Cameron was advocating a return to medieval family values.

... well only a bit.

Probably more UKIP's line, though....

Medieval England was not a comfortable place for most women. Medieval women invariably had a hard time in an era when many men lived harsh lives. A few women lived comfortable lives but Medieval society was completely dominated by men and women had to know 'their place' in such a society.

Medieval society would have been very traditional. Women had little or no role to play within the country at large. Within towns, society would have effectively dictated what jobs a woman could do and her role in a medieval village would have been to support her husband. As well as doing her daily work, whether in a town or village, a woman would have had many responsibilities with regards to her family.

Within a village, women would have done many of the tasks men did on the land. However, they were paid less for doing the same job. Documents from Medieval England relating to what the common person did are rare, but some do exist which examine what villages did. For reaping, a man could get 8 pence a day. For the same task, women would get 5 pence. For hay making, men would earn 6 pence a day while women got 4 pence. In a male dominated society, no woman would openly complain about this disparity.

About 90% of all women lived in rural areas and were therefore involved in some form of farm work.

In medieval towns, women would have found it difficult to advance into a trade as medieval guilds frequently barred women from joining them. Therefore, a skilled job as recognised by a guild was usually out of reach for any woman living in a town. Within towns, women were usually allowed to do work that involved some form of clothes making but little else.

For many women, a life as a servant for the rich was all they could hope for. Such work was demanding and poorly rewarded.


The law, set by men, also greatly limited the freedom of women. Women were:

• not allowed to marry without their parents' consent
• could own no business with special permission
• not allowed to divorce their husbands
• could not own property of any kind unless they were widows
• could not inherit land from their parents' if they had any surviving brothers

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/medieval_women.htm

lostinrates

TheSaint wrote: »

Unfortunately, this will apply to pensioners more than the younger. We need to revert to the pre 2000 system where the whole tax free allowance could be transferred. This would benefit families where one parent wishes to stay at home and raise the kids.

It is widely understood that one parent at home makes for better educated better integrated adults once the grow up. This is a policy that looks to safeguard a future generation of taxpayers.

I do think it needs tweaking to only apply where children are in the family though.

To all the manners shouting its not fair - we need to encourage stability, you had parents too once. I think £1000 transfer won't have any impact though.

I don't apply for any dla but may be entitled. In the future I may apply. I'd rather live within my households 'income' and have transferable allowances and it would be cheaper for other people too. Regardless of not having children, there are others like me, who might cost more in 'state money' but whose costs could be lessened in beaurocracy costs if this were to be expanded potentially. It might not stack up of course, but an interesting idea.

Thrugelmir

lostinrates wrote: »

who might cost more in 'state money' but whose costs could be lessened in beaurocracy costs if this were to be expanded potentially.

That's the rub. Under the previous administration the public sector grew by around 500,000. The cost of administering the wheels of the state grew enormously. The process of dismantling the bureaucacy has already commenced.

chucky

Thrugelmir wrote: »

That's the rub. Under the previous administration the public sector grew by around 500,000. The cost of administering the wheels of the state grew enormously. The process of dismantling the bureaucacy has already commenced.

When you say dismantle I assume you mean put more in administration in place because the administration of this allowance isn't going to done by itself.

chucky

chewmylegoff wrote: »

It doesn't really do that though does it. It provides a very small tax advantage to only to specific types of couple, where one party is a basic rate tax payer and the other has earnings less than the personal allowance. I wouldn't be surprised if a large proportion of the people it "helps" are pensioner couples who aren't particularly likely to get divorced anytime soon. Even then the tax break is so small that it is basically irrelevant. Seems to me that it is just a waste of money as it will have little impact on the people who receive it.

What a great post. Sums up the allowance perfectly.

Jennifer_Jane

TruckerT wrote: »

The clear implication of Mr Cameron's tax break deal is that he believes that 'traditional family values' are a good thing, and play an important part in maintaining a stable society.

But only a month or three ago, the same Mr Cameron went to inordinate lengths to extend the possibility of 'marriage' to same-sex couples.

Marriage is surely the ultimate traditional family value! It will take many 'generations' before a same-sex marriage will be able to claim to represent a traditional family value.

Unfortunately, the 'generations' concerned can only be 'generated' by traditional opposite-sex marriages.

I am for anything that promotes marriage: if this is heterosexuals or homosexuals, then that's fine.

I believe that marriage encourages stability (I am also for easy divorce, having lived through the 50's and 60's when it was a farce). I hope that David Cameron's extension of the same-sex civil partnership to marriage will encourage people of all types to make that commitment to each other.

In practice, there is no financial link at all. We are treated as single people in all our dealings with HMRC, DWP, and council housing benefit departments. We have no responsibility for each others debts (of which there are none!), and if either of us were to be turned down for any kind of contract because of the other's credit history, then there would be serious cause for complaint. It would be unreasonable for either of us claim any kind of financial 'rights 'as a result of being technically still married.

Incidentally, some of the traditional grounds for divorce used to be 'adultery' and 'non-consummation'. But these definitions make no sense at all in anything but a heterosexual context. How will same-sex divorces deal with the infidelity, or the impotence/frigidity, issue?

And how can a male MP be charged with 'raping' another male? My dictionary defines rape as forced sexual intercourse, and I can't see how anal penetration can be classed as sexual intercourse.

TruckerT

TruckerT - I think most people would disagree with your last paragraph. I can't understand why you wouldn't be able to call a man forcing his penis (or an implement) into someone else's body anything but rape. So what words would you use for this?