… liberal-lefty unmarried couples who “have to” get married to avoid inheritance tax. Remarkably un-self-aware article in the Observer here.

Oh, and this irritated me too:

… the UK is alone in insisting that this punitive tax can only be avoided if two partners marry - unless, as it happens, they happen to be of the same sex, in which case they are able to demand a civil partnership ceremony that declares them as good as man and wife and thus immune to the tax.
It’s heterosexuals who are forced to surrender their freedom in order to save their children the necessity of paying the tax at their death.
In France, and in a number of US states, the equivalent of a civil partnership is granted to heterosexuals. So the government’s attitude is reminiscent, in its grim Victorian dictates, of the worst discrimination against what used to be known as living in sin.

Er, nope. Civil partnership = marriage, in every meaningful sense. Would have been a lot simpler if they’d just called it that, to be honest, but they didn’t. So excuse me for not wanting straight couples to be able to get civil partnerships until gays can get married, and excuse me for thinking that neither cause is particularly urgent at the moment, no matter what those who write for the Observer think. I think I last pointed this one out a few years ago.

Talking of civil partnerships, there was a lovely moment today. It won’t surprise you to know that I’ve been out tapping on lots of doors ahead of the local elections in Oxford. Earlier I spoke to a woman who had a problem which needed sorting out (I’m being deliberately vague) so I popped into her lounge to take down the details, out of the cold. Her wall was covered in photos of her family - there must have been forty of them, and when I commented on them, she proudly said that she was very careful to make sure that she had all her sons and daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren were up there, though the newest great-grandson won’t arrive until later this summer so he’s not up yet. She pointed out her own children, including one photo of two women, with a cutting from the paper stuck into the frame. “That’s my daughter and her girlfriend on their wedding day - she’s gay, so they had one of those civil unions. What a lovely day - here’s the ad me and her Dad put in the Oxford Mail for them.” And we returned to talking about parking, and all the other things people might talk to a party political canvasser about. Marvellous.

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