Date published: 2007/07/08
The BBC says:
Tory leader David Cameron has said mending Britain's "broken society" is the biggest challenge facing the UK.
Citing high crime rates, drug abuse and teenage pregnancies, he said there was something "deeply wrong" and "long-term generational change" was needed.
Mr Cameron was speaking to the BBC's Sunday AM show ahead of a report by the party's Social Justice Policy Group.
A rise in the tax on alcohol to help tackle binge drinking is among the proposals it will contain.
In a wide-ranging interview, Mr Cameron called for changes to the tax and benefits system to encourage couples to stay together and marry.
"We need a big cultural change in favour of fatherhood, in favour of parenting, in favour of marriage," he added.
...
Its idea on higher alcohol taxes would add about 7p to the cost of a pint, and raise an extra £400m a year to help fund treatment of alcohol abuse.
You have to wonder how many people really think that Britain is a "broken society", or is it just something that a certain section of the chattering classes like to repeat, especially the Tories, who obviously have nothing better to complain about. And unfortunately the Tory "solutions" to these "problems" are rather pathetic.
On the proposal for an increase in the tax on alcohol, not only is this penalising the vast majority of drinkers who are socially responsible, it will also have little effect on the tiny minority of drinkers who are socially irresponsible, because 7p on the cost of a pint of beer is too little to be significant.
And on the proposal for a subsidy of marriage, this is so misguided that it begs belief that any major party would even consider proposing it. Why should married people be given a tax break? Why should millions of ordinary workers of Britain hand over more taxes so that David Cameron and lots of other rich people should get to pay less? Why is David Cameron risking alienating millions of voters, just to give a bribe to another set of millions of voters? The people who will lose out will surely be more aggrieved than the people who will gain.
It's hard to take the Tories seriously. Their policies are all over the place and none of them seem to have been thought through or make much sense.
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