Blogroll changes

I've made a few changes to the Blogroll to try and simplify the number of categories and also to reflect my current assessment of who's hot and who's not in the blogosphere.

Up into the list of Linford's Top Blogs come the revamped Conservative Home, king of the Anglosphere Little Man in a Toque, and leftie kindred spirits Chicken Yoghurt and The Nether World.

Also up there is Ben Brogan which I guess will surprise a few people. Brogan and I did not see eye to eye during my time in the Lobby, for reasons which seem spectacularly trivial now, but I always rated him highly as a journalist and in my view he is now the leading MSM blogger.

Out, for the time being, go Tom Watson, whose energies are currently being taken up by the Ealing Southall by-election, and Labour Watch, which has been taken offline while its author, Greg Stone, fights the corresponding contest in Sedgefield.

Some blogs which have been dormant for a couple of months or so disappear from the blogroll. Sadly, these include Forceful and Moderate which was once my favourite Lib Dem blog. It's main author Femme de Resistance is now pursuing other interests and I wish her luck.

Other changes include a new link to my Facebook profile and an invitation to join Tim Ireland's latest worthy crusade, Alastair Campbell Can Go And F**k Himself Fortnight. More about that one later.

Should the tax system encourage marriage?

Well, it certainly shouldn't discourage it, and if David Cameron thinks that's currently the case, then maybe he has a point. But I honestly don't think the tax system should encourage marriage either.

It's not that I don't believe that marriage provides the most stable environment for children to be brought up in. It quite clearly does. But is providing tax incentives to get married really likely to provide more stable, loving homes - or might it actually achieve just the opposite?

Okay, so I probably move in rather traditional social circles compared to some, but most people I know got married because they believed they had found their soulmate, not because they wanted to find a way of knocking £200 a year off the income tax bill.

If there really is anyone out there who got married for those sorts of reasons - and that I rather doubt - then they are probably three quarters of the way to the divorce court already.

Comrade Digby

Excellent post here, as ever, from Skipper. While sympathetic to the concept of governments-of-all-the-talents, I think the protesting Labour MPs may well have a point here.