GUILT ENGINEERING...

So, Childrens Secretary, Ed Balls, has condemned the Tories` plan to reintroduce tax breaks for married couples as `social engineering.` Now, I`m not talking politics here - I have no allegience to any poltical party - but his assertion has come across to me at least as an attack on the `institution` of marriage. And that`s beginning to make me feel a bit guilty.

I was born just before the outbreak of World War II and my father was a prisoner of war for five years, having been captured at Dunkirk. This meant that I really didn`t see him until he finally came home, by which time I was getting on for six years old. But for all that time, during those difficult and dangerous years, I had the benefit of a `family` around me - uncles, aunts, grandparents, each of whom seemed to take it in turns to give a home to my mother and me and provide the support we needed to see us through. After the war was over, we finally became a `proper` family and I spent a happy boyhood in a loving, caring, safe environment.

Fast forward to 1961 and to a marriage which, despite the ups and downs that all marriages have, is still going after 49 years. We had three sons (we still have) and we now have four grandchildren. We are still a family, but I have not once ever felt `socially engineered.` I don`t care about tax breaks and I don`t apologise for subscribing to the notion of a close, strong family environment being best placed to provide children with a good start in life. And equally, I don`t apologise for seeing marriage as the most likely way of providing that environment.

So Mr. Balls has succeeded in making me feel a bit guilty about being married for all these years and for providing my own children with a stable background from which to launch their lives. Not only that, but he has also succeeded in making me angry that what might be a genuine attempt by the Tories to acknowledge the value of marriage as an institution has been condemned as nothing more than an election bribe. Balls by name, balls by nature, it seems.