The Tories are scrabbling a bit to justify their marriage tax allowance plans, they will always be scrabbling to justify themselves on tax during this campaign unless they start making a more optimistic case for tax revenue growth based on policies that kick start the economy rather than just putting taxes up.  They are playing a zero-sum game devised by Brown and Balls, so they have to go through a charade of finding some way of funding the plan.

They have fallen back on green taxes on motorists, yet again.  How many times have they reached for green taxes to fund a spending commitment?

1.8 million voters signed a petition against more green taxes on car users.  Drivers already pay huge amounts of tax, more taxes would be extremely unpopular – when you go green, you lose votes. Think again.

UPDATE : Osborne just denied they were going to put up car taxes on the Today programme. Good. Time for a coffee.