Society

Thursday

6 Apr 2017

What does the new tax year mean for your pocket?

Today marks the start of the new 2017/18 tax year, and this month a long list of changes come into effect that could impact on your household finances. There’s good news for the low paid thanks to an increase in the National Living Wage, and middle earners also stand to benefit from a rise in the threshold at which they have to start paying higher-rate income tax. Pensioners will see an increase in how much the government gives them to live off and many individuals coming into an inheritance will see the taxman’s slice of their gains narrow. But the changes aren’t good news for everyone – especially most people

Ross Clark

VAT on fees? Our greedy private schools have it coming

The standard conservative response to Jeremy Corbyn’s proposal to impose VAT on private schools would be to attack it as as a policy motivated by class envy and dreamed up to please his party’s levellers — except that Michael Gove, too, questioned private schools’ charitable status a few weeks ago. Private schools might moan and groan, yet they have invited an attack on their charitable status by shamelessly pitching their product at the children of very wealthy parents – an increasing number of them from abroad. By jacking up their fees relentlessly they have priced many middle-class parents out of the market Where 40 years’ ago private schooling was an

Steerpike

Naz Shah makes a profit on the NHS

With health bosses warning last month that the NHS faces a ‘mission impossible’ to meet the standards required by the government with the current levels of funding, there are financial worries over its future. So, how is the NHS spending its limited funds? Well, the latest register of interests shows that Naz Shah has been brought in to train staff on ‘leadership’ skills. The Labour MP — who was previously suspended from the party after she said the ‘the Jews are rallying’ over an online poll on the Gaza war — took home £1,200 from the NHS for for delivering two leadership training sessions at the NHS Leadership Academy: Mr S hopes that Shah’s pearls of

Bruce Anderson

A toast to unsung heroes

We were talking about war, the desert and God. In the early Seventies, one of our number, Christopher James, had been involved in serious fighting in the struggles to stop Yemeni-backed communist insurgents from destabilising Oman. Christopher was happy to pay tribute to everyone else, but evasive about his own service in the SAS. That savage little war of peace witnessed much unsung gallantry, not least by one of the most under-decorated soldiers in military history: Sgt Talaiasi Labalaba, also SAS. In 1972, he won a battle by firing a 25 pounder as if it had been a rifle (it normally needs a crew of three or four). Hit repeatedly,

Rory Sutherland

All hail the new taxi-card revolution

From October last year, it was compulsory for all London black cabs to accept payment by card. London cabbies aren’t always sunnily disposed towards Transport for London, but those I have spoken to since the move seem to welcome the ruling, and acknowledge that business has picked up since. There are, of course, plenty of reasons why taxi drivers preferred cash. It’s quick and does not require equipment or entail the surcharges credit card payments do; it might also be a little more, ahem, tax-efficient. Never-theless, the case for cabs accepting card payments was compelling. Uber, for fair reasons and foul, was eating into their business. From New York, there

James Forsyth

Trump’s plan for Pyongyang

On several foreign policy issues, Donald Trump has toned down the campaign rhetoric now that he is in office. His administration still has concerns about the Iran nuclear deal, but it is backing away from the idea of simply ripping it up or unilaterally rewriting it. On the European Union, he is calming down too; his White House no longer says Brexit marks the beginning of the end of the European project. But on North Korea his positioning is hardening. Hence his warning that ‘if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will’. Not only does Trump want this problem fixed, but his National Security Council is already

Aidan Hartley

Wild life | 6 April 2017

Laikipia, Kenya For weeks the farm has been in the eye of a storm, with violence swirling all around us in clouds of dust kicked up by multitudes of cattle. Last week to the west, tribal invaders burned down Kuki Gallmann’s tourist lodge overlooking the Mukutan Gorge. On Sosian ranch to the south our neighbours are bravely pushing on a month after the invaders murdered Tristan and burned down several homes. To the east on Suyian ranch, Anne’s safari lodge — the loveliest camp I ever saw in Laikipia — also lies in ashes. To the north invaders are still poaching elephant, as they are everywhere around us, spraying

Mark Mason

My towering problem

Why don’t tall people get the same sympathy as short people? Everyone feels sorry for minnows, cutting them slack when they talk loudly in meetings or get themselves elected Speaker of the House of Commons. But tall people are seen as life’s victors; the ones you want to be, the ones who get everything their own way. It just isn’t the case. I’m not actually that tall — 6ft 1in — but even I encounter problems. Cashpoints are too low, hotel beds are too short, train seats don’t have enough leg room. In the days of phone boxes, I spent every call hunched over (not enough lead). I regularly have

Rod Liddle

You can take the liberal media bubble out of London…

An American woman started a website called ‘People I Want to Punch in the Throat’, in which she listed the people she wanted to punch in the throat. It was enormously successful and spawned a book called People I Want to Punch in the Throat, which sold very well. This is the heartening thing about the internet; the level of visceral loathing harboured by all of us for other people, which otherwise would remain hidden. I have thought about getting in on the action by starting a website called ‘People I Want to Stab to Death with a Bradawl’, or perhaps ‘People I Want to Dissolve in a Vat of

Hugo Rifkind

Let’s rein in Brexiteer triumphalism before we all go mad

According to archaeologists and all the papers last week, the 11th-century villagers of Wharram Percy, North Yorkshire, used to mutilate their dead, chopping off their heads and breaking their legs to minimise the danger of zombie resurrection. ‘Imagine being afraid,’ I chortled while reading this, ‘that the undead might put you in mortal danger!’ Whereupon I flicked forward a couple of pages and came across Michael Howard’s plan to defend Gibraltar by sending a gunboat. Personally, I’m against the idea of war with Spain. Although I say that cautiously, because we Remoaners must not hold back the will of the people. Indeed, such is the way of things these days,

Lucy Vickery

Answering back | 6 April 2017

In Competition No. 2991 you were invited to submit ‘The Rime of the Wedding Guest’. There were, naturally, lots of clever nods in the entry to Coleridge’s ballad of sin and atonement, but some were more charitable than others to the gimlet-eyed seadog with verbal diarrhoea. In a hotly contested week, Brian Allgar, Chris O’Carroll, Graham King, Max Gutmann and Mike Morrison came close to glory but were pipped by the winners below, who take £25 each. Basil Ransome–Davies nabs £30. My mates and me were larging it, As pissed as several newts. Three wedding guests, we was all dressed In Jasper Conran suits. This geezer came

Suzi Feay

Perilous times

Helen Dunmore’s new novel concerns lives, consequential in their day, that pass away into utter oblivion. Appropriately, the ‘solitary and no doubt rather grim middle-aged man’ of the opening pages is unnamed and never appears again, once he discovers a forgotten grave near the pathway of the title. Bearing the image of a quill, the headstone commemorates a radical 18th-century writer, Julia Fawkes, who died in Bristol in 1793. The stone was ‘Raised… in the Presence of her Many Admirers’. But who was this Julia, wife of an equally obscure pamphleteer, and what is left of the works that, the stone optimistically proclaims, ‘Remain Our Inheritance’? The historically minded 21st-century

Wednesday

5 Apr 2017

Bjorn Lomborg

The flawed thinking at the heart of the renewable energy swindle

A new report revealing that using wood pellets to generate electricity can actually speed up global warming should be the final nail in the coffin for the flawed policy of biomass subsidies. Policies designed to incentivise green energy use are not only having a dubious effect on climate change, they are destroying biodiversity and even killing many thousands of people. Wood (or to use the technical term covering wood, wood pellets and other burning matter like animal dung, biomass) is by far the most significant renewable energy source. In both the US and the EU, biomass is the single largest source of renewable energy. Owing to poverty, around three billion people globally cook and heat their

Steerpike

New Today editor’s great Brexit adventure

Although Nick Robinson claims the BBC no longer has a duty to ‘broadly balance’ the views of Remain and Leave in its Brexit reports, this hasn’t stopped the Today programme facing flak for its seemingly gloomy broadcasts. A recent News Watch study found that — in the six month period after the referendum vote — of the 366 guest speakers who appeared in the Business News segment, only 60 (16.3pc) expressed opinions which were pro-Brexit or saw the post-referendum economic outlook as positive. But can we expect a more sunny outlook in the coming months? Mr S only asks after reading Sarah Sands — the incoming Today editor — in the

Steerpike

BBC mistakenly announces death of veteran broadcaster

Oh dear. Someone at the BBC is having a very bad day indeed. Earlier today the corporation announced that Brian Matthew — the veteran BBC presenter and former host of Sounds of the 60s — has died aged 88. The news was soon followed up by several newspapers, with obituaries published and a message of condolence from The Who. However, there’s an issue. It turns out that Matthew isn’t actually dead. Instead he remains critically ill. The Beeb have since issued a correction explaining that he is alive. Mr S sends his best to Matthew as he fights his illness.

Helen Nugent

Frying high? Younger customers shun the great British chippy

Chippy tea. Just writing those words makes me yearn for fish and chips, lathered in vinegar and dosed with salt. Perhaps some mushy peas on the side and a bottle of ketchup to hand. While a world without fish suppers would be a cold, cold place (for me, at least), new research shows that people are turning their backs on this most traditional of British meals. According to The NPD Group, younger customers are shunning the local chippy, putting the future of fish and chip shops at risk. Can this really be true? Who doesn’t like a chip butty? And what’s wrong with pea wet and scraps? But the study

Rachel Springall

Everything you need to know about your ISA options for the new tax year

It’s that time of year again when savers are repeatedly asked the same old questions: do you have an ISA, did you invest your 2016/17 ISA allowance, have you decided where to put the new allowance? In previous years the answers were pretty straightforward, but things aren’t so simple these days. It’s rather like a countdown conundrum where all the options are there but you have limited time to digest and decide which one is the most appropriate. So how best to solve this puzzle? Let’s look at the facts and examine some of the best deals on offer. How much can I invest and what options are there? The 2017/18 tax year

Steerpike

Guardian metropolitan elite prepare for a move up North

Hold the front page. The Guardian may have just had its best idea in decades. According to the Times, brains at the Grauniad are pondering moving the paper’s offices back to Manchester in an attempt to save money. Senior executives at Guardian Media Group are said to have held ‘top secret’ talks about moving the newspaper’s headquarters from north London back to its birthplace in Manchester — where the main office was until 1964. Given that the paper is on track to burn through another £90m in cash this year, it makes sense to cut costs where it can. But that’s not the reason Mr S is so behind the move. Since the

Douglas Murray

In defence of Ken Livingstone

Listen to Douglas Murray and James Forsyth debating Ken Livingstone’s non-expulsion: We never loved each other, Ken Livingstone and I. We first clashed in public more than a decade ago, and have enjoyed castigating each other ever since. But, now that he has been suspended from the Labour party for a second year in a row, I come not to bury him but to praise him. For there is something valorous, even glorious, about his downfall. It was the MP for Bradford West who triggered his demise. In April last year Naz Shah was exposed for sharing anti-Semitic content on social media. Among these posts was a graphic advising the

Steerpike

Ken Livingstone’s unity gaffe: ‘we need to reduce our efforts for a Labour government’

To say Labour’s decision not to expel Ken Livingstone from the party — but instead suspend him for a year — over his comments on Hitler and Zionism has gone down like a cup of cold sick with the PLP would be an understatement. Following the move, Luciana Berger branded it ‘a new low’ for her party while Michael Dugher asked: ‘is the party really saying it knows more about anti-Semitism than the Chief Rabbi?’ So, with that in mind, Livingstone was clearly hoping to calm and unite his comrades when he took to social media to say the party must redouble its efforts for a Labour Government. My statement on the extension