Society

From ‘Possibilities of Taxation’, The Spectator, 17 July 1915: Since the day when Bob Lowe attempted to impose a tax on matches the cost of production has been immensely reduced and the consumption has increased enormously. Matches are now so cheap that even a tax which doubled their price would not hurt the consumer. Good matches can he bought for threepence for a dozen small boxes, each containing about fifty; which works out to about two hundred matches for a penny. The result of this cheapness is that people constantly strike two or three matches when with moderate care one would suffice. A tax of at least one penny a

So now we all know what we’re dealing with. This SNP malice against the English and our democracy is no joke. After repeatedly promising that her party would not abuse its newfound power to interfere in matters relating only to England, Nicola Sturgeon has shown her true colours. She means war. She is up for a bit of constitutional wrecking. The SNP statement saying they will oppose the Hunting Act amendments just to remind ‘an arrogant UK government of just how slender their majority is’ is nothing less than chilling. Let’s be clear. This is not about hunting. The SNP can’t say it is and don’t attempt to say it is,

Earlier this year Mr S reported how Jeremy Clarkson got on stage at a glitzy charity auction and told the audience that the BBC were ‘f—ing b—–ds’. Happily, during the expletive-filled rant over his Top Gear suspension he also managed to raise £100,000 for the Roundhouse arts charity by offering attendees the chance to join him for his last lap around the Top Gear test track: ‘I’ll drive somebody around in whatever I can get hold of, I’m sacked so it’s probably a Nissan Maestro. But anyway it will be my last ever lap of the Top Gear test drive. There was an 18 year waiting list to be in the audience

My Saturday morning would not be complete without Amanda Platell’s delicious put-downs in the Daily Mail, usually aimed at people who richly deserve them. But today she identifies a target that doesn’t. Her piece, “White Dee, and how the Left lost the war on welfare,” argues that Ch4 made Benefits Street to “provide a powerful argument for the deserving poor” but ended up awakening a nation to the abuses of welfare. She’s wrong: Ch4 knew what it was doing. And only Ch4 would have had the guts to do it. Benefits St was indeed a landmark in the debate; she’s right about that. But wrong to suggest that it somehow backfired on Ch4. Its

In his Budget, the Chancellor claimed that ‘those currently on the minimum wage will see their pay rise by over a third this Parliament, a cash increase for a full time worker of over £5,000.’ But this wasn’t quite the whole story. What he didn’t say is that a full-time worker could see just 7pc of this pay rise in their pockets due to the withdrawal of benefits and tax credits. Osborne’s Treasury will accrue the remaining 93pc in reduced welfare payments and increased tax revenue. The simple truth is that the Living Wage helps government more than it does workers. In Britain, tax credits and other benefits conspire to make

I have a particular affection for Chinese involvement in mind sports. In 1981 I was invited as the first western grandmaster to compete in an international chess tournament in China, held in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing. For this, I was awarded the gold medal of the Chinese Olympic Association. Since then, I have organised three world memory championships in China, with a fourth set for Chengdu in November.   The Chinese have their own form of chess, Xiang Qi, which differs from western chess in various ways: a nine-by-nine board, play on intersections rather than squares, a piece which fires through other pieces and a king which is trapped in