Society

On Sunday, it’ll be 100 years to the day since RMS Titanic sank during its maiden voyage. To mark the occasion, here is a piece about the disaster that appeared in The Spectator at the time: The loss of the ‘Titanic’, 20 April 1912 The appalling loss of life in the ‘Titanic’ and the story of what is in some ways the most terrible wreck in the history of shipping have not only compelled the emotion of the whole world, but have turned both Great Britain and the United States to wide and solemn searchings of heart. The destruction of the largest ship afloat on her maiden voyage, of a

If you take George Osborne’s plan for tax transparency to its natural conclusion, where do you end up? The answer is Norway, where details of every taxpayer’s annual income, wealth and annual tax return are publicly available — and it’s not a new thing. Norwegian tax returns have been publicly available since the 1800s, the idea being that financial transparency is seen a vital part of social democracy. Figures were traditionally released every October in a Yellow Pages-style book, available for anyone to read at the local town hall or tax office. As the internet evolved, they decided to take things online. The government initially came up with the idea

This morning’s editorial in Israel’s left-wing Haaretz newspaper noted a double standard that was also a bad joke. Israel’s Interior Minister’s had declared, ‘If Gunter Grass wants to continue to distribute his false and distorted works, I suggest he do so from Iran, where he’ll find an appreciative audience.’ The minister could not detect the irony in his words, the paper said. It is precisely his decision not to let Grass enter Israel because of a poem he wrote that ‘is characteristic of dark regimes like those in Iran or North Korea’. You can read Grass’s poem here. I find it a false and vainglorious work because of its strong

Nothing is more permanent than a ‘temporary’ government tax, as George Osborne is reminding us. When Alistair Darling proposed a 45p rate in 2008, even the Institute of Fiscal Studies said it would lose money – but Darling said it would be ‘temporary’. Brown upped it to 50p, Osborne took it back down to 45p but the ‘temporary’ status has been revoked. The Sunday Times has today splashed on Osborne’s interview with Robert Winnett of The Daily Telegraph, where the Chancellor said ‘I’m very happy with the 45p rate of tax. We’ve got it to a good place where it’s competitive.’ Britain had the highest top rate of tax in the