Tax
Ed Miliband’s 100 days – and the first Ed Balls Budget
There will be tax rises to suit every taste. But the people he’s expecting to pay will probably just leave
James McAvoy is wrong – the arts are better off without subsidy
The season of cringe-making acceptance speeches at arts awards ceremonies is nearly over, thank heavens. But it hasn’t passed without…
Where Alcibiades once walked, amateur tax spies are trying to entrap poor pistachio-sellers
Athens I am walking on a wide pedestrian road beneath the Acropolis within 200 meters of the remaining Themistoclean wall…
How Labour’s 50p tax trick has ended up helping George Osborne
Last week’s public borrowing and tax-receipt figures, headlined ‘Chancellor hails biggest monthly surplus in seven years’, received considerably less attention…
Lord Green must answer for HSBC’s sins – but maybe it was always too big to manage
Stephen Green — the former trade minister Lord Green of Hurstpier-point, who became this week’s political punchbag— was always a…
Why everywhere should be more like Essex
Apart from the Wye Valley, where I grew up, there are only two places in Britain I’d consider living: Kent…
Why my friends love the idea of a nasty, stupid mansion tax
I see all the flaws with a mansion tax, I really do. And yet some little piece of me, some…
Why the real winner from George Osborne’s ‘Google tax’ could be Nigel Farage
George Osborne’s promise to crack down on multinational companies’ avoidance of UK taxes by the use of impenetrable devices such…
Who cleans skyscrapers?
Tough at the top The clocks on Big Ben were cleaned by abseiling window-cleaners. Some other big cleaning/painting jobs: —…
How France’s left-wing government learned to love austerity
How France learned to love cuts
Ancient Rome’s fraudulent foreign students
Foreign students getting on to courses under false pretences, overstaying their welcome and so on are nothing new. Ask the Romans.…
What medieval farmers knew – and the Environment Agency doesn't
Our neighbour Philip Merricks is a farmer on Romney Marsh, 90 per cent of whose land is below sea level.…
Alex Salmond's economic policies would drive an independent Scotland into the ground
Within the white paper on economic policy in an independent Scotland that was published by Alex Salmond’s government this week…
My mansion tax solution: hit rich foreigners. But no one else
I am surprised no more attention has been given to Martin Vander Weyer’s suggestion in The Spectator two weeks ago…
What Vodafone should do with its huge windfall: invest it in the next Vodafone
Vodafone, which has just collected an £84 billion windfall from the sale of its 45 per cent stake in Verizon…
Never seen the need for a class system? Take a long-haul flight
Usually it is annoying when you have to board an aeroplane via a shuttle bus rather than an airbridge. The…
The free market didn’t kill Detroit: blame bad managers and worse unions
One of the best articles I ever commissioned as an editor was an account by James Doran of a road…
I’ll tell you what really devalues marriage: patronising, preachy little tax breaks
The Conservative party is trying to redefine marriage. I can’t believe they think they’re going to get away with this.…
