Actually, the rich pay lots of tax. But on income, not their wealth - article by Patrick Collinson in The Guardian. "In London, ... the city has 4.2 million income tax payers, but just 87,000 individuals earning over £200,000 a year paid nearly half the £43.8bn income tax raised in the capital.... Those London bankers, lawyers and their ilk paid more income tax in 2016-17 than the entire sum raised from every income tax payer in Scotland and Wales combined. None of this is a plea on behalf of the rich.... While as a country we tax the incomes of PAYE employees relatively heavily, we leave the enormous wealth of the truly rich, much of it accumulated through property gains, largely untouched. The great triumph of the rich is that they have persuaded the average person to vote against taxes on wealth, such as inheritance tax, and taxes on property – such as a land valuation tax or even a properly progressive council tax."
The artist in the machine – cartoon by Tom Gauld in The Guardian, after an AI attempts to write as George Orwell and Jane Austen. "The novel-writing algorithm has not written a novel yet. But it has written a series of emails to its editor claiming to be 'nearly there' and promising to finish 'really soon'."
Philippa Perry: ‘Listen carefully, parents, and don’t despair’ - interview by Robyn Wilder in The Guardian. "I’ve come to talk to Perry about her new manual, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did).... Much of the book’s inspiration, she tells me, ... came from what she saw in her 20-plus-years of practising psychotherapy. 'Most of my clients did not have abusive parents. They had kind, nice, well-meaning parents who – because no one had told them it was important – couldn’t attune to their children. So their children felt lonely and the loneliness sort of grew into depression. And I thought: All this mirroring and validating of feelings that I’m doing in this relationship, now, to put this person back on track – wouldn’t it be great if the parents did it themselves? If parents could do this from the off, surely I could give up being a psychotherapist – and arrange flowers instead.' Would she like to arrange flowers? 'Oh God, no.'”
Four Words for Friend by Marek Kohn: why language matters more than ever - review by Steven Poole in The Guardian. "Is the British disdain for foreign languages partly responsible for the cliff-bound clown car that is Brexit? 'Among the many asymmetries that worked to Britain’s disadvantage in its negotiations to leave the European Union,' this study suggests, 'was the 27 other nations’ fluent grasp of the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, unmatched by any corresponding British familiarity with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung or Bild.'... To know another language is also to know more about how others think, since some weakened version of the famous Sapir-Whorf hypothesis – that different languages, because they carve up the world in different ways, cause speakers to perceive and think differently – is almost certainly true. Hence the book’s title: in Russian, one is obliged to specify one of four levels of closeness when referring to a friend. Other examples abound of subtle differences that influence thought: Turkish has 'evidential grammar', according to which one must mark whether the information one is conveying is first-hand or not. This might be useful if forcibly adopted on social media."
Road signs for a gothic novel - cartoon by Tom Gauld in The Guardian. "Ghostly figures crossing. Tunnel closed due to ancient curse. Beware of low-flying monstrosities. No stopping on moonlit nights. Fog-shrouded castle ahead. Give way to headless horsemen."
Mary Warnock obituary in The Guardian - "A consummate chair, she was skilled at giving people rein in discussion ... , knowing exactly how long to let the members debate an issue and when to insist that the time had come to reach a conclusion. She also knew when to postpone troublesome issues so that, as one of the demurrers on the fertilisation report conceded: 'When you came back you’d be surprised at how far the block had melted away.' The human fertilisation committee (1982-84) [which she chaired] was one on which feelings ran high, above all on the issues of embryo research and surrogate motherhood. Warnock believed that morality involves the engagement of feeling and that those dealing with public morality should respect ordinary people’s moral intuitions. She somehow managed more or less to satisfy the conflicting claims of science and religion."
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