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Spear's Salon

Strong Opinion from our Stable of Star Turns

Josh Spero

Josh Spero is the editor of Spear’s. Before Spear’s, he was at The Independent and has written for publications including The Guardian, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Economist and the National Theatre. He is a regular guest on CNBC and has appeared on the BBC World Service and radio and TV stations around the world to talk about everything from finance to art. He is a co-founder of theartsdesk.com, Britain’s first critic-run arts review website. Twitter: @joshspero.

Philanthropists recognised in Queen's Birthday Honours

The point of honours for philanthropists is not glory-seeking but example-setting: the more people we see giving, the more likely we are to give

Ashoka Changemakers dinner brought together the best social enterpreneurs

They are capable of making you optimistic about even the toughest problem as they drive their innovative companies towards world-changing results

Rupert Murdoch divorces Wendi Deng - but what about the prenup?

Murdoch is worth a mere $12 billion - so how much of that does Deng stand to get?

How can G8 protestors be anti-capitalism? It's all there is

I don't understand anti-capitalists. It's like being anti-sun or anti-blood: there is nothing else

Stratford meets SW3 at the Chelsea Flower Show

West and East London don't mix, like chi-chi olive oil and Red Stripe drunk out of the can

After defeat over the Marquis of Lansdowne, the director of the Geffrye Museum must now resign

There has been victory in saving the pub, but defeat because the Geffrye is back to square one

Adam Dant enters the battle to save the Marquis of Lansdowne from the Geffrye Museum

The pomposity, the arrogance of museum director David Dewing is astonishing. First, there's the mere phrase, 'the Labouring Classes', as de-haut-en-bas as you can imagine

Meet the odd couple camping out to be first at Margaret Thatcher's funeral

It’s a romantic, tragic story: a man and a woman united by marriage and death. Not their own. Or even their families’. Margaret Kittle and John Loughrey, the first two people to wait outside St Paul’s Cathedral for Baroness Thatcher’s funeral tomorrow, meet as spectators at each British state occasion, Margaret coming from Canada, John from Wandsworth

Forger of Giacometti sculptures shows, in art world, money is king

Estimating that he made 1,300 fake sculptures, Robert Driessen tells of surreptitious meetings in lay-bys where envelopes stuffed with cash would be handed over in return for the forgeries

Keith McNally of Balthazar blasts London's food critics

"My pet hate is the London food and restaurant community which, with two notable exceptions, is a petty, self-regarding, back-stabbing bunch of narcissists who should be put through a meat grinder and dumped into the Indian Ocean."'

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Our specialists solve your HNW problems (gratis!)

In this new anti-tax-avoidance era, when so many tax reliefs have been withdrawn, I've heard that investing in a Business Property Renovation Allowance scheme is one of the few remaining good opportunities for maxing your tax position. Is it true that you can get up to 100 per cent tax relief on the amount invested? And what exactly are these schemes? How do they work? What are the upsides? Downsides?

In this climate, it is a relief to see one potentially attractive tax allowance come through unscathed from recent criticism