Pippi and a taxing tale

QUESTION Was the author of the books about Pippi Longstocking responsible for changing Sweden’s tax laws?

SWEDISH writer Astrid Lindgren (19072002) was famous for her children’s books, bringing down the government and, eventually, reforming the tax laws.

In 1945, she wrote the first Pippi Longstocking story and broke the mould of children’s literature. Her heroine was red-haired, freckled, unconventional and morally and physically incredibly strong — she could lift her horse one-handed.

Pippi, like Lindgren, made fun of unreasonable adults. When moralists argued that Pippi’s behaviour made her an unsuitable role model, her creator revelled in this criticism.

Lindgren became a figure of national importance in Sweden, campaigning for environmental causes, children and animal rights — the Lex Lindgren animal protection law was named after her.

In 1976, she discovered that following a change in the tax system, as a selfemployed writer she was effectively being taxed at 100 per cent of her earnings.

Sweden had a marginal rate of 89.4 per cent, but Lindgren also had to pay employer’s fees. So in 1976, she published a scorching satirical fairytale, Pomperipossa In The World Of Money, serialised in the evening newspaper Expressen, about a children’s book author forced to pay exorbitant taxes.

The story ignited a debate over the tax laws, and the Social Democratic Party, who had been in power for 44 years, lost Swedish heroine: Pippi Longstocking the election to a centre-right coalition. Lindgren had helped change the political landscape, but Sweden’s complex tax system proved more difficult to reform. It wasn’t until the Eighties that the upper tax rate was reduced to 60 per cent.

Karl Lavender, London E11.

QUESTION Why is a nun’s wimple so called?

A WIMPLE is a garment of linen or silk folded to envelop the head, chin, sides of the face and neck, and dates to the Middle Ages, when married women covered their hair as a sign of modesty.

Wealthy women would, however, use their wimple to display their riches by attaching jewels to the cloth.

The modesty and plainness of the wimple made it a popular choice for nuns, leading to the phrase ‘to take the veil’, which means to join a religious order.

The word ‘wimple’ can be traced back to the Old English wimpel, which is also found in most Germanic languages, such as the Middle Dutch and Middle Germanic wimpel and Old High German

wimpal. Its origin is uncertain; one suggestion is that it is derived from the compound wind-poell, a garment used as protection from the wind, poell being a borrowing from the Latin pallium, a woollen cloak worn by the Pope.

The word wimpel first appeared in English in the tenth century in a list of clothes in the glossary by the prolific medieval author Aelfric of Eynsham.

Wimple has gained two related meanings: since the 17th century, it has been used to denote a flag, pennant or streamer; and from the 18th century, it refers to a meander, twist or turn.

Alison Scott, Tewkesbury, Wilts.

QUESTION Inhabitants of Leicester are called Rat-eyes, from the Roman name for the city, Ratae. What other inventive nicknames are there for Britain’s towns and cities?

FURTHER to earlier answers, when I was serving at RAF Colerne, Wiltshire, in the Seventies and during a liquid lunch at the Fox & Socks, an elderly local told me the tale of a vicar who had to leave for a few weeks and asked two trusted parishioners to look after his donkey.

Sadly, the beast died and, not wanting to be accused of selling it and drinking the profits, the two men left the animal where it fell.

Locals complained about the stench, so they decided to bury the donkey upside down with the hooves protruding from the ground as proof they had not sold it.

To ensure the donkey was recognisable to the vicar, the locals set up a rota to polish the hooves. From then, villagers of Colerne have been called Hoof Polishers!

Tony Oakes-Phillips, Melksham, Wilts.

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