Digested week: It’s 35 years since the ‘tax man’ conceded married women were independent beings

Let’s celebrate the feminist wins and thank goodness dire wolves are back, since DNA is simpler to understand than tariffs

Ideally, for diary purposes, it would be today, but we cannot allow simple chronological misfortune to allow yesterday to go unmarked. For 6 April 1990 was the day that married women became recognised by HMRC as beings – get this! – independent from their husbands, and started having their incomes taxed separately from their spouses’. Of course, many said the rot would set in and it’s true that just a few short years later rape in marriage became a crime, as people started to think that maybe wives’ bodies as well as their earnings were their own and things briefly started looking up all round.