Amazon Kindle review: the e-reader for the mass market

Amazon’s new Kindle is the first ebook reader that has a credible chance of cracking the mass market. Smaller, cheaper, faster and better connected than its predecessor, the new Kindle is to the old what the paperback is to the hardback, and on Friday it’s finally officially available in the UK. Prices start at an affordable £109.

It’s worth getting some criticisms of this excellent device out of the way first, however: the open ePub reading format is not supported, so you’re tied into the Amazon ecosystem (which is not too bad a place to be, by the way). The screen isn’t in colour, either, and design-wise this, like the iPad, is a device that needs a cover to protect it from the real world. Unfortunately that will set you back nearly £50 and effectively doubles the width of the device

Six million people in UK have overpaid or underpaid tax

Nearly six million people in the UK have paid the wrong amount of tax.

About £2bn was underpaid via the Pay as You Earn (PAYE) system in the past two years, with about 1.4 million people owing an average of £1,500 each.

But £1.8bn has also been overpaid and some 4.3 million people will get a rebate because they have paid too much.

Treasury minister David Gauke said that in the current financial climate, the government was not in a position to "just wave goodbye" to the money owed.

He said the government had inherited the problem and the PAYE system - which was created in the 1940s - was struggling to cope with modern working patterns.