The Spectator

Friday

The Spectator

Don’t dismiss cryptocurrencies as the drug dealer’s friend

From our UK edition

This is the leading article in this week's Spectator magazine. Since its inception, cryptocurrency has been regarded as technically fascinating but fundamentally unreliable. Those who invested £10 in Bitcoin eight years ago would have £1.6 million today — a fluctuation which, while mind-boggling, further undermines the notion that digitally created currency is a stable store of value. At first, it was dismissed as a toy for geeks. Then it was seen as a threat, used by criminals to buy drugs and guns. Some, like Lloyds Bank, have refused to carry out any cryptocurrency transactions on behalf of customers. But its popularity has kept growing and this week, it made a significant leap towards the mainstream.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 10 May 2018

From our UK edition

Where capitalism fails Sir: James Delingpole is right, of course, to extol the virtues of capitalism (‘We don’t deserve capitalism’, 5 May) but wrong to imagine that if only we stuck to strict capitalist principles we could cure problems like the allegedly system-clogging bureaucracy in the NHS. The United States probably has the most ‘capitalistic’ health service in the world; but it has seen an even greater rise in numbers of bureaucrats than the NHS, contributing to its ranking as the world’s most expensive healthcare system. Or take US universities: they too operate on a very capitalistic model which has seen student fees rise steeply over the past three decades and has burdened the campuses with huge bureaucracies.

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 10 May 2018

From our UK edition

Home Although the world was led to believe that, thanks to the vote of Sajid Javid, the new Home Secretary, the idea of a ‘customs partnership’ with the EU had been killed by six to five in the cabinet Brexit sub-committee, the corpse was revivified by Greg Clark, the Business Secretary, on the Andrew Marr Show, where he suggested that 3,500 Toyota jobs were at risk. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the pro-Brexit European Research Group, said: ‘The customs partnership is in a sense misnamed because it means single market as well as customs union and therefore we would not in effect be leaving the European Union.

The Spectator

Who’s afraid of cryptocurrency?

From our UK edition

Since its inception, cryptocurrency has been regarded as technically fascinating but fundamentally unreliable. Those who invested £10 in Bitcoin eight years ago would have £1.6 million today — a fluctuation which, while mind-boggling, further undermines the notion that digitally created currency is a stable store of value. At first, it was dismissed as a toy for geeks. Then it was seen as a threat, used by criminals to buy drugs and guns. Some, like Lloyds Bank, have refused to carry out any cryptocurrency transactions on behalf of customers. But its popularity has kept growing and this week, it made a significant leap towards the mainstream.

The Spectator

to 2355: A Poet Skylarking

From our UK edition

13 1A 23 22 is from SHELLEY’S ‘Ode to a Skylark’. Other unclued lights had ‘a poet hidden in the light’: OVID in 6A; LARKIN in 16; ELIOT in 17; TATE in 42; AUDEN in 43. Two poets’ names in the puzzle’s real title, ‘A Poet Skylarking’, needed highlighting.

The Spectator

All peril on the Western Front

From our UK edition

From ‘The situation on the Western Front in light of the Paris speech’, 11 May 1918: Instead of the Western Front proving impenetrable, the enemy has penetrated it, and brought us nearer a position of peril than we have been in since the retreat from Mons. There has been ‘real unity in the war direction of the Allied countries,’ but even if it may be an advantage per se, which we are not going to deny, it has proved a very poor substitute for Brigades and Divisions… Our line has been broken in, not from any want of so-called good Staff work, or from any failure on the part of our men, or from bad generalship, but simply and solely because if in modern war 14 Divisions are opposed by 50, the 14 must sooner or later succumb.

Friday

The Spectator

Live local elections 2018: Labour falls short in London

From our UK edition

The key results from the 2018 local elections: The Tories win Barnet and hold Westminster and Wandsworth, despite predictions Labour could seize the two Tory strongholds Labour take control of Plymouth from the Tories The Lib Dems win Richmond and Kingston-upon-Thames, on a good night for Vince Cable Ukip's falling vote share hands the Tories control in Basildon and Peterborough.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 3 May 2018

From our UK edition

Campaign for real cricket Sir: Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s splendid article ‘Cricket, unlovely cricket’ (28 April) remonstrated against the threat to Test matches and the County Championship posed by the juggernaut of what he termed ‘Twenty20Trash’. He ended with the words ‘after the very successful Campaign for Real Ale, what about a Campaign for Real Cricket?’ As one of the four traditional beer lovers who founded Camra and as an MCC member, I wholeheartedly agree. We must rescue our beloved sport from the hands of the money-obsessed administrators who are foisting an apology for beach cricket on true lovers of traditional forms of a noble game.

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 3 May 2018

From our UK edition

Home The prospect of Brexit in name only hovered on the horizon as the government contemplated an association agreement with the EU, which Jacob Rees-Mogg dismissed as ‘second-tier EU membership’. The cabinet’s Brexit sub-committee considered two ways of coping with the Irish problem: either a customs partnership with the EU, in which Britain would collect tariffs at the Irish border on behalf of the EU, or a combination of technology and trusted trader schemes to avoid a hard border. Peers voted 335 to 244 for an amendment, introduced by the Conservative Viscount Hailsham, to the EU Withdrawal Bill which would enable MPs to send ministers back to renegotiate with Brussels if parliament rejected the Brexit deal presented to it.

The Spectator

Barometer | 3 May 2018

From our UK edition

Is this thing on? Sainsbury’s Chief Executive Mike Coupe was recorded singing ‘We’re in the Money’ as he prepared to go on ITV news about his company’s proposed merger with Asda. Other embarrassing microphone moments: — Ronald Reagan was preparing for his weekly broadcast on National Public Radio in 1984 when he joked to technicians: ‘My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.’ The recording was later leaked.

The Spectator

Momentum builds

From our UK edition

The local elections have thrown up a paradox. In theory, Britain has never had more devolution: we have assemblies in Edinburgh and Cardiff, city mayors in England, elected police chiefs and the supposed Northern Powerhouse. So, the run-up to the vote ought to have been dominated by local issues, with a new breed of local political heroes or villains in the media spotlight. Instead, apart from a few door-knocks and the odd leaflet, one could be forgiven for not even realising local elections were being held. This may be in part because of the sad decline of the local press and the dearth of reporters to cover the elections. But it is also because of the equally sad decline in the number of political volunteers willing to campaign, especially for the Tories.

The Spectator

to 2354: Pioneering

From our UK edition

Parts indicated in clues in italics must each BREAK NEW GROUND (1A 4A), creating entries at 6, 13, 26, 39 and 40; definitions of these entries are 2, 15A, 33, 27 and 20.

The Spectator

The Spectator Podcast: Mayday!

From our UK edition

In this week’s podcast, we discuss Theresa May’s impossible situation - how can she get herself out of the bind created by the Brexiteers and the Remainers? We also discuss the hostile environment policy, and ask, will Ireland appeal its Eighth Amendment? First, Theresa May finds herself in a real dilemma. Her cabinet colleagues, the EU and her advisors are all pulling her in different directions over the question of the customs union. While Remainers argue that a ‘customs partnership’ is the only way to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland, Brexiteers believe ‘max fac’ (a maximum facilitation agreement, which includes a technology based border in Ireland) is the only way forward.

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 26 April 2018

From our UK edition

Kill or cure An anti-war protester on a march against the Syrian missile attacks claimed that President Assad couldn’t be a bad man because ‘he’s a doctor, for heaven’s sake’. Some other qualified medics who provide counter-evidence for this theory: — Dr Harold Shipman GP in Hyde, Manchester, convicted of 15 murders in 2000, though it is thought that he may have killed more than 250 patients. — Dr Crippen US-trained homeopath and ear and eye specialist who dispensed medicines, though his qualifications were not recognised in Britain. He was hanged in 1910 for murdering his wife. — Josef Mengele Gained a PhD in anthropology, researched genetics, then gained a doctorate in medicine before taking a job as physician at Auschwitz.

The Spectator

Letters | 26 April 2018

From our UK edition

Resetting Brexit Sir: I agree with Fraser Nelson’s article ‘Brexit blunders’ (21 April). I am a Leaver, but immigration did not figure in my decision in the referendum. On the contrary, I recall many years ago hearing that some 240 languages were spoken in London and the UK, and for some reason it made me immensely proud. If Theresa May does not understand that immigration is not the issue, then we have the wrong leader. My suspicions in this regard are further strengthened by her stated but continually thwarted ambitions to have a special relationship with the EU bloc. Her attempts are relentlessly rebuffed and, because of the EU’s fear of ‘letting us off lightly’, I begin to fear that they always will be.

The Spectator

Rocket men

From our UK edition

After spending most of his presidency posing a nuclear-armed hothead, Kim Jong-un is now presenting himself as a man of peace. ‘I came here to put an end to the history of confrontation,’ he said on his historic visit to South Korea. Which might be so. But his real agenda may be to gain acceptance for North Korea's status as a nuclear power: holding an olive branch in one hand, and a seven-kilotonne bomb in the other. The visit to the south comes ahead of his trips to meet Donald Trump, who has referred to Kim Jong-un as a ‘little rocket man’ and tweeted a photo boasting that his own nuclear button was larger and more effective than that of the North Korean leader.

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 26 April 2018

From our UK edition

Home No. 10 insisted: ‘We will not be staying in the customs union or joining a customs union.’ The undertaking came after a defeat for the government on the matter in the House of Lords and before a vote in the House of Commons. The government proposed two alternatives: one being a ‘customs partnership’ in which the UK would collect tariffs on the EU’s behalf on goods coming from other countries, and the other being a ‘highly streamlined customs arrangement’.