The cabinet’s trip to Chequers next month will be a tense affair. Things always are when Brexit is the only item on the agenda. This week’s cabinet meeting, convened to discuss the new NHS funding settlement, offered a preview of some of the arguments to come. Greg Clark, the Business Secretary, and David Gauke, a
‘So, Professor Shin, tell us what you really think about cryptocurrencies.’ I’m guessing that’s the brief the Bank for International Settlements (the Basel-based central bank of central banks) gave economist Hyun-Song Shin to write a chapter for its annual report, published this week. His response delivers a serious kicking to the whole befuddled concept of
Next month the National Health Service turns 70. The institution is greatly loved, and not for nothing. The fear of ill-health runs deep in most of us and is ineradicable; but the fear of not being able to afford treatment, which must haunt most of the world’s population, has been abolished in Britain — and
Flies, millions of them, vast swarms of them, spawned in the filthy Volga river: mutant flies, probably. Gathering in clouds around each player on the pitch (one crawled into a Tunisian’s ear), the footballers suddenly resembling 22 Simon Schamas, flapping their hands about in outrage. Bitey Russian flies. As a trope for this tournament, and
Seen from almost any point of view, the government’s decision to increase spending on the NHS is disgusting. It is cynical in its timing to coincide with the Health Service’s 70th birthday in England; weak in its refusal to tie the increase to any improvements; mendacious in its claimed link between the increase and a
