Money
Money to burn: shoppers, not the state, will lead our recovery
Consumers, not ministers, will lead the recovery
The tyranny of French bureaucracy
Applying for a French bank account is like trying for a permit to open a Christian bookshop in North Korea.…
Covid is hastening the creep towards a cashless society
Covid is fuelling the anti-cash crusade
Capital punishment: why wealth taxes don’t work
Why wealth taxes don’t work
The ideological bankruptcy of modern monetary theory
There’s nothing new about ‘new monetary theory’
Which countries are most sceptical about vaccines?
Gloss over Should we be worried that the head of research into respiratory drugs at AstraZeneca is called Dr Pangalos,…
The cashless lobby is cashing in on the COVID-19 crisis
Coronavirus, we have been warned many times, has brought scammers out in force. But lobbyists are not far behind. Their…
Progressives should now admit their outrage about ‘money in politics’ is confected
There’s a funny silence where the complaints about ‘money in politics’ used to be. The latest numbers on amounts spent…
In defence of pocket money
Our grandchildren are penniless. They have pretty much everything their hearts desire and they have parents with wallets full of…
Stringfellows for the sex robot age: Bob Bob Cité reviewed
Bob Bob Cité is a restaurant dangling like testicles from the underside of the Leadenhall Building in the City of…
The world is stuck in a debt trap
I don’t usually get up early just for an appointment at a bank. Yet last Tuesday in New York, I…
![[Photo: by-studio]](https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2019/09/21SeptHighlife.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=410&h=275)
Why I prefer cows to humans
Gstaad The cows are coming down, the cows are coming down, and I’m off to the Bagel. My Swiss…
If investors are fleeing to gold, this is not the time to be smug
It came as no great surprise that the UK economy contracted by 0.2 per cent in the second quarter, following…
All money is dirty – but it can still be used for good
Whitney museum: no space for profiteers of state violence // dismantle patriarchy // warren kanders must go! // supreme injustice…
The titanic battle between the former Tesco chiefs
How surprising to read one former Tesco chief, 82-year-old Lord MacLaurin, badmouthing another, Sir Terry Leahy. The surprise is because…
It’s easy to sex up the business of paying tax
To fund the war against Napoleon in 1813, Princess Marianne of Prussia invented an ingenious tax-raising scheme. Wealthy Prussians were…
Dear Mary: I won a bet – how do I make my friend pay up?
Q. A delightful but disorganised friend has invited several of our circle for a weekend at his family’s beautiful country…
Does fracking really cause earthquakes?
Great shakes Shale gas commissioner Natascha Engel resigned in protest at what she called ‘absurd’ restrictions on fracking — in…
Gone are the days when the middle class could afford to go skiing
It won’t be news to readers of The Spectator that one of the long-term effects of globalisation is the hollowing…
At sixes and sevens about seven and six
Someone on the wireless was talking about marrying in the Liberty of Newgate before the Marriage Act of 1753, and…
Why cryptocurrency is the answer
The craze for cryptocurrency can be explained by a host of factors: the allure of getting rich quick; the attraction…
Politicians want to move us towards a cashless world. It would be a disaster
What could be more terrifying than a return to the 15 per cent interest rates with which homebuyers had to…
High life
The death of the richest woman on this planet, as the tabloids dubbed Liliane Bettencourt, brought back some vivid memories,…
Why confront the ugly lie of Islamic State with a tacky fake?
Can the beauty of Palmyra be reproduced by data-driven robots? Stephen Bayley on copies, fakes and forgeries
Here’s what’s wrong with the ‘public sector ethos’
Matthew Parris 14 November 2015 9:00 am
An infuriating benefit of readers’ online comments beneath the efforts of a columnist like me is that as you read…