25/08/2018
25 Aug 2018

When money dies

25 Aug 2018

When money dies

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Features
Paul Wood
Desperate Donald

Donald Trump’s Twitter feed was oddly silent as the news came that his former campaign manager and his former lawyer were going to jail. Perhaps his staff have finally seized control of his phone. Perhaps his lawyers have convinced him that every time he tweets on anything relating to the Russia investigation, he is dancing on a precipice, with special counsel Robert Mueller just waiting to push him off. Whatever the reason, this was the equivalent of Trump entering a stunned, catatonic state, while his world spins out of control around him.

Desperate Donald
Will Heaven
Jail breaks

You need a strong stomach to be Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, as a letter from Peter Clarke — the current holder of the title — proved this week. HMP Birmingham was in an ‘appalling’ state during his unannounced visit at the start of August. ‘We saw evidence of bodily fluids left unattended, including blood and vomit… next to numerous rat droppings.’ His findings marked a dramatic new low for the prison estate.

Jail breaks
Jason Mitchell
Maduro’s madness

Imagine if Theresa May suddenly announced that her government was going to devalue the pound by 96 per cent; increase the minimum wage by 6,000 per cent; pay the wage increases for millions of businesses for three months; tie the pound to a mythical cryptocurrency; prepared for petrol rationing; and impose a 0.7 per cent tax on big financial transactions. It would be seen either as an act of lunacy, of a collapsing country — or both.

Maduro’s madness
Sinclair McKay
Britain, their Britain

Here’s a bracing lesson from Victorian history that might possibly help to slice some impossible Brexit knots. In the 19th century, there was complete freedom of movement of people from Europe to Britain. And that was all anyone needed. Europhiles might find it difficult to conceive of a time when the folk of continental Europe ached to get to Britain because it was only here that they could find stability, peace, and freedom from oppression.

Britain, their Britain
Ross Clark
The incest trap

It is hard to think of a code of behaviour which is common to all societies on earth, let alone to most other species too — except, that is, for the avoidance of incest. Even cockroaches have developed a breeding strategy that prevents them mating with their own siblings. And yet as we understand more about the genetic dangers of inbreeding, so the social infrastructure that guards against it is being dismantled. In the 40 years since the birth of Louise Brown, the world’s first test tube baby, births by IVF have become routine — almost 2,500 a year using donated eggs, sperm or both.

The incest trap
Cosmo Landesman
Identity theft

I got some bad news this week. I discovered that I’m a ‘privileged, white male’. It was my agent who broke it to me. We were talking about the trouble he’s having in finding a publisher for my book — a work of non-fiction — when the following exchange took place. Me: What’s wrong with my book? Agent: There’s nothing wrong with your book. It’s brilliant. It’s moving. It’s funny. Me: OK. So what’s the problem? Agent: You’re the problem.

Identity theft
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