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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. Each week, we choose three pieces from the magazine

and ask their writers to read them aloud. I'm Oscar Edwinson and on the podcast this week.

Cindy Yu reads her piece out of the Taiwanese elections this week.

Mary Wakefield discusses the US opioid crisis, which she fears has come to Britain.

And Natasha Faroes tells us about the rise of relationship contracts.

Up first, Cindy Yu. The Taiwanese rock band

May Day, the Beatles of the Chinese-speaking world, are being investigated by the Chinese

Communist Party for the crime of lip-sinking. Local authorities are combing through recordings

of May Day's Shanghai concerts from November, looking for

evidence of deceptive fake singing, as the CCP calls it, which has been illegal in China since 2009,

although the law is rarely enforced. Last month, an anonymous Taiwanese government source

told Reuters that the investigation had been cooked up because the pop

stars refused the request from Beijing to say something nice about China in the run-up to Taiwan's

election this Saturday. The ban found itself at the centre of a row between the presidential

hopefuls about Chinese interference. Lighting De, the vice president, the candidate for the

independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party and the favourite to win,

lambasted China for meddling in the election, if reports are true.

Ho Ye, the candidate for the Kuomintan, the KMT, the more Beijing-friendly of the two main

parties, has accused the DPP

...