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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. Each week we choose some of our favourite pieces from the magazine and ask their writers to read them aloud.

I'm Moss Gredminton and on the podcast this week.

Max Jeffrey writes from Blackpool, where he says you can see the welfare crisis at its very worst.

Lisa Hazeldine reads her interview with the wife of Vladimir Karamurzer, whose husband is a Russian-British journalist,

currently languishing in a Siberian jail. Christopher Howes reads his piece about an ancient

synagogue that's currently under threat from developers. Philip Hensher reads his book review of

write-cut rewrite by Dirk Van Hull and Mark Nixon about some of the early revisions of

well-known authors currently housed at the Bodleian Library.

And Calvin Poe reads his art lead where he asks whether Labour will allow architects to reshape

housing should they take power at the next election.

Up first, Max Jeffrey. It is mid-afternoon

in the Royal Oak Pub in Blackpool and Liv has arrived to sell a bag full of stuff she's stolen from

the supermarket. She's got fabric conditioner, soap, cream eggs and a large bar of dairy milk. She pulls in a few

pounds and then leaves to score some crack. Everyone struggles,

says a man watching herself. Lots of people here don't work. People earn money however they can.

In Blackpool, you see the worst of Britain's welfare crisis. More than a quarter of the city's

working-age residents are on out-of-work benefits, the highest proportion in the UK, and twice the national average.

In parts of South Shore, right near the promenade and home to a once strong tourism industry, it's closer to 60%.

There used to be circuses and casinos, and Peter Kaye once filmed here. That's all gone.

...