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confidence. Hello and welcome to the edition podcast from The Spectator.

Each week, we take a look at some of the most important and intriguing stories from the issue and the writers behind them.

I'm William Moore, the Spectator's Features Editor.

This week, what's behind the rise in workers' wages?

Plus, how painless is assisted dying?

And finally, are NFTs memes or masterpieces?

First up, workers' wages are rising faster than they have in years.

Why?

That's the question Matthew Lynn tries to answer in our cover story this week.

He joins me now,

along with Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins. Matthew, in this week's cover story, you look at the

extraordinary changes we've seen in the labour market in the last year. Workers' wages are rising,

but at the same time, the labour shortage has led to empty shelves and closed restaurants.

To what extent do you think Brexit's behind all this?

Well, I mean, Brexit certainly hasn't helped.

I mean, it's certainly a factor in what's going on.

I mean, just to sort of step back for a moment, I mean, certainly on the wages front,

you know, it's extraordinary.

It's quite short term. We don't quite know how long it's going to last.

But, you know, celerating wages of 7 or 8% across the board, 20 to 30% in certain blue collar sectors such as truck driving and ware housing and other areas like that, you know, kind of things we haven't seen since, you know, the immediate kind of post-war boom. Is Brexit the blame for that? It's definitely part of the story. You know, we've stopped free movement with it with Eastern Europe, which, you know, a lot of the British economy,

...