Great Britain and Mississippi

On this day:

20
Agrippa Postumus, adoptive son of the late Roman Emperor Augustus, is executed by his guards while in exile under mysterious circumstances
636
Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid seize Syria and Palestine from the Byzantine Empire, marking the first great wave of Muslim conquests and the rapid advance of Islam outside Arabia.
1308
Pope Clement V pardons Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, absolving him of charges of heresy.
1672
Former Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis are brutally murdered by an angry mob in The Hague.
1858
Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution through natural selection in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace’s same theory.
1998
U.S. embassy bombings: the United States launches cruise missile attacks against alleged al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical plant in Sudan in retaliation for the August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

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Harry Potter fans have succeeded in moving a construction project that would have originally gone through the “grave” of the character Dobby.

The 125-mile Greenlink power connector, which costs £430million, is intended to link power between the UK’s National Grid and Ireland, running between County Wexford and Freshwater West in Pembrokeshire.

However, the latter site is known to Potter fans as the site of house elf Dobby’s grave in the film Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, and contains a pile of stones with the words “here lies Dobby” that many flock to.

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Louisiana requires florists to be licensed. Are their arrangements better? More pleasing to the eye? Better for the environment? Safer? Is there a national security reason?

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Schools in at least three states will be equipped with drones this year that can zoom through halls, smash windows, and pepper-spray active shooters if teachers report a threat.

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Pittsburgh in Esquire:

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a73444112/insiders-guide-pittsburgh/

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Great Britain and Mississippi

"How Britain Became as Poor as Mississippi" is a good piece in the Atlantic by Idrees Kahloon:

Some colorful anecdotes of a nation in decline:

The health service now has to spend more money settling maternity-malpractice claims than it does on actually providing maternity care.

Many Brits can neither obtain an appointment with a publicly funded dentist nor afford a private one; in a 2023 survey, one in 10 reported doing DIY dental work, in extreme cases extracting their own teeth or gluing broken crowns back together.

Incomes can be shockingly low: Junior doctors recently went on strike for the 15th time in three years over their salaries, which start at just £38,800; the median salary for British civil servants is £35,680. In April, amid the Iran conflict, the Daily Mail pounced on Prime Minister Keir Starmer for vacationing in Valencia, Spain, at what the tabloid described as a luxury hotel, costing £200 a night.

Does this sound familiar?

Recent plans to transform the country have rested in no small part on High Speed 2, a superfast rail line intended to connect London with Birmingham, Leeds, and Manchester. But since HS2 was proposed, in 2009, its costs have tripled, to more than £100 billion. It is the most expensive rail line in the world. (A special structure to protect a rare bat species near the rail line in Buckinghamshire required 8,000 permits and was built at a cost of £216 million.) The most important sections of the proposed route have been lopped off. The rump line—going from Birmingham, Britain’s second-largest city, to not-quite-central London—may be finished by 2040…. HS2 has been delayed for so long that two swiftly built towers near the terminus now themselves look derelict and in need of demolition.

…Building infrastructure, or much of anything else, has become all but impossible in the United Kingdom. In addition to having the world’s most expensive (not yet built) train line, Britain also hosts the world’s most expensive (not yet built) nuclear-power plant, Hinkley Point C. Its environmental-impact assessment ran 31,401 pages; the plant will feature a £700 million “fish disco,” which will pulse sounds underwater to deter animals from its intake pipes.

Upon closer inspection, the United States looks a lot less like a shining city on a hill and a lot more like a declining Great Britain, appendaged with one or two dynamic sectors, most notably AI. The similarities are especially obvious in the retrograde solutions Britain has lumbered into, namely attacking immigrants and trade—Brexit being the equivalent of a high tariff regime. Nations in decline, like people, tend to lash out at others rather than deal with their real problems. Needless to say, neither immigrants nor trade explain Britain’s—or California’s—inability to build high-speed rail or other infrastructure.

It is discomforting to watch the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, individual rights, and free speech—the nation that once built the railways, the steam engines, the factories that remade the world—lose the capacity to build much of anything, or even to tolerate people speaking their minds. In parallel, instead of dealing with our real problems—almost all of our creation—the right gets literally hysterical over symbolic culture-war questions like birthright citizenship, while the left nominates candidates with Marxist-Leninist sympathies. The abundance and progress movements are some of the few shining lights. It’s not too late. But Great Britain is a warning.

England and Reading

Gerrit Cole had TJ in Los Angeles by orthopedist Neal ElAttrache. It is the first major surgery of Cole's 13-year career. The Yankees are also without AL Rookie of the Year Luis Gil, who is out indefinitely with a high-grade lat strain.

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A sign at Columbia University's demonstration shows that "student workers" are back.

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England and Reading

In the last year, the median Briton has only read or listened to three books, with 40% of the public not reading or listening to a single book in that time.

A quarter of Britons (23%) say they have read or listened to between one and five books in the last year, with a further 10% reading or listening to between six and ten, and an extra 10% consuming between 11 and 20 books. There are a small number of mega-readers, with 4% saying they have read more than 50 books, i.e. roughly one or more books a week on average.

While two-thirds of women (66%) say they have read or listened to a book in the last year, just over half of men (53%) say they have.

Older Britons are also more likely to be readers, with 65% of over 65s and 63% of 50-64 year olds having read at least one book or listened to one audiobook in the last year, compared to 57% of 25-49 year olds and 53% of 18-24 year olds.

Half of Britons (50%) say they read or listen to books at least once a week, including 37% who say they read at least most days, and 20% of the public professing to read every day. Just 15% of Britons say they ‘never’ read or listen to books at all.

Women are roughly twice as likely to be daily readers, with 27% of women reading every day, compared to 13% of men.

A Titanic Problem

Software used by British submariners was subcontracted to developers in Belarus.

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Pope Francis has branded Donald Trump's plans to impose mass deportation of immigrants as 'a disgrace' and urged the incoming president to lead a society with 'no room for hatred'.

Francis, who nearly a decade ago called Trump 'not Christian' for wanting to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, was asked about Trump's deportation pledges during a Sunday appearance on the popular Italian talk show, Che Tempo Che Fa.

'If true, this will be a disgrace, because it makes the poor wretches who have nothing pay the bill' for the problem, the Pope said. 'This won't do! This is not the way to solve things. That's not how things are resolved.'

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A Titanic Problem

Britain now has the highest industrial energy prices in the world, has fallen out of the world’s top ten manufacturers, faces power rationing, and is spending over £3bn a year to import electricity.

Last month, the country’s last big coal-fired power station closed and nuclear generation remains in consistent decline. The bill for these imports runs at £250m a month and regularly represents 20 percent of the total electricity supply. Forecasts show imports could soon supply up to a third of British needs by 2030 and beyond.

Ministers boast of Britain’s falling emissions from the energy sector; they won’t tell you about the overseas emissions connected with the electricity we now import but don’t appear on UK statistics; they claim they cannot measure it, so they ignore it. Britain is offshoring its emissions, hiding them, and hoping people won’t notice.

The consequences are stark, ranging from the loss of British competitiveness, rising fuel poverty, chronic economic underperformance, and becoming dangerously vulnerable to future energy crises.

Between 2004 and 2020, before the war in Ukraine, the industrial price of energy in Britain tripled in nominal terms (153%) or doubled relative to consumer prices. Electricity prices have doubled since 2019. This has led to a huge slice of Britain’s manufacturing base already choosing to relocate overseas in search of lower costs. Since 2010 over 200,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost; as a share of GDP, manufacturing has been cut in half since the 1990s.

Per capita electricity generation in the UK is now just two-thirds of what it is in France and barely over a third of the US. Britain now mirrors developing countries like South Africa (which endures rolling blackouts) more than key competitors like Germany. British businesses pay almost four times as much as American firms for each unit of power and households pay three times as much.

Sixty years ago Britain had 21 nuclear reactors, compared to 19 combined in the rest of the world. France picked up global leadership in this sector, which now generates 70 percent of its power from its nuclear stations and decarbonizes while retaining competitive power prices. France built no less than 40 nuclear plants between 1965 and 1985 and is now refurbishing and replacing older ones. Today, British firms pay on average sixty percent more for electricity than French ones.

All this is a microcosm of decline.

UK's Economy

A construction worker in 2020 produced less than a construction worker in 1970, at least according to the official statistics. Contrast that with the economy overall, where labor productivity rose by 290 percent between 1950 and 2020, or to the manufacturing sector, which saw a stunning ninefold increase in productivity.

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Around seven in 10 people in Haiti back proposed the creation of an international force to help the national police fight violence from armed gangs who have expanded their territory since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, according to a survey carried out in January.

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ChatGPT, the popular chatbot from OpenAI, is estimated to have reached 100 million monthly active users in January, just two months after launch, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history, according to a UBS study on Wednesday.

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UK's Economy

Some hard times may be coming in Great Britain.

In December, as many as 500 patients per week were dying in Britain because of E.R. waits, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, a figure rivaling (and perhaps surpassing) the death toll from Covid-19. On average, English ambulances were taking an hour and a half to respond to stroke and heart-attack calls, compared with a target time of 18 minutes; nationwide, 10 times as many patients spent more than four hours waiting in emergency rooms as did in 2011. The waiting list for scheduled treatments recently passed seven million — more than 10 percent of the country — prompting nurses to strike. The National Health Service has been in crisis for years, but over the holidays, as wait times spiked, the crisis moved to the very center of a narrative of national decline.

There's more.

"GDP is a simple multiplier of two factors: people and their productivity. But we don’t have people we need, nor the productivity,” CBI director general Tony Danker added.

The United Kingdom is the only G7 economy that hasn’t recovered fully from the pandemic. Soaring energy and food costs drove inflation to a 41-year high in October. Widespread strikes have become the norm recently as workers feel the sting of a worsening cost-of-living crisis.

UK workers suffered the most significant drop in their spending power in more than 20 years between April and June as average real wages — which take inflation into account — fell by 3%. The drop in real wages was less severe in the third quarter but was still one of the largest since official records began in 2001.

By the end of next year, the average British family will be less well off than the average Slovenian one, according to a recent analysis by John Burn-Murdoch at The Financial Times; by the end of this decade, the average British family will have a lower standard of living than the average Polish one.

Corbyn and Sanders

                                     Corbyn and Sanders

There was an interesting article in the WSJ recently comparing Corbyn of the UK and Bernie Sanders. The article says that Sanders is very vulnerable in the same area that destroyed Corbyn: Patriotism.

"Among those who voted Labour in 2017 but not in 2019, the most common reason for switching allegiance, cited by 53%, was that they didn’t want Mr. Corbyn to be prime minister. That sentiment outranked Brexit as a motivation even among voters who defected to Mr. Johnson’s get-Brexit-done Conservatives by 75% to 73% (respondents could choose more than one option). These voters decided the election.

Mr. Corbyn had given them ample reason for doubt: There was his tendency to pal around with terrorists who killed Britons or their allies. His indulgence of anti-Semitism in Labour’s ranks, which offended working-class Britons’ sense of decency. His disdain for alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and military programs such as the Trident nuclear deterrent, which give the U.K. its esteemed place in the world.

Mr. Sanders faces the same problem. No one who shares Middle America’s core values of freedom, democracy and entrepreneurship would choose to honeymoon in the Soviet Union. No one who values American achievements in science, the arts or education would heap praise on Cuba’s schools.

Every other Democratic candidate on a debate stage with Mr. Sanders has been able to communicate even the most fantastical policy ideas with an undertone of patriotism. Mr. Sanders alone sounds as if he wants to replace America rather than transform it.

And if he wins the Democratic nomination he’ll be running against Donald Trump, whose only consistent mode is American greatness. Mr. Corbyn ran aground against a candidate in Boris Johnson and a policy in Brexit that spoke directly to British patriotism."

Cutting Edge Violence Debate

“Composer quits London for new life in Mexico because ‘it's safer' ...” was the  headline on a September, 2012 article by Anna Edwards in the UK's Daily Mail.

“Composer Michael Nyman is packing his bags and moving to Mexico,” reported Edwards. Nyman told a local newspaper that he was going to permanently move to La Roma, in Mexico City, after “becoming increasingly worried about the level of violence in London.”  In gun-free Britain.
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Nyman may have been wise. “London murder rate is HIGHER than New York's for the first time ever after TWELVE killings in just 19 days” was a headline April 2, 2018 in the Daily Mail.

The Times of London, similarly, reports that the British capital city has been hit with a surge in stabbings.

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In what sounds like a parody of the American gun debate, police in Lancashire, responding to increasing knife violence, joined the “Save a Life — Surrender Your Knife” campaign that offers “amnesty” to those who hand over their knives. Knife bins were located in locations around Lancashire between 2014 and 2016, and knives may now be surrendered at police stations with front counters.
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Researchers at West Middlesex University Hospital reported in 2005 that kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings, many committed impulsively, often prompted by drugs and alcohol. 

The researchers said there was no reason for long, pointed knives to be publicly available or possessed.

We should consult the experts.

Indeed, ten top UK chefs the researchers contacted said long, pointed knives have little practical value in the kitchen. In short, if busy chefs can get by with small-bladed knives, then there's no justification for those at home to be using long, pointed knives to slice vegetables for soup.

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(Just so you know I'm not making this up, much of this is from the Trib.)

Diplomacy by Other Means

In January of 1842 the British retreated from Kabul. 4,500 troops under the leadership of the lightly regarded General William Elphinstone, along with 12,000 women and children (and some merchants) left for Jalalabad, 90 miles away, after the murders of the British representatives in Kabul. The British representative, Macnaghten, had offered to make Akbar Khan Afghanistan's vizier in exchange for allowing the British to stay in Afghanistan, while simultaneously planning to have him assassinated, plans that Akbar Khan discovered. A meeting for direct negotiations between MacNaghten and Akbar was held on 23 December, but MacNaghten and the three officers accompanying him were murdered by Akbar Khan. Macnaghten's body was then dragged through the streets of Kabul and displayed in the bazaar. Elphinstone took this as a bad sign and the British negotiated safe passage, they thought, through the snowbound mountain passes to Jalalabad.

During the next seven days, with various insincere offers for peace and truce, the Afghans systematically cut the unit, women and children to pieces. The final British stand was at Gandamak. On January 13, one survivor arrived at Jalalabad: a Doctor Brydon, a military physician with a significant head wound.

The British have long regarded this event as evidence of Afghan untrustworthiness. (MacNaghten's treachery was apparently understandable.) But one does wonder how people recover from these disasters. How can the British just soldier on? How does an event like this not stain their psyche, interfering with every negotiation and international encounter? How do national blood feuds not develop? How can the Americans become trading partners with Japan after the Pacific war? How can the Vietnamese do the same with the Americans? Is it forgiveness? Or are these large and national events quite separate from us small individuals, like some sort of national epidemic that burns itself out like the flu or the Plague, and the individual does indeed soldier on, scars and all, grateful to have survived.
(a redo)

Class

Recent conversation with some British about Kate Middleton revealed some interesting observations. She was universally admired as an able woman stepping in to a difficult role, especially with the backdrop of the Diana disaster, but she was also seen wryly as "not a royal." She was a commoner, her parents were merchants, her mother chewed gum and was simply not up to royal snuff. Someone said she spoke like a royal; the Brit answered "She was taught that." It was not her nature.

The "nature" of people is always under discussion. Are the Irish, by nature, drunks? Are Blacks lazy? Are Asian girls bad drivers? These are classic examples of small sample prejudice, that is, bad thinking. But the notion of a "royal" is larger; it implies some selective process over time that has created a different sort of person. Does injection of common genes into the family contaminate that specialness? Invalidate it, even? (The Chinese royals used to do that on purpose, to keep the line from getting "thin blood.") Or can that only be done with the guillotine? This is the basis of the royal family: they are seen as a different "class" of person.

This appears everywhere, sometimes with a vengeance. Middleton can cross that class barrier, a woman of the untouchable cast in India may not. Advance in the French bureaucracy is difficult if you are not from the correct educational institution.

The Americans have always prided themselves as being without class distinction. De Tocqueville marveled that this was a land where no man called another "master." But distinction--physical and educational--is making an appearance, politically at least. The racial prism is present in every encounter, every discussion. The "1%" tarring threatens an economic distinction. Politicians and entrepreneurs seem to be willing to drive this early wedge despite the eventual cost.

John Adams said in 1805: 'The rewards ... in this life are esteem and admiration of others -- the punishments are neglect and contempt. . . . The desire of the esteem of others is as real a want of nature as hunger -- and the neglect and contempt of the world as severe a pain as the gout or stone. ...'

Perhaps as Americans deny class they would admit to the hierarchy of materialism: Status.

The Queen and a Korean Observation

There is a new book out about Queen Elizabeth and it has inspired the usual anti-monarchy response. The English Royal Family is an easy outrage that never seems to extend to the real despots of the world. More recently a financial motive has crept into the argument: Can Great Britain afford them? Diana suppressed most of the complaints but, now that she is gone and the unattractive Charles has moved to the fore, the murmuring has returned.

Years ago I was in a difficult conversation with two Koreans. I speak no Korean, they spoke no English but they had a dictionary. We were struggling over the meaning of the royal family, how they were seen by the British as symbolic of the nation and we bounced synonyms off each other while one searched his dictionary. Suddenly he straightened and pointed a word out to me in his dictionary. He pronounced it slowly.
"Mascot?" he asked. "Mascot?"
"Perfect," I replied.