Category: Britain

King George III and George Washington Both Admired Cato, Defender of the Roman Republic

(p. C7) George III (1738-1820) enjoyed one of the longest reigns in British history, but he is known mostly for his turbulent early years as king and the loss of Britain’s American colonies. Thomas Paine called him “a wicked tyrannical brute”; Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, said his character was “marked by every act which may define a tyrant.” As if such charges weren’t enough, George III suffered in his later years from bouts of mental illness that eventually curtailed his reign.

In “The Last King of America,” Andrew Roberts sets out to reclaim George III by drawing a portrait of the man in full and recalibrating modern judgments, not least the judgments of Americans who may share Jefferson’s view. Far from a tyrant, Mr. Roberts argues, George III dutifully supported Britain’s parliamentary constitution of limited monarchy.

. . .

. . . in 1751, . . . the shy, introverted teenager next in line to the throne aimed to be a patriot king.

What did that mean? One gauge, Mr. Roberts observes, is a prologue (written by his father) that George declaimed as a 10-year-old at a performance of “Cato,” a play by Joseph Addison dramatizing the life of the Roman republican. The prologue expressed a pride in England and a love of liberty. (Ironically, “Cato,” performed at Valley Forge, was George Washington’s favorite play.) And indeed, George III later upheld the parliamentary supremacy established by the Glorious Revolution of 1688. No monarch, he believed, could rule justly without the consent of his realm.

Had British statesmen possessed the diplomatic acumen of Franklin and Washington, Mr. Roberts argues, a way through the impasse in North America might have been found. Many colonists had hoped that George III would take their side against Parliament. The king himself spoke of “fighting the battle of the legislature.” Instead, the British establishment—the king included—determined to crush what they viewed as a conspiracy of the colonial elite.

For the full review, see:

William Anthony Hay. “The Method & the Madness.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Oct. 30, 2021 [sic]): C7.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review was updated Oct. 29, 2021 [sic], and has the title “‘The Last King of America’ Review: The Method and the Madness.”)

The book under review above is:

Roberts, Andrew. The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III. London: Viking, 2021.

Thiel Says British Public Supports National Health System Because They Suffer from the Stockholm Syndrome

Peter Thiel claims that the British public supports their National Health System because they suffer from the Stockholm Syndrome. The claim is amusing, thought-provoking, and may be partly true. But I suspect that there are other reasons for the British public’s support. I suspect they assume that future advances in health care inevitably will be more expensive than they will be able to afford. They do not understand that in a laissez-faire health system substantial incentives would exist to develop effective low-cost cures and therapies.

(p. 8) It began with a £1 contract.

In the hours after a pandemic was declared in March 2020, Palantir, the secretive American data analytics company, was invited to 10 Downing Street along with other tech groups, including Amazon, Google and Meta, to discuss how it could help the British government respond.

Within days, Palantir’s software was processing streams of data from across England’s National Health Service, with Palantir engineers embedded to help. The company’s services, used by the C.I.A. and Western militaries for more than a decade, were deployed to track emergency room capacity and direct supplies of scarce equipment.

Palantir charged the government just one pound.

The deal provided the company with a valuable toehold. Since then, Palantir, which is chaired by Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor and one of President Donald J. Trump’s major 2016 donors, has parlayed the work into more than £60 million in government health contracts. Its biggest reward may be yet to come: a seven-year contract worth up to £480 million — about $590 million — to overhaul N.H.S. England’s outdated patient data system.

. . .

Palantir declined to comment on its bid but said it was proud to support “the world’s most important private and public institutions.” The company defended the quality of its work and said, “We are now helping to reduce the N.H.S. backlog, cut the amount of time nurses and doctors need to spend on administrative tasks and speed up cancer diagnosis — all while rigorously protecting data privacy.”

. . .

Speaking at Oxford University in January [2023], Mr. Thiel went off script. The N.H.S. makes people sick and should embrace privatization, he said in response to a question. The British public’s support for the service, he said, was “Stockholm syndrome.”

For the full story, see:

Euan Ward and Adam Satariano. “Uproar in U.K. Over Data Giant’s Push for Heavier Role in Health Care.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, October 1, 2023): 8.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Sept. 29, 2023, and has the title “How Peter Thiel’s Palantir Pushed Toward the Heart of U.K. Health Care.”)

Britain’s Socialized National Health Service (NHS) Stripped Parents of Control, Leaving Indi No Choice but to Die

(p. A13) Indi was born with mitochondrial disease, a degenerative condition that prevents cells from producing energy. When her parents and the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, England, disagreed over whether she should be kept on life support, the NHS turned to the courts to strip the parents of decision-making authority. The U.K. High Court agreed, overrode the parents’ wishes, and ordered life support removed.

. . .

While the NHS thought continued treatment would be futile, other experts disagreed, including at the Vatican’s Bambino Gesù pediatric hospital. As part of its religious mission, Bambino Gesù specializes in treating children with rare diseases. Doctors there offered a treatment plan they thought could help Indi, free of charge. The Italian government even made her a citizen so that she could be airlifted from England.

. . .

For the U.K., the offer of free treatment by willing doctors ought to have been the end of the story. The government didn’t have to pay another penny. The grateful parents simply wanted the freedom to take their daughter to the experts in Rome.

Instead, the NHS went back to the same court and judge to insist it remained in Indi’s best interests to die in the U.K. The court again agreed and overrode the parents’ desire to take Indi to see the experts in Rome. The judge ordered that they could take her only to one place: to the hospice to die.

The parents had no choice but to comply. Lest they try anything else to save their daughter, the parents were sent to hospice with a security escort and police presence.

Deprived of treatment and with her parents forbidden to help her, Indi died within two days, under the watchful eye of the government that said all along it was looking out for her best interests.

For the full commentary, see:

Mark Rienzi. “Britain’s NHS Left Indi Gregory to Die.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023): A13.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date November 20, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

As Freedom Left Hong Kong, So Did Hundreds of Billions of Dollars and 100,000 Citizens

(p. B1) This summer, when Hong Kong’s stock market rout seemed to have no end in sight, the city’s financial chief, Paul Chan, jumped into action, creating a task force to inject confidence into a market that was being pummeled by global investors wary of China.

Hong Kong cut taxes on trading, and Mr. Chan went on a roadshow to Europe and the United States, promising measures to “let investors feel optimistic about the outlook.” Investors were anything but sanguine, however, and the city’s stock exchange is among the world’s worst-performing stock markets this year.

. . .

Hundreds of billions of dollars flowed out this year as money managers and pension funds reduced their holdings in Hong Kong, which has long been a gateway for foreign investors wanting to put money into mainland China. The outflows were largely driven by an economic downturn in China and mounting pressure on American investors to sell their (p. B3) exposure to Chinese companies.

. . .

A former British colony, Hong Kong was handed back to China in 1997 with a pledge that it would maintain a high degree of self-governance under a policy called “one country, two systems.” For two decades, this allowed Hong Kong to define itself as unique and distinct from the rest of China, while offering financial access to the world’s second largest economy.

But after citywide protests in 2019, Beijing imposed the national security law, which has silenced political debate and stifled civic activity.

More than 100,000 residents have left Hong Kong over the last few years, in part because of the security law and tough pandemic restrictions. Many young Hong Kong professionals who are still there have expressed a desire to leave, making it a challenge to recruit the talent that has helped the city function as a financial center.

Once a major hub for Wall Street banks, Hong Kong had a drought of initial public offerings this year. Companies raised the lowest amount of money since 2001, resulting in layoffs at financial institutions citywide.

Many international companies have stopped hiring for new positions in Hong Kong. With less money coming into the exchange and fewer transactions, dozens of brokerages have also closed.

For the full story, see:

Alexandra Stevenson. “Hong Kong Stock Market Ends in Loss For 4th Year.” The New York Times (Saturday, December 30, 2023): B1 & B3.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 29, 2023, and has the title “Hong Kong Stocks Plunge to Losses for 4th Straight Year.”)

If You Are Pained to Wait Over Two Years for Socialist Surgery in Britain, Seek Timely Free Market Surgery in Lithuania

(p. 4) For David Haselgrove, it was a battle each day to get out of bed, then another struggle to put on his socks. Stairs were often impossible, and the pain made him tetchy and difficult to live with.

But when he sought medical help for his arthritis, Mr. Haselgrove was told the wait for a specialist consultation was more than two years. It might be another two years before surgery.

“If I wasn’t the person I am, I would have been losing the will to live because the pain takes over your life,” said Mr. Haselgrove, 71, who is now fully mobile after a successful hip replacement.

His recovery has nothing to do with Britain’s National Health Service.

Instead, Mr. Haselgrove, who ran several small businesses during his working life, flew to a clinic in Lithuania to have surgery, becoming one of a growing number of Britons who have dipped into their own pockets to pay for procedures to which they are entitled free on the N.H.S.

. . .

Investment in buildings and equipment, including in vital diagnostic tools such as CT and M.R.I. scanners, has significantly lagged medical systems in other advanced economies, according to the King’s Fund, a health-focused think tank.

That contributed to a backlog of 4.6 million procedures even before the pandemic, a number that swelled to six million as planned procedures made way for emergency care during the Covid crisis. The line for treatment has only grown since. It is now about 7.7 million procedures, representing about a 10th of the population. Thousands have waited more than two years, often in pain.

Little wonder, then, that many Britons who can afford to pay to cut the line are doing so, while some of more limited means are dipping into savings or taking on debt. Yet that trend, some critics say, could undermine a health care system that has been a bedrock of British life for three-quarters of a century.

Private medical insurance is costly in Britain, and taxable when offered as a benefit by employers, so the shift is most visible when people pay for operations and other medical help out of pocket.

According to the Private Healthcare Information Network, which publishes data on the sector, there were about 50,000 “self-pay” medical admissions in a typical quarter before the pandemic. That figure is now steadily substantially higher; in the first quarter of this year, it was 71,000, close to a record.

That does not include patients who go overseas, like Mr. Haselgrove. At 7,000 euros, about $7,500, a hip replacement at the Nord Clinic in Lithuania was significantly cheaper than it would have been in a private hospital in Britain.

. . .

Britain is chronically short of health workers, with over 100,000 N.H.S. positions vacant.

. . .

. . . the deepest risk of the rise in self-pay patients, according to Chris Thomas, principal health fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, a progressive think tank, is not to the health service’s operations, but to its political underpinnings.

The British health system, he said, is built around the idea of “universalizing the best” — creating a system “as good for a rich person” as for a poor one, Mr. Thomas said.

If wealthier people increasingly opt out, Mr. Thomas said, the N.H.S. will become a second-class system for those who cannot afford to do so, resulting in “a slow erosion of support.”

For the full story, see:

Stephen Castle. “Long Wait Lists Threaten U.K. Promise of Free Care.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, December 10, 2023): 4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 9, 2023, and has the title “Britons Love the N.H.S. Some Will Also Pay to Avoid It.”)

British Colonial Authorities in India “Eased Out” Vaccine Innovator

(p. 19) The story of Waldemar Mordechai Wolff Haffkine, little told in the West beyond the world of bacteriology and within the annals of Judaica, is thrilling in its nobility and verve, and it might have better served Schama’s purpose had he devoted the entire book to the tale of a man he so clearly adores.

. . .

He was born in Odessa in 1860, and as a teenager was set to defending his community from the endless Russian pogroms. In time he moved to Switzerland and then to France, where he trained at the Pasteur Institute and, after studying paramecium, threw his energies into the scourge of cholera. He treated himself with an experimental vaccine and took off to India in 1893 to see how it worked.

That it did, brilliantly, and by today’s reckoning his invention saved millions. His more remarkable eventual success came five years later with a vaccine for eradicating bubonic plague.

Schama — by his own admission no biologist — describes the painstaking method of making a plague vaccine with enthralling technical precision. He writes of the gentle and respectful means of extracting the noxious fluids from the swollen buboes that dangled in the intimate parts of the infected and the dying; of the subsequent culturation process, in ghee-covered flasks of goat broth — no cow or pig could be used, since the vaccines would be given to Hindu and Muslim alike — and then of the nurturing of the resulting silky threads that held the trove of bacilli, ready to be injected.

Notwithstanding Haffkine’s immense contribution to India’s public health, the British colonial authorities, haughty and racist by turn, eventually wearied of the man. Their own means of dealing with infection had, after all, relied on brawn and bombast — the wholesale destruction of villages, the eviction of natives, the smothering of everything with lime and carbolic acid. Such schemes had generally failed, and it irritated the burra sahibs that a foreigner, and moreover a keen adherent to an alien belief, could succeed where they had not.

And so Haffkine was eased out, first from his Calcutta laboratory across to Bombay, and then out of the empire’s crown jewel altogether. He later went to Lausanne, where he would spend his final years.

For the full review, see:

Simon Winchester. “The Vaccinator.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, November 5, 2023): 19.

(Note: ellipsis added. In the original only the words “burra sahibs” are in italics.)

(Note: the online version of the review was updated Oct. 28, 2023, and has the title “Not All Heroes Wear Capes. Some Prefer Lab Coats.”)

The book under review is:

Schama, Simon. Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations. New York: Ecco Press, 2023.

Builders of Untested Fragile R101 Airship Feared Revealing Danger to Head of British Air Ministry

The airships called “dirigibles” were sometimes also called “zeppelins” after their German inventor.

(p. 43) . . . zeppelins had fatal flaws. A single ignition source could turn one into a fireball, as British fighter pilots discovered once they started arming their planes with incendiary bullets. Explosive properties aside, dirigibles were all but uncontrollable in high winds and struggled to stay aloft when rain saturated their cloth skins, adding tons of extra weight.

. . .

That Britain persisted with its airship program owes much to the book’s main character, Lord Christopher Thomson, a retired brigadier and Labour Party politician who in 1923 was appointed to run the British Air Ministry. Witty, cultured and handsome, the India-born Thomson had a romantic vision of a “peaceful, air-linked world” that was closely tied to romance of a different sort. Thomson had for years been carrying on a long-distance affair with Marthe Bibesco, a ravishing (and married) Romanian princess and celebrated author. By 1930, during his second stint as air secretary, there was a chance he would be tapped as the next viceroy of India, a job that would take him even farther from his beloved. In Gwynne’s persuasive telling, Thomson believed that airships could save both the empire and his love life.

Thomson comes across as decent but hopelessly naïve, his faith in R101 based partly on bad information from the underlings responsible for building it. They knew the airship was too heavy, and that its gas bags — made from cow intestines — were prone to leakage. But with few exceptions they kept that knowledge to themselves, for fear of displeasing the boss.

It didn’t help that Thomson was on a tight schedule. Having claimed a berth on R101’s inaugural, round-trip voyage to India, he was determined to be back in London in time for a conference of colonial premiers, perhaps imagining a dramatic, Phileas Fogg-style entrance that would underscore the brilliance of his scheme. To accommodate him, flight tests were cut short, and the airship took off despite reports of bad weather along the route over France. There is reason to believe that the airship’s senior officer may have been drunk at the time.

For the full review, see:

John Lancaster. “Hot Air.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, June 4, 2023): 43.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 1, 2023, and has the title “When Ego Meets Hot Air, the Results Can Be Deadly.”)

The book under review is:

Gwynne, S. C. His Majesty’s Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World’s Largest Flying Machine. New York: Scribner, 2023.

The story of the competition between the privately-built R100 and the government-built R101 was earlier well-told in:

Squires, Arthur M. The Tender Ship: Government Management of Technological Change. Boston, Massachusetts: Birkhauser, 1986.

“Proud Symbol of Britain’s Welfare State” in “Deepest Crisis of Its History”

(p. A1) As it turns 75 this month, the N.H.S., a proud symbol of Britain’s welfare state, is in the deepest crisis of its history: flooded by aging, enfeebled patients; starved of investment in equipment and facilities; and understaffed by doctors and nurses, many of whom are so burned out that they are either (p. A6) joining strikes or leaving for jobs abroad.

Interviews over three months with doctors, nurses, patients, hospital administrators and medical analysts depict a system so profoundly troubled that some experts warn that the health service is at risk of collapse.

. . .

(p. A6) More than 7.4 million people in England are waiting for medical procedures, everything from hip replacements to cancer surgery. That is up from 4.1 million before the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020.

Mortality data, exacerbated by long wait times, paints a bleak picture. In 2022, the number of excess deaths rose to one of the highest levels in the last 50 years, and those numbers have kept rising, even as the pandemic has ebbed.

In the first quarter of 2023, more than half of excess deaths — that is, deaths above the five-year average mortality rate, before the pandemic — were caused by something other than Covid-19. Cardiovascular-related fatalities, which can be linked to delays in treatment, were up particularly sharply, according to Stuart McDonald, an expert on mortality data at LCP, a London-based pension and investment advisory firm.

For the full story, see:

Mark Landler. “After 75 Years, Health Service In U.K. Teeters.” The New York Times (Monday, July 17, 2023): A1 & A6-A7.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 16, 2023, and has the title “A National Treasure, Tarnished: Can Britain Fix Its Health Service?”)

“Singapore’s Bill Gates” Thought Innovation Should Not Require Government Permission

(p. A9) In the late 1990s, before Singapore was known as a global center of digital innovation, Sim Wong Hoo had a theory about what was holding his country back.

Mr. Sim, who went on to become the city-state’s first tech billionaire, called it the “No U-Turn Syndrome,” or NUTS. In the U.S., he said, cars could turn around anywhere unless a sign told them not to. But in Singapore, drivers wouldn’t dare if it wasn’t expressly allowed. The “no rule, no do” mentality kept Singaporeans from thinking outside the box, he said.

So he wrote some new rules. Mr. Sim was raised in a poor household by illiterate parents before founding a startup that revolutionized computer audio and inspired a generation of Asian entrepreneurs. Many admirers still call him

. . .

Born in Singapore in 1955, when it was still under British rule, Mr. Sim grew up in a village in an area now called Bukit Panjang with 10 siblings. Their father died when he was young, and his mother struggled to support their large family by selling whatever seasonal fruits grew on the unkempt 1-acre farm she leased for about $15 a year. When not in school, the young Mr. Sim helped her sell eggs at a local market for about 1 cent apiece.

In his 1999 book, “Chaotic Thoughts From the Old Millennium,” Mr. Sim described himself as a weird child who made his own toys and board games because he couldn’t afford to buy them.

For the full obituary, see:

Feliz Solomon. “Singaporean Inspired Asian Tech Innovators.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Jan. 14, 2023): A9.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date January 13, 2023, and has the title “Sim Wong Hoo, Creator of Sound Blaster, Inspired Asian Tech Innovators.”)

Mr. Sim’s book mentioned above is:

Sim, Wong Hoo. Chaotic Thoughts from the Old Millennium. Singapore: Creative O., 1999.

Let “People Express Concerns in a Therapeutic Environment Before You and I Decide the Policy”

(p. A4) Britain’s top civil servant warned in October 2020 that Prime Minister Boris Johnson was a “nationally distrusted” figure who should not announce new social-distancing rules in the depths of the coronavirus pandemic.

The health secretary at the time, Matt Hancock, disparaged an eminent medical researcher who had publicly criticized Britain’s handling of Covid as a “complete loudmouth.” Mr. Hancock also mocked “Eat Out to Help Out,” a program to lure people back to restaurants sponsored by Rishi Sunak, referring to it as “eat out to help the virus get about.”

Those and many other unfiltered remarks are in more than 100,000 WhatsApp messages exchanged among Mr. Hancock, other ministers and aides as they tried to control the coronavirus outbreak in 2020 and 2021. They were handed to The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper, by Isabel Oakeshott, a journalist who obtained them while helping Mr. Hancock write a book, “Pandemic Diaries,” about those desperate days.

. . .

“What I found shocking was the callous nature of the messages — the banter, the humor, and how casual they were about making decisions that affected people and their lives,” said Prof. Devi Sridhar, head of the global public health program at the University of Edinburgh.

. . .

Amid the pervasive sense of dread in the texts, there were also moments of gallows humor. Mr. Hancock once asked Michael Gove, a fellow minister, to explain the goals of a coming government meeting on the pandemic.

“Letting people express concerns in a therapeutic environment before you and I decide the policy,” Mr. Gove wrote.

“You are glorious,” Mr. Hancock replied.

For the full story, see:

Mark Landler. “Juicy Nuggets, but No Surprises About U.K. Covid Policy.” The New York Times (Monday, March 8, 2023): A4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 7, 2023, and has the title “Ex-Minister’s Texts Lift the Veil on U.K. Covid Policy. It Isn’t Pretty.”)

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As People Die of “Old Age” Will the FDA Ever Approve Longevity Drugs?

The FDA has required that new drugs be proven to be effective against a disease, and the FDA has refused to consider old age to be a disease. Perhaps as more government institutions give “old age” as the reason for a death, the FDA will reconsider.

(p. A6) LONDON — Queen Elizabeth II died of “old age,” according to her death certificate, which was released on Thursday by the registrar general of Scotland. The certificate, which lists her occupation as Her Majesty the Queen, also notes that the queen died at 3:10 p.m. on Sept. 8 [2022] at Balmoral Castle.

The first fact is indisputable, given that the queen was 96. But the report offers no further details about the cause of her death, which came two days after she was photographed standing and smiling as she greeted Britain’s new prime minister, Liz Truss.

For the full story, see:

Mark Landler. “Record Says Queen Died of ‘Old Age’.” The New York Times (Friday, September 30, 2022): A6.

(Note: bracketed year added.]

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Sept. 29, 2022, and has the title “Queen’s Death Certificate Reveals Cause and Time of Death.”)