Britain – Page 4 – artdiamondblog.com

“Ordinary People Should Have a Go”

(p. A11) The classical archaeologist and now big-picture historian Ian Morris, whose last book argued that war is good for you, now explains why coal is too. In “Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels,” Mr. Morris puts “energy capture” at the center of human values since the Ice Age, through three eras: the Foragers to begin with; the Farmers after about 8,000 B.C.; and, in the past few centuries, the Fossil Fuelers.
. . .
A culture favorable to liberty and dignity for commoners came out of the Reformation and 16th-century Holland, spread to Britain and Britain’s colonies in the 18th century, and resulted after 1800 in an explosion of ingenuity.
This Great Enrichment, which Mr. Morris acknowledges but does not explain, increased income per head not by the 100% or 200% of earlier efflorescences but by anything from 2,000% to 10,000%. Routine materialism of Mr. Morris’s sort can’t explain the most important secular event in human history. He wants to pin it all on energy capture. The correct story is one of ideas of human equality changing, starting with a conviction novel in the 17th century in northwestern Europe that ordinary people should have a go. This led to massive innovation, among which was energy capture. We do not have a fossil-fuel civilization. We have a free and ingenious one.

For the full review, see:
DEIRDRE MCCLOSKEY. “BOOKSHELF; Oil on Troubled Waters; In this telling, progress is explained by the rising use of fossil fuels. Yet the Industrial Revolution was powered by water, not coal..”The Wall Street Journal (Mon., July 6, 2015): A11.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date July 5, 2015.)

The book under review, is:
Morris, Ian. Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve, The University Center for Human Values Series. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015.

Brits Attack Freedom, the Poor and the Environment, by Taxing Plastic Bags

(p. A4) LONDON — Some warned of “bag rage” by irate shoppers. The Daily Mail predicted, “Plastic Bags Chaos Looms.” Chloe Metzger, a 21-year-old blogger and student, wrote on Twitter: “I understand the whole #plasticbags thing but it couldn’t be more annoying.”
Nerves were rattled, jokes were made and the annoyance of it all was duly noted in Britain this week. Nevertheless, shoppers pulled off something that has also occurred in other cities, states and countries: They began weaning themselves off plastic shopping bags.
Starting this week, the government introduced a 5 pence charge for plastic bags for most groceries, clothes and other purchased items. And while it did not lead to a nationwide mutiny, as some had warned, it did create some tension in cashier lines.
. . .
The TaxPayers’ Alliance, an anti-tax group, said the new measure would burden families struggling to get by.
A 2013 study by the National Center for Policy Analysis in Washington, which champions laissez-faire economics, argued that paper and reusable bags were worse for the environment than plastic bags when it came to energy and water use, and to greenhouse gas emissions. “Every type of grocery bag incurs environmental costs,” wrote H. Sterling Burnett, the author of the study.
Whatever the arguments, the charge has inspired a mix of applause, resentment, fear and humor.
It has also inspired ingenious new ways to try to get around paying the new fee. The Daily Express, a British tabloid, noted that there was “nothing to stop Brits buying loose vegetables, being rewarded with their free plastic bag and ramming it full of the rest of the shopping.”

For the full story, see:
DAN BILEFSKY. “British Begin Attack Aimed at a Scourge of the Realm.” The New York Times (Weds., OCT. 7, 2015): A4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date OCT. 6, 2015, and has the title “Charge for Plastic Bags in Britain Draws Applause, Anger and Humor.”)

The 2013 bag report, referred to above, is:
Burnett, H. Sterling. “Do Bans on Plastic Grocery Bags Save Cities Money?” National Center for Policy Analysis, Policy Report # 353, Dec. 2013.

FDA Forces Child to Go to London to Get Drug to Fight His Cancer

(p. A15) How far would you go to get a drug that could save your child’s life? Across an ocean? That is exactly what the federal government is forcing some American families with dying children to do.
In 2012, when Diego Morris was 11 years old, he was diagnosed with a deadly cancer in his leg called osteosarcoma. Doctors at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., removed the tumor, but the prognosis was poor. There was a significant risk that even extensive chemotherapy after surgery would not prevent the cancer from returning.
Fortunately, a team of doctors at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City had developed a revolutionary new drug, mifamurtide (MTP), that can prevent osteosarcoma from coming back. A study by Dr. Eugenie Kleinerman of MD Anderson and Dr. Paul Meyers of Sloan Kettering showed the drug resulted in a 30% reduction in the osteosarcoma mortality rate at eight years after diagnosis.
The drug was approved in 2009 by the European Medicines Agency and is currently the standard of care in Europe, Israel and many other countries. In 2012 it received the prestigious Prix Galien Award, the gold medal for pharmaceutical research and development in the United Kingdom.
MPT was exactly what Diego needed. But there was one problem: The drug was not available in America because the Food and Drug Administration had rejected it, demanding additional studies. That meant that Diego had to travel from Phoenix to London to get the drug he needed to save his life–a drug that was available in almost every industrialized nation and should have been available in the U.S.

For the full commentary, see:

DARCY OLSEN. “Winning the Right to Save Your Own Life; As the FDA dawdles, 24 states pass ‘right-to-try’ laws giving terminally ill patients access to drugs.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., Nov. 27, 2015): A15.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Nov. 26, 2015.)

Olsen’s commentary is related to her book:
Olsen, Darcy. The Right to Try: How the Federal Government Prevents Americans from Getting the Lifesaving Treatments They Need. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2015.

Chinese Communists Fear the Magna Carta

(p. A5) HONG KONG — China’s leaders have long behaved as if nothing could daunt them. But an 800-year-old document written in Latin on sheepskin may have them running scared.
. . .
It is not clear why the public showing was moved off the Renmin University campus. But Magna Carta is widely considered a cornerstone for constitutional government in Britain and the United States, and such a system is inimical to China’s leaders, who view “constitutionalism” as a threat to Communist Party rule.
In 2013, the party issued its “seven unmentionables” — taboo topics for its members. The first unmentionable is promoting Western-style constitutional democracy. The Chinese characters for “Magna Carta” are censored in web searches on Sina Weibo, the country’s Twitter-like social media site.
Hu Jia, a prominent Chinese dissident, said he was not surprised that the exhibit had been moved off the campus. He said that Renmin University had close ties to the Communist Party’s training academy and that the principles the document stood for were contrary to the party’s. More important, he said, Chinese leaders may have been concerned that the exhibit would be popular and that “many students would flock there.”
“They fear that such ideology and historical material will penetrate deep into the students’ hearts,” Mr. Hu said.
. . .
Magna Carta has been the subject of several academic conferences and lectures in China this year, including two at Renmin University. One doctoral student in history who knows people at the museum said that the school had canceled the exhibit on orders of the Ministry of Education.
“To get kind of wound up about an old document like the Magna Carta? They’re a little bit brittle and fragile, aren’t they, Chinese leaders?” said Kerry Brown, a former British diplomat who was stationed in Beijing and now serves as director of the China Studies Center at the University of Sydney in Australia. “Poor dears.”

For the full story, see:
MICHAEL FORSYTHE. “Magna Carta Visits China, but Venue Abruptly Shifts.” The New York Times (Thurs., OCT. 15, 2015): A5.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article was dated OCT. 14, 2015, and had the title “Magna Carta Exhibition in China Is Abruptly Moved From University.”)

Dogged Dreamers Developed Deadly Dirigibles

(p. C7) “Dirigibility” means the ability to navigate through the air by engine power, unlike balloon flight, which is captive to the wind. Beginning and ending with the Hindenburg vignette, C. Michael Hiam gives in “Dirigible Dreams” a concise but comprehensive history of the airship and its evolution. With style and some flair, Mr. Hiam introduces a cast of dogged visionaries, starting with Albert Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian whose exploits from 1901 onward usually culminated in our hero dangling from a tree or a high building, shredded gas bags draped around him like a shroud. For all of these pioneers, problems queued up from the outset: Insurance companies, for example, refused to quote a rate for aerial liability. (Try asking your broker today.) And to inflate the craft the engineers were stuck with hydrogen, since non-flammable helium was too scarce and hot air has insufficient lifting force.
. . .
In 1929, British engineers pioneered a giant dirigible–at 133 feet in diameter, Mr. Hiam notes, it was “the largest object ever flown”–powered by six Rolls-Royce Condor engines. But too many died as the still-flimsy crafts plunged to the ground in flames. His Majesty’s secretary of state for air perished in a luxurious airship cabin on the way to visit the king’s subjects in India. One by one, nations gave up their dirigible dreams, especially after 35 souls burned to death on the Hindenburg in Lakehurst, N.J., one of the first transport disasters recorded on film. After that tragedy, commercial passengers never flew in an airship again, and by the start of World War II just two years later “the airship had become entirely extinct.”

For the full review, see:
SARA WHEELER. “Inflated Hopes; Early airship experimenters found that insurance companies refused to quote rates for aerial liability.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Oct. 18, 2014): C7.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review was updated on Oct. 23, 2014.)

The book under review, is:
Hiam, C. Michael. Dirigible Dreams: The Age of the Airship. Lebanon, NH: ForeEdge, 2014.

Madly-Recycling Germans Pay to Burn British Trash

(p. A1) MAGDEBURG, Germany–Each day, trucks roll into this city filled with the latest hot import from the streets of Manchester, England: garbage.
The destination is a power plant that makes a business of turning trash into electricity, or as it touts in a brochure, “spinning straw into gold.” The straw in this case is large, pillowy blobs of rubbish, neatly wrapped in plastic.
. . .
A waste not, want not attitude mixed with a national zeal for recycling has led to an awkward problem for Germany: It isn’t producing enough of its own trash.
Over the past decade, heaps of garbage-burning power plants and composting facilities were built throughout Germany as the country shut off all its landfills to new household trash. But instead of growing, as many thought it would, household-waste production flattened, in part because sparing Germans edged their already-high recycling rate even higher.

For the full story, see:
ELIOT BROWN. “Germans Have a Burning Need for More Garbage; Lack of garbage forces power plants to import waste; ‘straw into gold’.”The Wall Street Journal (Tues., Oct. 20, 2015): A1 & A10.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Oct. 19, 2015.)

In 13th Century England, William Marshal Defended Property and Brokered Magna Carta

(p. C7) On Saturday, May 20, 1217, two armies gathered outside Lincoln, a walled cathedral town in the northeast Midlands of England. One was a party of barons loyal to the French prince Louis the Lion, who had come to batter down the walls of the town’s large stone castle. The second party was there to relieve the siege. It was led by an energetic 70-year-old: William Marshal, earl of Pembroke, the most famous knight of his time and one of the most storied men in Christendom. Marshal was the official guardian of the 9-year-old English king Henry III, whom Louis was aiming to replace. Lincoln was one of the most important strategic military bases in England, controlling the major roads between London, York and the southwest. The fate of a kingdom really did rest in William Marshal’s hands.
According to a 19,000-line verse biography, written in old French during the 1220s and commissioned by Marshal’s son, the aged hero prepared his men for a battle with a barnstorming speech. “Those men have seized and taken by force / our lands and our possessions,” he cried. “Shame upon the man who does not strive, this very day, to put up a challenge / . . . if we beat them, it is no lie to say / that we will have won eternal glory / . . . I can tell you that they will come to a sticky end / as they descend into Hell.” Then Marshal was astride his horse and at the front of the charge. He was so excited that he nearly rode off to fight without his helmet on.
. . .
Marshal was one of the few loyal men left at the end of John’s reign, and in June 1215 he helped broker Magna Carta, the document that (temporarily) mollified the king’s opponents by granting them a long list of legal rights and privileges. John died the next year, and the now-elderly Marshal was appointed as guardian to Henry III. He reissued Magna Carta as a political manifesto, rather than a peace treaty, which helped to begin the charter’s long and legendary afterlife. He won the battle of Lincoln, and then he died. His corpse was wrapped in silk that he had brought home from a journey to the Holy Land.

For the full review, see:
DAN JONES. “The Servant of Five Kings; One of the few men who remained loyal to King John, William Marshal helped broker Magna Carta.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Jan. 10, 2015): C7.
(Note: ellipsis between paragraphs added; ellipses internal to paragraph, in original.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Jan. 9, 2015.)

The book under review, is:
Asbridge, Thomas. The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power Behind Five English Thrones. New York: Ecco, 2014.

Smart and Energetic Young Adults in France Find Opportunity in England, Australia or the U.S.

(p. A6) The income gap between generations is even more severe in France than in the United States, said Louis Chauvel, a French sociologist who has also worked in America on income inequality and other issues. On top of that, Mr. Chauvel added, the United States economy has been rebounding, while unemployment in France has been rising since 2008 and has hovered around 10 percent for the last two years.
“In the U.S., the young 25-year-olds have lots of opportunities,” he said. “It’s generally much better to be relatively young in the United States than to be aging.
“In France, we face a completely different trend: We have more and more educated young French citizens, and they face economic scarcity, even though they have more education than their parents.”
Young adults in France see their taxes going to finance social benefits for retirees that they believe they will never receive, Mr. Chauvel added. The most energetic and smartest among them do find jobs, he said, but often they can do it only by leaving France for Britain, Australia or the United States.

For the full story, see:
ALISSA J. RUBIN and AURELIEN BREEDEN. “‘Song for French Charity Strikes Discordant Note.” The New York Times (Weds., MARCH 4, 2015): A6.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MARCH 3, 2015, and has the title “‘Toute La Vie,’ Song for French Charity, Strikes Discordant Note.”)

Refugee Walks Nearly 30 Miles Across English Channel, Dodging Hurtling Trains in Dark, Before His Arrest

(p. A1) LONDON — For one African migrant, there was nothing left to lose.
The migrant, Abdul Rahman Haroun, 40, risked his life this week by climbing four fences, evading international search teams and as many as 400 security cameras, and walking about 30 miles in the darkness of the Channel Tunnel in an effort to reach Britain from Calais, France. He dodged trains traveling to London from Paris as they hurtled by at up to 100 miles per hour.
He had made it nearly to the other side, Folkestone, England, before he was caught and arrested on Tuesday [August 4, 2015].
Three days later news of Mr. Haroun’s perilous journey was still reverberating in Britain, a country polarized by a spiraling migration crisis. Though much about him remains unknown — the police said he is Sudanese and has no fixed address — his story of determination had reduced the sprawling migration crisis to a human scale, . . .

For the full story, see:
DAN BILEFSKY. “In a First, a Sudanese Migrant Nearly Crosses the English Channel on Foot.” The New York Times (Sat., AUG. 8, 2015): A1 & A8.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date AUG. 7, 2015.)

“I’ll Be Lucky When I’m in England”

(p. A4) CALAIS, France — The sun had barely set when a 23-year-old Eritrean woman who gave her name as Akbrat fell into step with dozens of other men and women and started scaling the fence surrounding the entrance to the French side of the Channel Tunnel.
The barbed wire cut her hands, but she did not feel the pain. The police seemed to be everywhere. She thought of her 5-year-old son back in Africa and ran, zigzag through the falling shadows, once almost colliding with an officer in a helmet.
Then she was alone. She slipped under the freight train and waited, clambering out just as it began moving.
But before she could hurl herself onto the train bed transporting trucks filled with Britain-bound produce, a French officer caught up with her, she recalled in an interview on Thursday. Blinded by tear gas, she stumbled and bruised her right ankle. After being ejected from the complex around the tunnel, it took her five hours to limp the nine miles back to the refugee camp of makeshift shelters that its 3,000 inhabitants call the “jungle.”
“You’re lucky you weren’t killed,” someone told her.
“I’m not lucky,” she responded. “I’ll be lucky when I’m in England.”
. . .
For many of the migrants who have been coming to the Continent from Africa, the Middle East and beyond, Calais, a mere 21 miles from the white cliffs of Dover, is their last stop. If they make it across to Britain, many believe they will have reached safety and a better life.

For the full story, see:
KATRIN BENNHOLD and ALISSA J. RUBIN. “Migrants Taste Freedom at Tunnel’s Door.” The New York Times (Fri., JULY 31, 2015): A4 & A10.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JULY 30, 2015, and has the title “Migrants in Calais Desperately Rush the Channel Tunnel to England, Night After Night.”)