Britain – Page 7 – artdiamondblog.com

21st Century Person Would Be Sick in Dickens’ 1850 London

“Anderson found Dickens World to be “surprisingly grisly” for a park that markets itself to children; he noted several severed heads and a gruesome performance of “Oliver Twist” in the courtyard. Here, a mannequin of Nancy from “Oliver Twist.”” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 48) . . . even if it were possible to create a lavish simulacrum of 1850s London — with its typhus and cholera and clouds of toxic corpse gas, its sewage pouring into the Thames, its (p. 49) average life span of 27 years — why would anyone want to visit? (“If a late-20th-century person were suddenly to find himself in a tavern or house of the period,” Peter Ackroyd, a Dickens biographer, has written, “he would be literally sick — sick with the smells, sick with the food, sick with the atmosphere around him.”)

For the full story, see:
SAM ANDERSON. “VOYAGES; The Pippiest Place on Earth.” The New York Times Magazine (Sun., February 7, 2012): 48-53.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date February 7, 2012 (sic), and has the title “VOYAGES; The World of Charles Dickens, Complete With Pizza Hut.”)

Confident Winner Studied Economics at Cambridge and Directed Bronson in “Death Wish”

“Michael Winner, left, and Charles Bronson on the set of the 1974 film “Death Wish.” The two collaborated on several films.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT obituary quoted and cited below.

(p. B8) Michael Winner, the brash British director known for violent action movies starring Charles Bronson including “The Mechanic” and the first three “Death Wish” films, died on Monday [January 21, 2013] at his home in London. He was 77.
. . .
Mr. Winner’s films viscerally pleased crowds, largely ignored artistic pretensions and often underwhelmed critics. He directed many major stars in more than 30 films over more than four decades.
. . .
Mr. Bronson played Paul Kersey, a New York City architect who becomes a vigilante after his wife is murdered and his daughter is sexually assaulted by muggers.
. . .
Michael Robert Winner was born in London on Oct. 30, 1935. The son of a well-to-do business owner, Mr. Winner graduated from Cambridge, having studied law and economics.
. . .
He was confident on set, sometimes bordering on the dictatorial. “You have to be an egomaniac about it. You have to impose your own taste,” he said. “The team effort is a lot of people doing what I say.”

For the full obituary, see:
DANIEL E. SLOTNIK. “Michael Winner, 77, ‘Death Wish’ Director.” The New York Times (Tues., January 22, 2013): B8.
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the slightly different title “Michael Winner, ‘Death Wish’ Director, Dies at 77.”)
(Note: ellipses and bracketed date were added.)

Liver Transplant Pioneer Roy Calne Has a “Rebellious Nature”

“Roy Y. Calne” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT interview quoted and cited below.

(p. D2) Sir Roy Calne is a pioneer of organ transplants — the surgeon who in the 1950s found ways to stop the human immune system from rejecting implanted hearts, livers and kidneys. In 1968 he performed Europe’s first liver transplant, and in 1987 the world’s first transplant of a liver, heart and lung.
. . .
When you were studying medicine in early-1950s Britain, what was the prevailing attitude toward organ transplantation?
It didn’t exist! While a medical student, I recall being presented with a young patient with kidney failure. I was told to make him as comfortable as possible because he would die in two weeks.
This troubled me. Some of our patients were very young, very deserving. Aside from their kidney disease, there was nothing else wrong with them. I wondered then if it might be possible to do organ transplants, because kidneys are fairly simple in terms of their plumbing. I thought in gardening terms. Might it not be possible to do an organ graft, replacing a malfunctioning organ with a healthy one? I was told, “No, that’s impossible.”
Well, I’ve always tended to dislike being told that something can’t be done. I’ve always had a somewhat rebellious nature. Just ask my wife.

For the full interview, see:
CLAUDIA DREIFUS, interviewer. “A CONVERSATION WITH ROY Y. CALNE; “I’ve always tended to dislike being told that something can’t be done. I’ve always had a somewhat rebellious nature.”” The New York Times (Weds., November 27, 2012): D2.
(Note: ellipsis added; bold in original to indicate interviewer (Dreifus) question.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date November 26, 2012 and has the title “A CONVERSATION WITH ROY Y. CALNE; Organ Transplant Pioneer Talks About Risks and Rewards.”)

EU Costs Britain $238 Billion Per Year According to Congdon Report

“Nigel Farage has waged a 20-year campaign to get Britain to leave the European Union.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A7) Strasbourg, France THE floor of the European Union’s cavernous and mostly vacant parliamentary chamber here is hardly known for its lively debates. At least not until Nigel Farage, the Brussels-bashing leader of Britain’s fastest growing political party, gets up to speak.

The vast majority of the European Parliament’s 754 members, as they process the torrent of rules and regulations that Europe bestows upon them, are not inclined to question why they are here. The pay and perks are generous for those elected to five-year terms in low-turnout elections throughout the European Union’s 27 member countries. And the mission — to extend the sweep of European federalism — is for most a shared one.
But for Mr. Farage, who has waged a 20-year campaign to get Britain to leave the European Union, Strasbourg has become the perfect stage to disseminate his anti-European Union message by highlighting the bloc’s bureaucratic absurdities and spendthrift tendencies as well as by mocking with glee the most prominent proponents of a European superstate: the head of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and the European Council president, Herman Van Rompuy. “I said you’d be the quiet assassin of nation-state democracy,” Mr. Farage has declared, as his target, Mr. Van Rompuy, squirmed in his seat just opposite, “and sure enough, in your dull and technocratic way, you’ve gone about your course.”
. . .
Last year, in net terms, Britain paid $16 billion to the European Union. But according to a recent study by the economist Tim Congdon, himself an Independence Party member, if the cost of regulation, waste and misallocated resources is included, the annual cost of membership rises to $238 billion a year, or about 10 percent of Britain’s economic output.
Perhaps the most egregious example of this profligacy is the spot where Mr. Farage has found fame: the European Parliament. As most of the legislative work is done in Brussels, the building is in use just three days each month. Analysts estimate that it costs taxpayers about $250 million a year to transport each month 754 members of Parliament, several thousand support staff members and lobbyists to this French city.
Mr. Farage lights another cigarette and shakes his head. “I just would like for my grandchildren to read some day that I did my part in saving my country from this lunacy,” he said with a sigh.

For the full story, see:
LANDON THOMAS Jr. “THE SATURDAY PROFILE; An Enemy of Brussels, and Not Afraid to Say So.” The New York Times (Sat., December 8, 2012): A11.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date December 7, 2012.)

The Tim Congdon report mentioned is:
Congdon, Tim. “How Much Does the European Union Cost Britain?” UK Independence Party, 2012.
(Note: the report calculates a total cost of about 150 billion British pounds, which when converted to dollars is equal to the $238 billion reported in the article, at an exchange rate of about $1.587 per British pound.)

A Rising Tax Gathers No Rolling Stone

Source of book image: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Nhhn-YcP9IY/TjkQHfGGEeI/AAAAAAAAAVA/_jKMGRBm9Ac/s1600/life-keith-richards.jpg

(p. 289) The tax rate in the early ’70s on the highest earners was 83 percent, and that went up to 98 percent for investments and so-called unearned income. So that’s the same as being told to leave the country. … The last thing I think the powers that be expected when they hit us with the super-super tax is that we’d say, fine, we’ll leave. We’ll be another one not paying tax to you. They just didn’t factor that in. It made us bigger than ever, and it produced Exile on Main St., which was maybe the best thing we did. They didn’t believe we’d be able to continue as we were if we didn’t live in England. And in all honesty, we were very doubtful too. We didn’t know if we would make it, but if we didn’t try, what would we do? Sit in England and they’d give us a penny out of every pound we earned? We had no desire to be closed down. And so we upped and went to France.

Source:
Richards, Keith. Life. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2010.
(Note: I first saw the quote on the back cover of: Journal of Political Economy 119, no. 1 (Feb. 2011).)
(Note: ellipsis added.)

Global Warming Expands Range of Brown Argus Butterfly

“The brown argus butterfly has expanded its range in England.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. D3) A butterfly species in England is expanding its range, thanks to climate change.

In the current issue of Science, researchers at the University of York report that the brown argus butterfly has spread its reach in England northward by about 50 miles over 20 years as a warmer climate allows its caterpillars to feed off wild geranium plants, which are widespread in the countryside.

For the full story, see:
SINDYA N. BHANOO. “OBSERVATORY; A Butterfly Takes Wing on Climate Change.” The New York Times (Tues., May 29, 2012): D3.
(Note: the online version of the article has the date May 24, 2012.)

The results summarized above are reported to the scientific community in:
Chen, Ching, Jane K. Hill, Ralf Ohlemüller, David B. Roy, and Chris D. Thomas. “Report; Rapid Range Shifts of Species Associated with High Levels of Climate Warming.” Science 333, no. 6045 (August 19, 2011): 1024-1026.

How a Group of “Natural Philosophers” Created Science in a London “Full of Thieves, Murderers and Human Waste”

Source of book image: http://www.edwarddolnick.net/images/clockworkuniverse-cover.jpg

(p. 19) London before the mid-1600s was a general calamity. The streets were full of thieves, murderers and human waste. Death was everywhere: doctors were hapless, adults lived to about age 30, children died like flies. In 1665, plague moved into the city, killing sometimes 6,000 people a week. In 1666, an unstoppable fire burned the city to the ground; the bells of St. Paul’s melted. Londoners thought that the terrible voice of God was “roaring in the City,” one witness wrote, and they would do best to accept the horror, calculate their sins, pray for guidance and await retribution.

In the midst of it all, a group of men whose names we still learn in school formed the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge. They thought that God, while an unforgiving judge, was also a mathematician. As such, he had organized the universe according to discernible, mathematical law, which, if they tried, they could figure out. They called themselves “natural philosophers,” and their motto was “Nullius in verba”: roughly, take no one’s word for anything. You have an idea? Demonstrate it, do an experiment, prove it. The ideas behind the Royal Society would flower into the Enlightenment, the political, cultural, scientific and educational revolution that gave rise to the modern West.
This little history begins Edward Dolnick’s “Clockwork Universe,” so the reader might think the book is about the Royal Society and its effects. But the Royal Society is dispatched in the first third of the book, and thereafter, the subject is how the attempt to find the mathematics governing the universe played out in the life of Isaac Newton.
. . .
To go from sinful “curiositas” to productive “curiosity,” from blind acceptance to open-eyed inquiry, from asking, “Why?” to answering, “How?” — this change, of all the world’s revolutions, must surely be the most remarkable.

For the full review, see:
ANN FINKBEINER. “Masters of the Universe.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., March 27, 2011): 19.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date March 25, 2011, and had the title “What Newton Gave Us.”)

The full reference for the book under review, is:
Dolnick, Edward. The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2011.

EU Is “Infused with the Spirit of Yesterday’s Future”

“Mrs. Thatcher at a Conservative Party Conference in 1982.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ commentary quoted and cited below.

(p. C2) . . . , it was Mrs. Thatcher . . . , a couple of years after she left office, who identified the problem with European construction. It was, she said, “infused with the spirit of yesterday’s future.” It made the “central intellectual mistake” of assuming that “the model for future government was that of a centralized bureaucracy.” As she concluded, “The day of the artificially constructed megastate is gone.”

For the full commentary, see:
CHARLES MOORE. “What Would The Iron Lady Do? She preached a gospel of self-discipline, free enterprise and national autonomy. As Europe implodes and the West’s economic woes mount, it’s time to re-examine Margaret Thatcher’s ambiguous legacy, writes Charles Moore.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., December 17, 2011): C1-C2.
(Note: ellipses added.)

“People Were Being Infantilized and Made Dependent”

Mayor of London Boris Johnson. Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 16) While I was reading your book “Johnson’s Life of London,” in which you take readers on a tour of the city while discussing some of history’s most famous Londoners, I thought to myself, Being mayor of London can’t be that taxing if you could find time to write such a decent book.
The job of mayor of London is unbelievably taxing, particularly in the run-up to the Olympics. It just happens I write fast and always have done. Some people play the piano, some do Sudoku, some watch television, some people go out to dinner parties. I write books.
. . .
Do you remember the moment you knew that you were a Conservative?
When I was a 22- or 23-year-old reporter in a place called Wolverhampton. I got impatient with some of the stuff I saw going on about damp and mold, about who’s ultimately responsible for improving the ventilation in people’s houses. I felt that people were being infantilized and made dependent by the system and that the local Labour politicians had no interest in sorting it out, were content to harvest these people’s votes without improving their lives.
Wow. You were politically formed by mold.
It was the spores of damp, of mold forming on the walls in Wolverhampton.

For the full interview, see:
ANDREW GOLDMAN, interviewer. “TALK; Boris Johnson, Tory With an Attitude.” The New York Times Magazine (Sun., June 3, 2012): 16.
(Note: ellipsis added; bold in original.)

Johnson’s book is:
Johnson, Boris. Johnson’s Life of London: The People Who Made the City That Made the World. New York: Riverhead Books, 2012.

Riots, Arson and Looting Returned in Spite of “State Largesse Lavished on Tottenham”

“As unrest flared in the U.K. on Aug. 7, fire raged through a building in Tottenham, north London–an area also the scene of riots 26 years ago.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A8) LONDON–After furious race riots broke out in London’s Tottenham area 26 years ago, government and local authorities poured millions of pounds into the district and especially Broadwater Farm estate, a notorious housing project that was the epicenter of the 1985 unrest.

Yet last week, Tottenham returned to an unwelcome spotlight as the point of ignition for riots here–and this time the unrest spread far beyond the neighborhood, to other parts of London and distant cities like Birmingham and Manchester.
What started as a peaceful protest over the killing of a local man by police was quickly seized on as an excuse for looting, arson and other unruly behavior by roaming packs of people that gripped the country for days. The result as of Sunday night: 1,401 arrests nationwide and a debate over who is to blame and how to prevent it happening again.
Tottenham’s repeat appearance in the rioting shows the sometimes limited effectiveness of urban-regeneration programs that fail to tackle the deep-seated problems of poor communities. The state largesse lavished on Tottenham has resulted in better facilities and nicer surroundings, yet the area is still blighted by high unemployment, a thriving gang culture and social breakdown, according to official data.

For the full story, see:
GUY CHAZAN And ALISTAIR MACDONALD. “State Aid Failed to Stem U.K. Unrest; Tottenham, Site of Past Violence, Saw Renewed Clashes Despite Government Efforts to Boost the Area.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., August 15, 2011): A8.