Great Britain
August 24, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
When I think of England in the 1950s, I think of shortages, decline, and despair. Part of that impression stems from the play “Look Back in Anger” and the movie “The Entertainer” (also a play) — both by John Osborne — so it might be an exaggeration. But certainly much of the art and literature of 1950s England reflected pure bleakness. I view the early Beatles as an answer, or
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June 10, 2020 — John Hinderaker
The mania currently sweeping much of the Western world apparently knows no limits. In the U.K., Black Lives Matter activists are trying to tear down statues of famous Britons, including Robert Peel. Why Robert Peel? Because he is “seen as the father of modern policing,” having founded London’s metropolitan police department. Which, of course, was famously unarmed. But that isn’t the worst of it: Nelson’s Column is the latest target
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June 5, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
In response to China’s coming crackdown on Hong Kong, Boris Johnson says he’s prepared to grant British residency and working rights to approximately 3 million Hong Kong residents — about 40 percent of its population. Johnson says he will make this move if China implements its new security laws, which will criminalize conduct deemed sedition and subversion, and enable Chinese security forces to crush dissent in Hong Kong as they
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May 4, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
With the Wuhan coronavirus receding significantly in Italy and Spain, the United Kingdom is about to become the European leader in deaths from the virus. The number of deaths attributed to the virus in the UK, more than 28,000, is only about 400 fewer than the total in Italy, the current European leader. (Unless otherwise noted, all numbers are from Worldometer.) Deaths per capita remain lower in the UK than
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April 18, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Dr. Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College London epidemiologist, drew plenty of attention by first predicting that the UK would experience up to 500,000 deaths from the Wuhan coronavirus and by then forecasting that the number would be 20,000 or less. Ferguson explained that the revision was based on the fact that the UK had decided to implement tough social distancing measures. How these measures were going to save 480,000 lives
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April 7, 2020 — Steven Hayward
The downloads folder on my computer is jammed full right now with endless charts depicting data and analysis of both the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic shocks rolling across the world, and naturally they can tell a widely varying story depending on the data quality and, most crucial of all, the assumptions that go into any model that generates projections about the future—even the near future. Experts and models disagree!
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April 6, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
It looks like I was too optimistic when I wrote about Boris Johnson’s condition last night. I hoped that, like a friend of mine who has the Wuhan coronavirus, Johnson’s visit to the hospital was just a precautionary measure in response to his inability to shake the fever that comes with the virus. That is how Downing Street characterized it. However, Johnson’s condition has worsened, and he’s been rushed to
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April 5, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was admitted to the hospital for tests today, ten days after testing positive for the Wuhan coronavirus. The word from Downing Street is that Johnson was hospitalized because he hasn’t shaken the fever that typically comes with the virus. Johnson’s case seems similar to that of a friend of mine who has this virus. For about a week, my friend experienced coughing and a persistent
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March 26, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London is an epidemiologist. If his name and college sound familiar, it’s probably because their well publicized forecast regarding the Wuhan coronavirus inspired lockdown measures in the U.S. and Great Britain. Ferguson warned that an uncontrolled spread of the virus could cause as many as 510,000 deaths in Britain and up to 2.2 million deaths in the U.S. According to the New York Times, “it
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December 23, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
The punchline to this joke was supplied 20 years ago by a soccer fan I met on my way to a match in London: American football, you get up, get dressed, and go to the game. English football, you get up, get dressed, get drunk, and go the game. Twenty years later, I’m not sure the joke applies. The difference may now reside in where you get drunk. In American
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December 17, 2019 — Steven Hayward
The inimitable Titania McGrath wonders on Twitter how Jeremy Corbyn could possibly have lost the election since he announced his pronouns in the proper intersectional fashion: (Click on the link above to see the embedded four-second video of Corbyn’s Adventure in Pronoun Correctness.) This brings me back to a point that Hugh Hewitt offered months ago: the “Freeport Question”* of the 2020 presidential campaign could be: “How many genders are
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December 12, 2019 — Steven Hayward
As I write we’re not far away from getting the first results of the British election today. I’ve seen stories of long lines to vote and indicators of a heavy turnout. And the British Pound seems to be under pressure today, which might be an ill omen, except that recall the Dow Jones futures plummeted on election night here in 2016, before soaring the next day when people realized that
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December 9, 2019 — Steven Hayward
I haven’t had time to devote sufficient attention to the British election that is now less than 72 hours away. The polls give reason for confidence that the Tories are going to win, since they have tended in recent elections to outperform their polls. This is still rather amazing considering the debacle of the Theresa May government. But the Tories have Boris Johnson, while Labour has the execrable Jeremy Corbyn.
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November 17, 2019 — Steven Hayward
This week I catch up with Henry Olsen to go through the inside baseball of the unfolding Democratic presidential primary season, but also the inside baseball about . . . baseball! Did you know that the Houston Astros colluded with the Russians and Ukrainians to steal the 2017 World Series! So runs the allegation, with hearings no doubt to follow. In any case, I actually stumped Henry by recalling the
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September 28, 2019 — Steven Hayward
I won’t pretend to have substantial knowledge of the intricacies of Britain’s unwritten constitution, or the workings of their judicial system that has sat uneasily beneath the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy since at least the time of Sir Edward Coke and Blackstone. One of my favorite books on my law shelf can help explain the conundrum for anyone not steeped in British law: It is Theodore Plucknett’s A Concise History of
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July 24, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Boris Johnson is now prime minister of Great Britain, and the British establishment, including much of his own party, is horrified at this turn of events, just like the American Establishment (including the GOP hierarchy) were horrified by Donald Trump’s election. I can report on some of the early sentiment. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles are said to be “bitterly opposed” to Johnson becoming prime minister. A cabinet secretary has been
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July 11, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Sir Kim Darroch, the British ambassador to the U.S. whose blistering and insulting dispatches about President Trump became public, has resigned his position. I don’t see that he had much choice. It is unrealistic to expect any president, and certainly not the current one, to deal with an ambassador whose contempt for him is this deep and now this public. And Britain would be poorly served by an ambassador to
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