We know as well as anyone that Europe(both the EU and non-EU bits) and the North America(the United States and other bits) are far from perfect societies. And we know the historic wrongs and mistakes which have plagued our planet’s history. But the mere fact that we can sit here writing critical thoughts should, in the last analysis, be the ultimate vindication of those societies. Consider what civilisations like Iran and Russia do to dissidents, [1] [2]even in third countries. For all their faults, Europe and the US try to make an effort. And nowhere is this more clearly seen in the EU’s Horizon programme, which is now attracting adherents from all around the world. Let Nature Briefings explain

South Korea will join Horizon

South Korea will become the first East Asian country to join the European Union’s €95-billion (US$102-billion) Horizon Europe research-funding programme. The country’s researchers will be eligible to apply for grants from a €53.5 billion pot of funding for research into global challenges in health, energy, climate change and industrial competitiveness. Last year, New Zealand became the first country to ‘associate to’ Horizon Europe, Canada will be signing on later this year, and Singapore and Japan are in preliminary discussions with the European Commission.Science | 4 min read

Despite the seemingly unstoppable rise of populists and dictators, some countries still place their bets on learning and the free flow of information. Facts are facts. The rules of logic are unbreakable. The moon is made of rock, whatever the monster in the Presidential Palace says. And we think there is a chance that prizing honest knowledge above group think may in the long term win out. Because in a free society a kilogram of anything is a kilogram. In somewhere like Russia , a kilogram can be whatever one of Putin’s buddies says it is. If you question it, you will be murdered as an enemy of the state. In such circumstances, how can anyone safely order concrete, buy data or even trust the results of a football match? Such societies will stagnate, as did the USSR and China in the Cultural Revolution.

It’s true that free countries are under threat. We have to circle the wagons. Widening Horizon is one small part of that. But if we win through the world can once again return to uninterrupted technological and social progress. And the Dictators will be the Dinosaurs of the past.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/mar/31/tehran-denies-involvement-in-london-attack-on-tv-presenter

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/27/history-killing-how-russia-has-silenced-putins-opponents

#Horizon #EU #USA #science #free trade #markets #dictator #populism #iran

This Time No Mistakes by Will Hutton [1]

The literature on Britain’s Decline stretches far back into the 19th Century, when panicked Victorians first perceived the challenge to their hegemony by more efficient upstarts such as Germany and the United States. Authors as divergent as Corelli Barnett and Beatrice and Sidney Webb have all had their say. Will Hutton is something of an old hand by now, as fans of The State We’re in (1992) will recall.

But it’s worth giving Hutton another run over the gallops, if only because he’s so readable. Complex ideas are broken into easily-assimilable parts, and his new ways of looking at old things always keep the reader on their toes. This is no rehash. The gravity of our present situation of soaring poverty, bounding national debt and broken trade partnerships has seen to that. Any reforming Government will face a situation at least as difficult as Attlee’s in 1945, confronting a shattered economy ( for which, read: austerity) and a lost Empire (read: Brexit).

Will there be any chance of a turnaround? Hutton thinks it’s possible. We are less sanguine. “Britain has the misfortune to be run by the British” observed the reviewer of a similar book in 1984. By which he meant the nexus of privately-and Oxbridge-educated clans who go on to populate the leading jobs in law, finance and media. Especially the latter, who use their power ruthlessly to destroy reputations of “enemy” politicians of whatever political party, while shamelessly eliminating any space for objective debate. Since the First World War, the Conservatives have been in power, largely on their own, for 82 years. Majority opposition governments for barely 25. The decline in British power in that time has been both precipitous and undeniable. Can anything really be done?

In the Rise and Fall of Great Powers, Paul Kennedy[3] makes a convincing case that the whole process is inevitable and rather natural. Smaller states like Venice, who “once held the East in thrall” were inevitably eclipsed when larger powers like Spain and France came along. Perhaps the British people, or rather the English, know this, and have consciously turned their back on power. In which case the Conservative policy of managed decline could be the right one after all.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/31/will-hutton-this-time-no-mistakes-extract

[2] Will Hutton: This Time no Mistakes Head of Zeus 2024 (appears 11 April)

[3] Paul Kennedy The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers Random House 1987

#conservatives #labour #liberal #great Britain #england #politics #economics

It’s a warm sunny day in southern England, the first after a long cold winter. And proud grandparents Brian and Karen are proud to take their only grandson, little Chesney, to a country park. It was where Brian himself played fifty years before. And it’ll give the child’s mother, a hardworking nurse, a break. The water of the lake looks so inviting that little Chesney begs to put on his arm bands and plunge in. Brian, remembering his own happy hours there, agrees. But as the adults watch their grandson splashing happily, little to they realise he has already entered the last painful hours of his short life.

Problems start after they return home. Chesney complains of feeling sick. He becomes listless and starts showing signs of a fever, which rapidly grows worse. The grandparents rush the boy to the local Emergencies section of the nearest hospital. Doctors report that the fever has spread to the little boys brain. It is they say Primary Amoebic Meningoencephalitis, a disease caused by the amoeba Naegleria fowleri. It has entered the boy’s nasal sinuses, and travelled rapidly up to the brain, which it has begun to feed on from the inside outwards. The fatality rate is 97%. There is just time to call the boy’s mother back from her shift before he dies in her arms.

Fanciful? It could become all too common according to this story by Rebecca Whittaker of the Mail.[1] What Brian didn’t know is that the planet has been warming steadily since his younger days , allowing the deadly amoeba to multiply to unprecedented levels in the lake. Now British lakes and rivers are as warm as those of the Southern United States. A paradise for Naegleria.

And what can be done? Well, there is some hope [2] Despite the colossal fatality rate some antibiotics and some steroids seem to ameliorate the disease in some cases. Better Government inspection and testing of lakes and other swimming places could help, although in Britain that seems a unlikely at the moment. Best of all might be to slowdown the breakneck pace of global warming. Good luck with the last one.

^{the names and family in the first part of this piece are entirely imaginary}

[1]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13187827/Warning-brain-eating-parasite-99-death-rate-making-way-British-water.html

[2]https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/naegleria/general.html#anchor_91787

#meningitis #naegleria fowleri #water born disease #swimming #pollution #global warming