The political news is positive for a change. Settlement of the war in Gaza does seem possible, although there is a lot of work yet to be done on that. Meanwhile the Conservative and Reform Parties are competing on who can be toughest in halting excessive immigration. The Tories will definitely withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) if elected to govern which I consider a good thing – for too long judges have presumed to settle English law instead of Parliament deciding. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp gave a good interview for the BBC on this subject yesterday. I always thought he could go far and might make a better leader than other candidates.
A book I have been reading lately is “The Fate of the Day” by Rick Atkinson – all 850 pages of it. It’s a history of the American war of independence and covers the years 1770-1780. It’s too long but is revealing on the wonders of how the Americans managed to win the war when Great Britain had the largest navy in the world and a large land army also. British politicians thought it would be easy to bring the Americans to heel but found otherwise in reality. Political will is what made the difference.
It’s a shame that Americans did not learn from their own history when deciding to go deeper into the war in Vietnam.
One interesting section covers the activities of US Naval Captain John Paul Jones who attacked Whitehaven and stole the local gentry’s silver plate. He died at quite a young age and was buried in Paris. But many years later his body was disinterred for reburial in the USA when a medical examination showed he was suffering from a kidney disease – probably IgA nephropathy which I also suffer from. He remains a hero of the American Revolution despite a chequered career.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://x.com/RogerWLawson )
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