@Rosylone Hospital nursing hit a high point some decades ago: Great camaraderie - essential to help all get through sad and difficult times; Superb attention to hygiene and personal care - that made patients happy to be in hospital; Adherence to protocol - but not unquestioning or blind.
@serialsockthief He will be a secret agent working for a foreign power. Write several meaningless phrases in a notebook, and watch how he starts to frown.
@zatzi In fact, if Britain HAD remained, Brussels had advanced plans to force the City of London to “share” its functions with a swathe of EU cities. Breaking up the City likely would have ended its usefulness - tied to deals occurring within one square mile on the shake of a hand.
The 1920-21 depression was the sharpest economic contraction in American history, yet you've probably never heard of it. Industrial production collapsed 32%. Unemployment spiked from 4% to 12% in twelve months. By every measure, this downturn dwarfed the initial shock of 1929.
President Warren Harding faced enormous pressure to "do something." Labor leaders demanded public works programs. Businessmen begged for bailouts and trade protection. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon advised Harding to slash government spending and let wages fall. Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover (yes, that Hoover) pushed for massive federal intervention.
Harding chose Mellon. The federal budget dropped from $6.4 billion to $3.2 billion in two years. No stimulus packages. No bailouts. No alphabet soup of new agencies. Government employment fell 40%. When you let markets clear, they clear fast.
The recovery started in July 1921. By 1923, unemployment had dropped to 2.4% and industrial production reached new highs. The entire episode lasted eighteen months from peak to full recovery. Compare that to Japan's lost decade of intervention, or the European debt crisis that dragged on for years, or our own jobless recovery after 2008.
Most economics textbooks omit this episode because liquidating malinvestments and allowing price adjustments works exactly as free market theory predicts: a fact that destroys the Keynesian narrative that government must spend its way out of recessions. Politicians today claim they learned the lessons of the 1930s, but they studiously ignore the more important lesson of 1921.
@this_not_News Famous US neurosurgeon Prince Ayub Ommaya noted - when he studied at Oxford in the 1950s - what he admired most about Britain was seeing outside his window on a cold, rainy night a cyclist stopped at a red light, with no other traffic in sight.
@twink_death When you don’t have a written language, you don’t have a history. You have stories - and can sometimes patch together a so-called “oral history” using fairly independent accounts. But nothing can be cross checked and verified.
@JenniferTilly An alien abducted them.
But - if they don’t look tasty - they sometimes return them quick.
Then you can continue your conversation normally.
@Peston Doubt Starmer will fight. He doesn’t want any messy stuff dragged out during a leadership contest; His own “corner” may see their best chances in switching rapidly to a new leader; And “ten year Keir” was always a fantasy.