I’m currently in Slovenia and Croatia, finalising the delivery of our new Whisky stills. It’s the 30th anniversary of the Yugoslavian civil war, and the horror of the 90s makes it too easy to forget what a unique country Yugoslavia was. Although Yugoslavia was part of the Communist world it followed it’s own path, equally … Read more
No. We are not increasing our nuclear arsenal, despite what you might have read. The UK has announced plans to raise the cap on it’s nuclear stockpile by 40%. This has been announced as an increase in our nuclear arsenal, but it isn’t. We have increased the maximum size of our nuclear capacity, not the … Read more
Hegel remarks…. that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Karl Marx 18th Brumaire. I get reminded of this quote on a daily basis when people make comparisons between our current age and the 1930s, in particular … Read more
This is my own personal tribute to Jive Bunny and the Master Mixers. 26 80s pop hits, all mixed together. Just work out which one is which PM me your answers or send them to jon.chadwick1@btinternet.com I’ll publish the answers and the winners tomorrow evening
In the mess of Brexit a rather good news story slipped out. DH have finally agreed a deal with Vertex Pharmaceuticals to give NHS patients unlimited access to Orkambi, Symkevi and Kalydeco, life changing drugs for Cystic Fibrosis. Just a shame it took so long. https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/Health/Correspondence/2019-20/19-10-24-letter-from-NHS-England-cystic-fibrosis-drugs.pdf Six months ago I wrote about the rather shabby … Read more
I like knowing things. For as long as I can remember I have enjoy learning stuff, memorising lists: Prime Ministers; Acts of Parliaments; Dates of Construction of historical monuments; Bass players in The Fall. Facts. I love lists of stuff so much that Wikipedia is actually named after me. It’s full name is JonChadwikipedia, although … Read more
If you follow public policy long enough you see the same shit policies over and over again. This isn’t surprising. After a while an administration runs out of steam, runs out of ideas. They start asking Civil Servants what they should do, and Civil Servants tend to give the same advice to Ministers regardless of … Read more
Firstly – an apology, I had this drafted for the 70th anniversary of the NHS a few weeks back, but didn’t get a chance to finish it. Part of the delay was because I distracted by things like holidays, but also because it turned out to be a bigger task than I thought. Much bigger. … Read more
No. “Productivity isn’t everything, but, in the long run, it is almost everything. A country’s ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker.” Paul Krugman This is why I think that Paul Krugman is wrong, despite his Nobel prize. People value human contact … Read more
The two headlines above, one from the Washington Post, and one from the Guardian are typical of recent press stories about the rise in inequality . Inequality is apparently the defining characteristic of our current age. The Guardian has an excellent series of articles chronicling how inequality shapes the modern world, while Oxfam have published … Read more