After some Visa Kerfuffles, I am back in my beloved1 England.
- is back, now with my friend at the helm! A must-subscribe.
A number of MPs, progress intellectuals and I have an open letter urging the government to accept John Fingleton’s recommendations on nuclear.
We’ve made enormous progress against extreme poverty, with the percentage of people in such a state falling by 75% in the last 30 years. But growth is stalling, and that may mean the number of people in extreme poverty will start growing again.
On the positive side of things, at least the US did fund the Global Fund?
- and interview on if you can just do things (and the concept of agency).
In the 1950s and 1960s, Egypt did a mass campaign to treat the population for schistosomiasis. But they didn’t use clean needles, and managed to give a large number of people hepatitis C. Iatrogenic harm at mass scale.
- finds that half of Britain’s fastest growing companies have a foreign-born founder.
My friend Danny Bate made The Economist’s best books of the year list.
This 1907 political cartoon about American imperialism makes the US look rad as hell.
No, really. I complain because I have fully culturally integrated into Britain.
On the Egypt Hep C story, the Egyptian govt with World Bank support apparently fully (if belatedly) solved the problem with a mass vaccination (and NCD screening) campaign in the late 2010s. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/28/health/hepatitis-c-cure-egypt.html (I heard World Bank staff regretting that this article didn't acknowledge the Bank's important role in the story)