Thursday, March 11, 2021

Six of the Best 998

"Not so long ago, Britain was the envy of the world. It had the world’s best healthcare system. You could walk down the street, go to the doctor, and literally have the world’s best healthcare on your doorstep. It had the world’s finest public broadcaster - the BBC. The middle class was expanding, growing in wealth and happiness. It was part of the world’s most successful political union, the EU - and Brits had the right to live and work across Europe, something that many Americans would kill for." Umair Haque on how Britain became the dumbest society in the world.

Matthew Green says the Royal Family is a factory of human misery. He's right.

Eliane Glaser argues that homeschooling has revealed the absurdity of England’s national curriculum: "Six- and seven-year-olds are now expected to know prepositions, conjunctions and subordinate clauses; eight- and nine-year-olds, noun phrases expanded by the addition of modifying adjectives, preposition phrases, fronted adverbials and determiners; nine- and 10-year-olds, modal verbs and relative pronoun cohesion. I don’t even know what some of these terms mean, and I’ve got a PhD in English."

An internet that promotes democratic values instead of destroying them - that makes conversation better instead of worse - lies within our grasp, say Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev.

Andrew Nette chooses his top 10 British gangster films.

"Hidden away in the valley close to the village of Chilworth, near Guildford, are the ruins of an industry that dominated the area for almost 300 years – the manufacturing of gunpowder." Caroline Swan of Flickering Lamps takes us there.

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