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Gulf Today
a day ago
- Politics
- Gulf Today
Who cares that Britain is on course to be ‘minority white'?
Anand Menon, The Independent Language is a funny thing. This week, a new report appeared to warn that the white British population could be a minority in the UK within 40 years. And it has brought out the worst in some of us. An analysis of migration, birth and death rates by the University of Buckingham suggests the white British population is set to fall from its current 73 per cent, to 57 per cent by 2050, before becoming a minority by 2063. One newspaper's report explained, rather curiously, that white British is 'defined as people who do not have an immigrant parent'. Bad luck, then, all you non-white kids of an Irish, French or German parent. Unlucky, too, King Charles, Winston Churchill and Boris Johnson. By this metric, it seems that you no longer qualify as white British. Beyond this rank stupidity, there is of course something else going on here. This is less dog whistle than plain old whistle. Dodgy extrapolations posing as predictions. Few people are spared. We're informed, presumably with some regret, that there is going to be a rise in the number of foreign-born people and of second-generation immigrants, all of whom could well be British. Further on, Matthew Goodwin, the author of the report, shifts the goalposts one more time, asserting that by 'the end of the current century, most of the people on these islands will not be able to trace their roots in this country back more than one or two generations'. And then, of course, we have the equating of 'foreign-born and Muslim populations', implying, presumably, that if you're Muslim, you just don't cut it wherever you happen to have been born. If the problem that this country simply isn't white enough, someone may as well just come out and say it. Because it's clear the issue here isn't Britishness. There is a serious debate to be had not only about immigration, but also about integration. Happily, the country that most of us inhabit is a place where both ethnic and religious integration is a daily reality for millions of families, including my own. While I think we in the UK do rather better at this than many of our Western peers, there is still more that can and should be done. There is also a conversation worth having about what a manageable level of immigration might be, and whether immigration policy is fit for purpose. This, however, is not the way to have those conversations. Indeed, potentially inciting distrust and dislike between different communities is not how anyone sensible would go about, in the words of the report itself, 'informing, rather than polarising'. That is the only conclusion that I can draw from their sloppiness. If, after all, their aim really was to 'inform, rather than polarise', they might spend more time explaining that forecasts are not predictions. They might explain that there is good evidence that the total fertility rate among immigrants tends to fall over time. That the population projections Goodwin has used — calculations based on assumptions about fertility, mortality and migration — are already massively outdated, and become even less reliable the further forward one projects. But no, there is no such nuance to be found. Merely certainty that the findings are certain to spark a 'considerable degree of anxiety, concern and political opposition' from those who oppose immigration. And let's think about this in a global context for a moment. The world is changing, its balance of power is shifting steadily eastwards. Demographically — and I'm sorry about this — it is becoming less, not more, white. Relatively small countries like the UK will have to work ever harder to compete and to attract talent in this new world order. Do we really think that bemoaning the insidious impact of non-white foreigners who cannot trace their ancestry back several generations is going to help us in this task? But what I do know is that I'm not only not white, but apparently not British, either.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Eisenhower Warned Us About the 'Scientific Elite'
In President Dwight D. Eisenhower's famous 1961 speech about the dangers of the military-industrial complex, he also cautioned Americans about the growing power of a "scientific, technological elite." "The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by federal employment project allocations and the power of money is ever present," warned Eisenhower. The federal government had become a major financier of scientific research after World War II, and Eisenhower was worried that the spirit of open inquiry and progress would be corrupted by the priorities of the federal bureaucracy. And he was right. Today, many of the people protesting the Trump administration's cuts to federal funding for scientific research are part of that scientific, technological elite. But there's a good chance that slashing federal spending will liberate science from the corrupting forces that Eisenhower warned us about. "If you look at, particularly, 19th century Britain when science was absolutely in the private sector, we have some of the best science," says Terence Kealey, a professor of clinical biochemistry at the University of Buckingham and a critic of government science funding. "It comes from the wealth of the rich. Charles Darwin was a rich person. Even [scientists] who had no money had access to rich men's money one way or another. The rich paid for science." Kealey points out that Britain's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita outpaced that of 19th-century France and Germany—both of which generously subsidized scientific research—indicating that the return on state subsidies in the form of economic growth was low. As America emerged as a superpower, its GDP per capita surpassed Britain's. "So the Industrial Revolution was British, and the second Industrial Revolution, was American, and both were in the absence of the government funding of science," says Kealey. Thomas Edison's industrial lab produced huge breakthroughs in telecommunications and electrification. Alexander Graham Bell's lab produced modern telephony and sound recording, all without government money. The Wright Brothers—who ran a bicycle shop before revolutionizing aviation—launched the first successfully manned airplane flight in December 1903, beating out more experienced competitors like Samuel Langley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, who had received a grant from the War Department for his research. The notion that the government needs to accelerate scientific progress was based on America's experience during World War II, when federally funded research led to breakthroughs in rocketry, medicine, and radar. The Manhattan Project, which cost $27 billion in today's dollars, employed more than half a million people and culminated in the creation of the atomic bomb and the discovery of nuclear fission. "Lobbyists took the Manhattan Project and said, 'Look what government funding of science can do,' and they then twisted it," says Kealey. He acknowledges that the government can accomplish discrete, "mission-based" scientific projects—like racing toward a bomb—but he argues that this is very different from the generalized state funding of "basic research" that followed. In November 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a letter to Vannevar Bush, director of the U.S. Office of Science and Development during the war. Roosevelt instructed Bush to come up with a plan to make federal funding of scientific research permanent. "It has been basic United States policy that government should foster the opening of new frontiers," wrote Bush in calling for the nationalization of basic science research. "It opened the seas to clipper ships and furnished land for pioneers." Bush's treatise eventually led to the creation of the National Science Foundation in 1950. But it was a stunning accomplishment from America's greatest rival that would supercharge the nationalization of science. Sputnik, the world's first manmade satellite, seemed to confirm fears that the Soviets, with their centrally planned economy, might eclipse the U.S. in scientific innovation and weapons technology. That turned out to be completely wrong. But in 1957, Americans were terrified. After Sputnik, the Eisenhower administration tripled the budget of the National Science Foundation, which would provide federal grants to universities and labs. If federal funding of science is counterproductive, as Kealey argues, what explains the success of Sputnik and the Manhattan Project? Of course, government funding has led to major breakthroughs both during and after World War II, such as the synthesis and mass production of penicillin during World War II (though it was accidentally discovered in a contaminated hospital lab in 1928), cancer immunotherapy, artificial heart valves, and the gene-editing technology CRISPR. But this has to be compared to what might have otherwise happened. Good economics takes into account not only the seen, but the unseen. What are the unseen innovations the world misses out on when governments set the research agenda? "If the government funds science, it actually takes the best scientists out of industry puts them in the universities, and then industry in fact suffers," says Kealey. After Sputnik, government money pushed basic science out of the private sector. By 1964, two-thirds of all research and development was paid for by the federal government. "If you were a tool maker in Ohio in 1964, and you wanted to invest in R&D to make better tools because you wanted the beat your competitors in Utah, you wrote a grant to the Department of Commerce," says Kealey. "That's how nationalized American science was … Eisenhower's warning is absolutely correct." In academic science, process often takes precedence over outcomes. Researchers are incentivized to publish peer-reviewed papers that garner citations, which helps them secure prestigious academic posts and more federal grants. "What happens under peer review under the government is that there's homogenization, and only one set of ideas is allowed to emerge," says Kealey. The pressure to publish has created a positivity bias, where an increasing number of papers supporting a hypothesis are published, while negative findings are often buried. One biotech company could confirm the scientific findings of only six out of 53 "landmark" cancer studies. Swedish researchers found that up to 70 percent of positive findings in certain brain imaging studies could be false. A team of researchers re-examined 100 psychology studies and successfully replicated only 39. "There is still more work to do to verify whether we know what we think we know," they concluded. In an influential 2005 paper, Stanford University professor John Ioannidis flatly concluded that "most published research findings are false." He argued that the current peer review model encourages groupthink, writing that "prestigious investigators may suppress via the peer review process the appearance and dissemination of findings that refute their findings, thus condemning their field to perpetuate false dogma." "You end up with a monolithic view, and so you crush what's so important in science, which is different ideas competing in a marketplace of ideas," says Kealey. For decades, the federal government advised Americans to avoid saturated fat and prioritize carbohydrates based on the work of a researcher named Ancel Keys, who received substantial funding from the U.S. Public Health Service and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Today, the debate that Keys suppressed rages on. "Ancel Keys said, 'I have the solution, it's all to do with fats,'" says Kealey. "And very quickly, you couldn't get grants to the American Heart Association unless you subscribe to Ancel Key's theory of fat. Having captured this small little redoubt, he then moved to the [National Science Foundation], and then suddenly the whole world believed only one thing." More recently, Stanford's Jay Bhattacharya was attacked by the public health establishment for questioning the COVID-19 lockdowns. He told Reason there's an inherent conflict between the NIH director setting public health policy and doling out grant money. "If you have an NIH director that [sets policy and distributes money], they control the minds of so many scientists. It's an inherent conflict, and nobody's going to really speak. Nobody's going to disagree with them because that's the cash cow," says Bhattacharya, who President Donald Trump appointed head of the NIH. His agency now faces a proposed 40 percent spending cut. But if Kealey is right, slashing science funding could, counterintuitively, accelerate medical innovation in the long run. "If these changes can be managed in such a way that these scientists can move from the NIH into the private sector without massive disruptions to all the work and research they're doing, that will be to the benefit of America," says Kealey. It would be similar to what happened in the early 1970s, when Congress slashed the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's budget in half, laying the groundwork for the rise of the computer age. "What happens to all those scientists? Well, they all go out to Silicon Valley, because they've all been made redundant … And they invent the modern world," says Kealey. "New frontiers of the mind are before us, and if they are pioneered with the same vision, boldness, and drive with which we have waged this war we can create a fuller and more fruitful employment and a fuller and more fruitful life," wrote Roosevelt in his letter to Bush. But maybe Roosevelt drew the wrong conclusions from the war. "Vision, boldness, and drive" can be found amongst the dreamers and tinkerers working in private laboratories, who are often too iconoclastic to be good candidates for government research grants but whose ideas, simply, work. "It's technology that keeps science honest," says Kealey. "If you're a scientist and you make an observation which can be tested, 'If you do this, the rocket will go that way, if you do that, the rocket will go this way,' then as a scientist you have to be honest because you'll soon be found out. But if your money comes from the government and it comes by peer review from committees, and the committees subscribe to a false paradigm, no one is going to test your paradigm." Before government money flooded in, private research facilities like Bell Labs were centers of innovation. AT&T's research lab discovered radio astronomy in 1933 when its scientists tried to figure out why its telephone wires experienced interference the longer they stretched. "You have a mission, you do research, and many times you make discoveries in pure science that actually are very valuable to everyone else," says Kealey. Vannevar Bush and FDR were wrong: The private sector can push forward the scientific frontier. In fact, federal funding of R&D in America has flatlined for decades, while business investment keeps going up. Abandoning NASA's Cold War space race monopoly, the government has outsourced rocket design to competing private companies. The world can barely keep pace with the breakthroughs announced by Silicon Valley's privately funded AI labs. "Science in America today is actually more private than it was in 1940. People just haven't seen it. No one wants to talk about it because there are no votes in privatizing science," says Kealey. "I would like to see that process continued." Let's heed Eisenhower's warning. The question is not whether or not America should continue conducting scientific research. It's about who is in control. Photo credits: MARILYN HUMPHRIES, MARILYN HUMPHRIES/2025 Marilyn Humphries/Newscom; Ron Adar, M10s/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Brian Branch Price/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group/Newscom; Don & Melinda Crawford/Don and Melinda Crawford/UCG/Universal Images Group/Newscom; Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group/Newscom; Gina M Randazzo/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Thomas Müller/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom; Chris Kleponis - Pool via CNP/Newscom; Jim LoScalzo - Pool via CNP/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom Editor: John Osterhoudt Graphics: Lex Villena The post Eisenhower Warned Us About the 'Scientific Elite' appeared first on
Daily Mirror
25-04-2025
- Daily Mirror
Lord of the Rings fan died while on 'dream trip' to locations in the film
Joseph Snode's mum Elaine said their family are all massive Lord of the Rings fans, which is what drew him to New Zealand. She said: 'He wanted to visit the film sets, which was thrilling for him and for us to hear' A Lord of the Rings fan was tragically killed in a car crash while hitchhiking to locations used in the films. Joseph Snode, 26, from Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, was in a vehicle on his way to Christchurch in New Zealand when the driver giving him a lift lost control and crashed into a wall, an inquest heard. The former film and photography student had graduated with a first class degree from the University of Buckingham in High Wycombe before taking a bar manager job at to fund the backpacking trip, which had included a trip to the Hobbiton set. Explaining the circumstances of Mr Snode's death, Coroner Michelle Brown told Essex Coroner's Court he had been "offered a lift by a lady and her teenage children". The woman was driving on the Otira Highway, on New Zealand's South Island, when the crash happened near Jacksons railway station on January 28 last year. Ms Brown said: "The car drifted to the left side of the road before overcorrecting, rotating and sliding across both lanes. The rear left of the car hit a stone wall. Mr Snode, who was in the left rear passenger seat, died at the scene." Ms Brown said it was "unknown" how the driver, who was later sentenced after admitting a charge of the careless use of a vehicle causing death, came to crash the vehicle. She ruled Mr Snode died from multiple head and chest injuries in a road traffic collision. Mr Snode's body was repatriated to the UK after a £10,000 fundraising campaign, which also covered the funeral costs. On the online campaign page, his mother, Elaine, wrote: "He was literally living his dream life before it was taken from him." She added her son was "always full of life and a loving, caring, intelligent young man" who she described as "one-in-a-billion". Speaking at the time of her son's death, Elaine the family had been overwhelmed by the wealth of loving messages from across the world. She said: "He was loved by lots of people which has been obvious from all the donations we've had so far. Every day we've been hearing from people that he's met and stayed in touch with. He had a passion for photography. This was one of the reasons why he wanted to travel; he wanted to do photography and filming as he went around the world. "He was always full of smiles, he made friends with everyone that he met. He was planning on travelling after leaving uni, but then Covid reared its ugly head and stopped that. He worked through uni at the student union bar and was promoted. He worked very hard in that for four years saving money. He worked at festivals like Glastonbury and Reading. He was asked to do higher up positions each time; he ended up managing people. He again made so many friends there. "A lot of people said he was the sort of person that would help them if they were struggling, any problems he was always there. He was so kind and considerate, he just had a lovely way about him. He never judged anyone, he accepted people for who they were and tried his best to get on with everyone." Elaine said their family are all massive Lord of the Rings fans, which is what drew Joseph to New Zealand. She continued: "He wanted to visit the film sets, which was thrilling for him and for us to hear. He stayed with his friend, we were just constantly getting photos from him and stories about people he was meeting. He loved being with people but also loved being on his own; going for a long hike, pitching his tent and being on his own with nature." "He loved music, he had different genres for different times that he liked to share. Travelling is something he wanted to do since quite a young age, he never wanted to settle down in one place, he liked to meet people. He had his backpack and tent and would go on a walk and go down to the park with friends."
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Political expert predicts three-step method Vladimir Putin would deploy to start World War 3
A political expert has shared a chilling prediction about what he thinks would happen if Vladimir Putin were to trigger wide-scale war in Europe. It would seem that Russian propagandists sure love nothing more than mouthing off about the prospect of global war and nuclear annihilation, don't they. In the last couple of weeks we've had pro-Kremlin talking heads tell British and French troops that they 'will all die' should they step foot in Ukraine. Russia has also previously wheeled out simulations showing how a nuclear strike would 'sink' the entire country and 'leaked' lists of nuclear targets in the UK. The Russian threats have also coincided with a series of ominous warnings from EU leaders urging citizens to prepare 72-hour survival kits should the unthinkable happen and ministers in Germany calling for children to receive civil defence training. So it's understandable if you're feeling like things are pretty apocalyptic at the moment. Thankfully threats from the east haven't materialised into actual acts of war as of yet, but if war were to spill out across the European continent then one political expert believes it wouldn't end well for us Brits. Outlining how the Russian leader could declare war, the University of Buckingham's Professor Anthony Glees explained to The Mirror last February that conflict with Putin would unfold in three steps. Professor Glees began by outline a hypothetical situation by stating that should Russia be able to declare victory in Ukraine, Putin would then follow up by putting pressure on former USSR countries which joined NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This includes countries such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Hungary. He believed the Russian leader would also attempt to 'subvert our democratic system' in order to divide nations such as the UK. "His skill set is of the Soviet intelligence community, and their aim has always been to make threats, to subvert and to hollow out their potential enemies," he explained. Should war break out and nuclear weapons not be deployed, Professor Glees stated that it would be a 'war of attrition' as the two sides gradually ground each other down. Meanwhile things would also become pretty grim on the home front, as resources such as 'fresh food' and 'petrol' would become scarce. "We would run out of fresh food in days. We would quickly see a black market for home-produced food and clothing," he said. The historian also speculated that Russia could target 'critical national infrastructure' in order to inflict maximum upheaval on our day-to-day lives. "Petrol and diesel would be virtually unobtainable for ordinary people. Medicines would quickly be subject to severe rationing and would soon disappear altogether." He also suggested that conscription, something which the UK government has previously ruled out, would be put into use. The final stage of Professor Glees rather depressing scenario involves the UK becoming 'a Russian colony' and led by a pro-Kremlin puppet leader while resistance movements would organise from places such as Wales and Scotland. He predicts this scenario could take as little as a month to come true in the advent of conventional war, which would be a tall order for a country which has taken just 20 percent of Ukraine in three years. If this is the alternative to nuclear war, then maybe the bomb doesn't sound too bad after all.
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
65th Honorary Doctorate of Achyuta Samanta from the University of Buckingham
BHUBANESWAR, India, April 11, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The well-known social worker, educationist, and founder of KIIT and KISS, Dr. Achyuta Samanta, ( was conferred honorary doctorate (Degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa) by the University of Buckingham, United Kingdom, during its Graduation Ceremony on April 10, 2025. This is the 65th honorary doctorate of Achyuta Samanta. The recognition underscores Dr. Samanta's remarkable contributions to society through education and social service. "For the last 33 years, I have been working relentlessly for the betterment of society. This honorary doctorate will remain a cherished milestone for me," Dr Samanta said, expressing his gratitude to the University for the distinction. Dr. Samanta has now been awarded 65 honorary doctorates by prestigious universities and institutions worldwide, acknowledging his outstanding contributions to education and social service. While conferring the degree, the university commended his exceptional efforts in transforming lives through education and community development. The University of Buckingham is the only independent university in the UK with a Royal Charter. It is the oldest of Britain's independent universities. The Senate was astonished to learn about Dr. Achyuta Samanta's life story, which is one of inspiration and hope. It is a testament to the indomitable human spirit, and the power of hard work, perseverance, and social responsibility to transform lives and create a better world. Among others, Dame Mary Archer, Chancellor, the University of Buckingham; Prof. James Tooley, Vice-Chancellor; Prof. Harriet Dunbar-Morris, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, as well as Council Members and Senate Members were also present on the occasion. Photo: View original content to download multimedia:
