Robert Campbell – Page 2 – Slugger O'Toole

What lessons can we learn from the making of modern Switzerland?

Robert Campbell on March 2, 2019, 8:10 am

| Readers 1975

Andrew Gallagher recently wrote an op-ed for Slugger (here) on the mechanics of Irish re-unification. This has become very topical following the UK’s Brexit referendum, with a feeling that ‘the harder the Brexit, the more likely is a border poll and reunification’. While readers of Slugger will have been only too aware of the potential problems that Brexit would bring, there was a very considerable lack of understanding in Britain, and particularly in England; there it was a ‘remote’ issue. …

The Ghost of Christmas Present…

Robert Campbell on December 23, 2018, 8:31 am

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One hundred and seventy-five years ago, on 19 December 1843, Charles Dickens’s novella A Christmas Carol was first published. The first edition of 6,000 copies sold out within a few days, before Christmas. It has remained one of his most popular works ever since. A few days ago, to celebrate this, the BBC screened Simon Callow’s one-man show, a performance of this set in a disused building. Callow declaims from memory, though his text, following Dickens’s own theatrical script, is quite abridged …

Margaret Thatcher And The Road to Brexit…

Robert Campbell on June 14, 2018, 12:16 pm

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It was while reading Will Hutton’s and Andrew Adonis’s recently published book Saving Britain that a curious and disturbing thought came into my head, unexpectedly and without invitation; it hasn’t gone away. I’m not a great fan of either author, though they can give useful insights at times. The book has two main parts, firstly, how Brexit came about, and secondly what can be done to save Britain. The thought occurred while reading the first part. Apart from this thought, my views on Brexit …

Dementia and the pathology of leadership…

Robert Campbell on June 7, 2018, 6:56 pm

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I described previously the problem of the ‘Pathology of Leadership’ (here), with a further post mainly devoted to dementia in our leaders (here). It’s not just political leaders who have health problems. I mentioned Ferdinand Sauerbruch in the second post. It’s difficult now to overemphasise just how renowned a surgeon he was in the inter-war period. From very modest origins, he rose to be the top surgeon in the top hospital, the Charité in Berlin, in Germany. He was deservedly internationally famous …

Brexit: what the hell happens now? And Brexit and Ireland – Two interesting books on Brexit…

Robert Campbell on May 16, 2018, 3:45 pm

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Let me be clear from the outset: I am a Remainer. I’ve not seen or read anything that would materially change my opinion. The European Union (EU) may have its problems, but overall I see it as a force for good. I live in N Ireland; here, we voted to remain in the EU. But the vote of the English outweighed this, and the vote in Scotland. The ‘will of the people’ is to Leave. The government triggered the Article …

Archbishops and Admirals…

Robert Campbell on January 13, 2018, 10:11 am

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What do you suppose the following had in common: the American President Abraham Lincoln and his assassin, John Wilkes Booth, the German Emperor Frederick (Friedrich) III, the author of Household Management, Mrs Isabella Beeton, the impressionist painter Édouard Manet, the post-impressionist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the gangster Al Capone, the composer Frederick Delius and the jazz pianist Scott Joplin, the Irish authors Oscar Wilde and James Joyce, the revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, the dictators Benito Mussolini and Idi Amin, the billionaire Howard …

Donald Trump and the pathology of leadership…

Robert Campbell on January 9, 2018, 6:49 pm

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Dame Iris Murdoch, the Dublin born novelist, won the Booker prize for fiction in 1978 for The Sea, The Sea. Her final novel, Jackson’s Dilemma, was published in 1995 and was met with a muted response from the critics. She was subsequently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease which was confirmed on post-mortem after her death in 1999. Subsequently, a textual examination of The Sea, The Sea, Jackson’s Dilemma and her first novel, Under The Net, showed that her vocabulary was considerably reduced and ‘commonplace’ in her final novel, but extensive …

What is the future of the NHS in the 21st century?

Robert Campbell on November 22, 2017, 9:36 am

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In his 1942 Report, Sir William Beveridge, a Liberal patrician, identified five ‘giant evils’ — Want, Ignorance, Squalor, Disease and Idleness. The Welfare State was founded in the immediate post-war period to improve the social conditions in the UK. The country was then bankrupt from war exertions; despite warnings, mainly from Conservatives, that the Welfare State was unaffordable, the Labour government, trusting in Maynard Keynes’ assertion that ‘we can afford whatever we want’ went ahead. The National Health Service was born …

The government’s idea of compelling doctors to work for a period in the NHS…

Robert Campbell on May 28, 2017, 9:19 am

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The general public regards the NHS as something between a ‘sacred cow’ and a ‘national treasure’, despite all the pressures that it is under. For decades it has provided a universal service, largely free* at the point of use. The public may have a collective memory of the abysmal provision before it was introduced; to see just what changes it made, you have to look for ‘the short and simple annals of the poor’ — you could start by reading …

The Belfast Bikes and trying to understand mindless vandalism…

Robert Campbell on April 26, 2017, 7:00 am

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The Irish Times reported recently that 210 or more than one-third of the 576 ‘Belfast Bikes’ had either been stolen or so damaged that they had been taken out of service. They contrasted this with the similar scheme in Dublin, where only twelve bikes were stolen or damaged in the first four years of the scheme. Belfast City Council said the problem was due to ‘mindless vandalism’; the Irish Times noted that the bike locks in Dublin were more substantial …

Rights are tricky things, especially when it comes to the ‘right to life of the unborn’ and the ‘equal right to life of the mother’…

Robert Campbell on April 20, 2017, 7:07 pm

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I get a distinct feeling of unease when I hear an individual or a group on the media complaining that their ‘rights’ to something have been infringed. I wouldn’t necessarily have thought that these people can make any such claim, but they are often vocal in their assertions. A group, for example, may take over a vacant property and ‘squat’ there; when there is an attempt at eviction they will claim that they have ‘squatters’ rights’. Perhaps they do have …

The Pathology of Leadership – What happens when our leaders are not fit enough to lead?

Robert Campbell on April 14, 2017, 7:39 pm

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Just over a year after the death of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965, his personal physician, Lord Moran, published Winston Churchill: the Struggle for Survival 1940 – 1960. Moran’s 800 page book was based on the diaries he had kept. Moran was vilified and excoriated for this; not only had be betrayed confidences, but he had broken the sacred bond of doctor-patient confidentiality. Some month later, when his critics had read the book, they saw that Churchill had been severely …

The Third Child and the ‘Law of Unintended Consequences’…

Robert Campbell on April 10, 2017, 1:58 pm

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The ‘Law of Unintended Consequences’ scored another ‘success’ recently, though only for women in N Ireland. The Criminal Law Act (Northern Ireland) Act 1967 was copied word for word from the equivalent legislation in Great Britain. The Act was a revision of the law, a tidying-up, eliminating the previous classification of misdemeanour and felony, and introducing the concept of an ‘arrestable offence’. The NI Act has a completely different Section 5, introduced specifically as anti-terrorist legislation. In this, it’s clear …

Should doctors strike?

Robert Campbell on April 20, 2016, 7:00 am

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There is to be a further strike by junior doctors in England next week. They will not work between 8 am and 5 pm on 26 and 27 April. In previous strikes, cover for emergencies was maintained; this time it is ‘all out’. (The strikes, and the challenges of the new contract, don’t apply in Wales, Scotland or N Ireland.) The strikes come as negotiations between junior doctors and the Department of Health have broken down. The negotiations were about …

No head injury is too severe to despair of, nor too trivial to ignore…

Robert Campbell on April 5, 2016, 8:35 am

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Following a recent boxing match with Chris Eubank Jnr, Nick Blackwell was taken to hospital and placed in an induced coma because of ‘bleeding on the brain’. Thankfully he has since awoken from his coma. The skull is a rigid bony box which contains the brain, blood vessels and a small quantity of fluid. When injured, any organ will swell. Within the skull there is little room for the brain to expand or swell. If the brain has been injured, initial medical …

Department of Health announce new guidelines on abortion in N Ireland

Robert Campbell on March 31, 2016, 9:22 am

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Good Friday this year was on March 25. March 25 is also Lady Day, the Feast of the Assumption, when Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary to tell her that she was with child. So you might well think it a strange, tactless, day for the Department of Health to announce new guidelines on abortion in N Ireland. Perhaps they thought it was a a good day to slip out news, perhaps the commemorations of the Rising would overshadow the …

John Bodkin Adams: An alleged serial killer from Randalstown suspected of killing over 160 people…

Robert Campbell on February 20, 2016, 7:00 am

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John Bodkin Adams was born in 1899 in Randalstown, educated at Coleraine Inst, and qualified in medicine from Queen’s Belfast. He worked as a GP in Eastbourne on the Sussex coast. He was tried for murder in the 1950s, but acquitted. Subsequently, there have been suggestions of political interference at the highest levels in his trial. He was described as the wealthiest GP in England. It is now believed that he could have murdered 160 of his patients. Wikipedia has …

Torture and Cognitive Dissonance

Robert Campbell on January 15, 2016, 9:43 am

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When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir? —JM Keynes A couple of recent, unrelated articles caught my eye. The New Scientist carried a review of ‘Why Torture doesn’t work’, a forthcoming book by Shane O’Mara, an academic at Trinity, Dublin. The scientific answer is that torture doesn’t work, in the sense of getting at ‘truth’, for people will say anything in an attempt to end their torment. People will falsely confess, something that’s “alarmingly …

George Monbiot on abortion “The religious conservatives who oppose these measures have blood on their hands.”

Robert Campbell on January 14, 2016, 12:36 pm

| Readers 1035

The Guardian ran a series of articles about abortion in N Ireland recently (details here). Now, George Monbiot has turned his analytical mind to this issue (here). His article is well worth reading in its entirety. He produced some remarkable information; whether legal or illegal, the incidence of abortion remains constant: Here is the fact that everyone debating abortion should know: there is no association between its legality and its incidence. In other words, banning abortion does not stop the …

So just what is traditional marriage anyway? A short history…

Robert Campbell on November 4, 2015, 5:32 pm

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Although the same-sex marriage vote just passed in the Assembly, it was vetoed by the DUP, as if same-sex marriage would seriously impinge on the sanctity of traditional marriage. Yet the concept of marriage—both the ceremony and the institution—has changed a lot throughout the millennia, and it continues to change. There’s a useful, broad summary here. Even within the Christian Church theological opinions have altered markedly over time, as have cultural beliefs. If being pregnant out of wedlock is unremarkable …