Positive thinking

Danny Dorling, University of Oxford and Sally Tomlinson, University of Oxford   It was a man called Reginald Brabazon, Earl of Meath, who in 1903, two years after the death of Queen Victoria, suggested that her birthday, May 24, should be renamed Empire Day and become a day for patriotic celebration. His idea began to take off the following year and slowly spread in popularity. In 1909, Brabazon attended a day in Preston where a crowd of 20,000 people watched boys and girls parade past in what they were told was the national dress of each colony. When World War I patriotic fervour was at its height, in 1916, the government gave in to calls for the day to be marked with an official state ceremony. But it wasn’t until the 1920s that the official celebrations really began to take off, and in May 1926, Empire Day became closely linked to the work of the newly established Empire Marketing Board . British school children all received a free mug and cake and were routinely ...

   Danny Dorling, University of Oxford and Lucinda Hiam, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine In the first seven weeks of 2018, over 10,000 (12.4%) more people died in England and Wales than was usual for the time of year . No official explanation from government health officials for this sharp rise in mortality has been forthcoming. It became crystal clear in early 2018 that the health and social care system was not coping with the demands being placed upon it. On January 2, in an unprecedented step by the NHS, thousands of non-urgent operations were cancelled. Many hospitals were already at, or beyond, their safe working levels, even though the weather was warmer than normal so any surge in demand was not due to unusually cold conditions. Another suggestion has been that the main reason for there being so much demand was a rise in influenza. Our analysis of the first available data finds that flu only accounted for a very small part of the o...