This issue of Inspire, a completely pupil-run publication, truly shows off the passion and knowledge of Marlborough’s academic scholars, seen through the variety and quality of the essays within. With the ability to write about anything that they choose, the scholars featured have been able to expand their knowledge on their chosen subject and provide a way for readers to learn about their article’s topic. We hope you enjoy this edition as much as we do.
Thank you
We would like to start by thanking everyone who has worked behind the scenes to help make this fantastic publication possible. Firstly, we would like to thank Mrs Jordan for her help, who has worked tirelessly to ensure that this magazine is available for everyone. We would also like to thank the Head of Academic Scholars, Mr Moule, for his trust in us, and giving us the opportunity to take this publication into our own hands. Finally, we would like to thank the academic scholars who have taken time to write an essay. Without you, this publication would have never have gotten off the ground, so thank you.
From the editorial team: Milo, Theo, Obaayaa, Sarah, Eloise, Helena, Arthur, Faith and Clo.
Unveiling the Secrets of Europa: Is There
Life Beneath the Ice?
‘All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landing there’. These were the last words communicated by a doomed super-intelligent alien race to their human predecessors in the famous sequel to Arthur C. Clarkes: Space Odessey. The inclusion of this mysterious moon in the popular science fiction novel captivated imaginations and spurred scientific curiosity. It was evident that as early as 1982; murmurs and speculation as to whether there could be conditions for life to form on Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon were present. But what really invigorates the exploration and eventual voyage of this seemingly random satellite?
Discovered by famed astronomer Galileo Galilei on the 8th of January 1610, the moon was named after a lover of Zeus (the Greek counterpart to Jupiter). Receiving only 4% of the sun’s energy, temperatures average at around
Jack H (L6)
-160 C, and an average person would scoff at the chance of life when kilometres thick icecrust envelopes its surface. However, NASA is continuing to devote an enormous $5.2 billion over the lifecycle of their project to send a probe to explore the intriguing nature of Europa’s magnetic field and geological features, among other goals. In this article we will delve into the fascinating arguments supporting the claim that life could be possible on Europa, and the astounding depth of current research.
A Subsurface Ocean Beneath the Ice?
From a distance, observers have long noticed the obscure nature of Europa’s surface. Unlike almost every other natural satellite, Europa’s surface is smooth – not obscured by craters formed over millennia of asteroid collisions. Although at first baffled, scientists have now compiled a theory to the constant replenishment of Europa’s crust; yet we need to dive into the physics rooted in this explanation.
Within Jupiter’s core, pressures and temperatures are so extreme that hydrogen is believed to take on the form of a metallic liquid. As a result, an extremely powerful magnetic field is created, not just in strength but in size. If magnetic fields were to be visible, the naked human eye would judge it to be roughly twice the size of the moon in the night sky. Alone this magnetic field is purposeless, however during the Galilean probe flyby of Europa in February 1997 it recorded some interesting data within its magnetometer: there was a strong magnetic field around Europa too. Like Earth’s magnetic poles, Jupiter’s aren’t aligned with its geographical poles. The powerful yet unbalanced magnetosphere of a spinning Jupiter induces a magnetic field on Europa.
This shifting magnetic field requires the existence of a fluid layer within the moon capable of conducting electricity, one which data estimates is only around 10 kilometres under the icy crust – possibly a salty ocean conducting a magnetic field through its dissolved mineral ions. This subterranean ocean could be driving the renewal of Europa’s crust, explaining its smooth landforms. Furthermore, the Galilean Probe mission data from 1997 saw its spectrometer recorded possible evidence for hydrated salts, sulfuric acid, and possibly remnants of certain bacteria that scar its surface with reddish- brown streaks. Studies from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory support this as sodium chloride was
found to turn the same brownish colour when exposed to similar radiation levels found in the Jovian region. This strengthens the idea that the ocean could contain chemical properties conducive to life. But what is preventing this subsurface ocean from freezing?
Tidal Flexing
Europa’s orbital resonance with nearby moons Io and Ganymede induce an interesting process known as tidal flexing. The three moons are locked in a gravitational ‘dance’, one that sees Europa’s slightly elliptical orbit around Jupiter exacerbated by the gravitational ‘push’ and ‘pull’ of the two moons respectively. The result: Europa’s mass being constantly tugged and squeezed. This subsequent friction creates intense heat to prevent this potential ocean from freezing solid, and the amplitude of this flexing provides additional support to the theory of a sub-surface ocean. If the whole of the moon is solid – Europa should flex by as little as 1 metre in diameter, yet 30 metres of flexing is recorded due to the incompressible nature of this ocean containing twice the volume of water on Earth.
This heat source is essential to life in a habitat that receives only 4% of the sun’s energy. Like deep sea hydrothermal vents on Earth, magma pushed up by this flexing would inject valuable ingredients for life such as sulphur and methane that have been proven to sustain
microbial metabolisms. Evidence suggests these oceans have been present for around 4 billion years, a surplus of time needed for simple life to evolve around concentrations of heat and mineral-rich environments.
Potential water vapor plumes have been frequently detected by NASAs Hubble Space telescope every decade. If these plumes are connected to this ocean, they provide a direct way of sampling signs of life than the alternative of drilling through kilometres if ice. Like how biologists fly drones through whale spouts to collect data on petri dishes, astrobiologists could navigate NASAs Europa Clipper through these plumes to analyse their content on its mass spectrometer – potentially gathering information about lifeforms subsiding within the Europan ocean.
Surface Features and Geology
Further evidence for a dynamic, water rich environment can be found through analysis of Europa’s surface. Its chaotic terrain of broken, rotated, and tilted ice blocks suggest heat from below may be causing the ice to fracture and move, similar to how convection currents in our mantle dictate tectonic crust movement.
Moreover, curve-like lines that are arcuate in shape scour the icy surface. These cracks could have propagated along the changing stress field of Europa (thanks to tidal flexing) at around the rate of a human walking. NASAs Clipper probe aims to study these cycloids in more detail, perhaps to gather more understanding on the three-dimensional nature of these landforms.
To conclude, Europa presents multiple compelling pieces of evidence pointing towards the possibility of life, from its subsurface ocean and tidal heating to its magnetic field and surface geology. Finding life on Europa would revolutionize our understanding of biology, chemistry, and physics whilst opening profound questions as to where and how life could exist elsewhere in the universe. So deep is the desire to find extraterrestrial life that the Galileo probe was deliberately crashed into Jupiter on September 21st, 2003, to avoid potential contamination of Europa. Yet the ethical matter in question is this: ‘Why should we prioritise seeking out new life over nurturing our own?’.
Should foreign judges have a continuing role on the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal?
Bella F (Re)
Foreign judges have been sitting on Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal (the highest court in Hong Kong) since the handover of Hong Kong from the UK to China in 1997. However, there are different opinions on whether foreign judges should continue to sit on the court. Some take the view that the presence of respected foreign judges gives legitimacy to China’s increasingly authoritarian approach to Hong Kong whiles others feel that foreign judges are more willing to withstand political pressure and uphold the rule of law. Without them, some say that the Hong Kong government would be more likely to bend to the pressure from Beijing and the Chinese government. Originally, there were 24 foreign judges and there are currently only 6 judges left, with 5 having left in the last year.
Hong Kong was a British colony until 1997, and so the foundation for their legal system follows the English Common Law System. Before 1997, the highest court in Hong Kong was the Privy Council, which was essentially a UK judicial body. After the handover, the Court of Final Appeal took over as the highest court for Hong Kong. Foreign judges from around the world, including England, were invited to sit in the court as judges. The theory behind this was that the local judges would be able to gain knowledge from more experienced judges until they became more established. The Court of Final Appeal made decisions by following the common law system based on the judicial precedent which meant that they made decisions with influence from decisions made for similar laws and circumstances.
In recent years, Hong Kong has experienced many protests for numerous
reasons, but all broadly regarding the relationship between Hong Kong and China. The protests in 2014, often called ‘Umbrella Protests’, were addressing China’s decision to have all candidates for the position of Chief Executive and other important political positions to be screened and approved by Beijing before they running. The name ‘Umbrella Protests’ derived from the fact that umbrellas were used to shield the protesters from tear gas and pepper spray that the police used to try and control the situation, and these protests are now seen as a symbol of peaceful resistance. The 2019 student protests were regarding China’s proposal for an extradition bill that meant that suspects for supposed crimes in Hong Kong could be sent to mainland China for trial, and the overall feeling that Hong Kong was losing its autonomy.
In response to these protests, China imposed the National Security law on Hong Kong. The aims of the law were supposed to prevent and punish acts that might endanger the national security as stated by the law, address and stop any terrorist attacks, and stop subversion, which means to stop people from trying to overthrow or take over Hong Kong. However, it essentially allowed Beijing to look at every candidate for any senior government role and make sure that they are a supporter of the Chinese Communist Party regime, stop political protests, and remove pro-democracy politicians even from elected bodies. Overall, following the implementation of the National Security Law and a broader crackdown by government authorities, all political opposition in Hong Kong has been largely removed, and the government of Hong Kong is required to adopt a pro-China stance and makes decisions
largely unchecked. These reforms also resulted in a loss of freedom of the press which meant that anyone who wrote against or criticised the Hong Kong government or the Chinese regime, could be arrested. One of the most well-known cases of this, was Jimmy Lai, the former owner and editor of Apple Daily. On 10 Augst 2020, Jimmy Lai was arrested along with a few colleagues for fraud and illegal cooperation with foreign countries. He is a British citizen, but has been in jail for three and a half years and is in the process of going through trials for various allegations under the National Security Law, he is currently at risk of spending the rest of his life in prison.
Most countries have a national security law of some description, and it is generally to give police powers to investigate and pursue people of suspicion that are potentially a threat to national security. The UK, for example, is a Western democracy which has national security laws, but the difference is that the government is elected by the people and the press are free to challenge and examine the government and their decisions as they wish to. The UK also has other political
parties to challenge and offer another view to the government’s view on issues. There are also limits to what laws could be enacted, and an entirely independent judiciary to make sure the rule of law is respected and not subject to political interference. There are also legally protected human rights, and a strong body of human rights lawyers willing to challenge the government’s decisions.
There are two main opposing views on this issue which are both important to consider when deciding whether foreign judges should be on the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal. On the one hand, if there is no longer any political opposition in Hong Kong and the National Security Law makes sure that Hong Kong basically has to follow Beijing’s orders and laws, it paints a bad image by having western judges sit on the Court of Final Appeal. It could give the impression that these western judges (who include some of the most senior judges from the UK) agree with the approach of the government and the Chinese regime when in reality, there is little that can be done. Many may view the judges, and by association, the
UK, as accepting Beijing’s treatment of Hong Kong to be legitimate. If a foreign judge has a case which results in a decision that favours the Hong Kong government and the National Security Law, does it add legitimacy to what, in general, the West would regard as an illegitimate law? So is it for the best that foreign judges aren’t there so that it doesn’t seem like they are backing up the Chinese regime?
On the other hand, by having foreign judges there, does it add a more objective and potentially less biased view on a situation? Foreign judges can be there to help interpret the law in a way that the Hong Kong or Chinese government may disagree with, they have a more senior status and are seen as respected judges. They may be able and more comfortable to stand up to any political interference than a local judge would. However, some think that this is no longer possible. Lord Sumption was a British judge that sat on the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal until 7 June 2024 when he resigned. Lord Sumption published a statement when he resigned in which he said ‘I have reached the point eventually where I don’t think that my continuing presence on the court is serving any useful purpose.’ In other words, his view is that there was no way that the court could stay
unpolitical and not bend to the pressure from the government to reach certain decisions. As you can see, Lord Sumption tried to help and withstand the pressure of the Chinese and Hong Kong governments, but he doesn’t feel like there is any way to do so anymore. A further concern is the foreign judges are now prevented from hearing cases involving certain aspects of the National Security Law, which arguably further undermines the benefit they can bring to the court. So, can foreign judges on the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal continue to provide any real benefit to the people of Hong Kong?
Ultimately, the purpose for the foreign judges being on the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal was to bring experience to the court while Hong Kong was still establishing it’s government and to help local judges. Now that Hong Kong has been running independently for twenty-seven years, the reason for foreign judges being on the court is much less relevant. At the same time, with the political situation in Hong Kong today, it seems likely that the ability of the court to remain objective and free from political interference will be increasingly challenged. In that light, perhaps the time has come for the remaining foreign judges to leave Hong Kong’s Courts.
Auction theory: an overview
I’m certain that we are all aware of auctions. A rapidly speaking auctioneer sells items to a room of people all trying to outbid each other for art or furniture, etc.; in fact, auctions are used from the treasury selling bonds, to a firm’s IPO, to deciding who gets 5G.
Why are auctions efficient?
Auctions are surprisingly very time efficient, if you can get all possible buyers into one room on a specific date, it prevents them waiting for the good to decrease in value and thus speeds up the selling process. Auctions are also great at transferring information, provided that it is an open auction, seeing what other consumers are willing to bid may tell you that they know something that you don’t. This is important as information asymmetries are incredibly damaging to business deals and the economy as a whole. This information flow helps the seller the most, as the buyers determine the price themselves. Since it is optimal to bid according to how much you value the good being auctioned, the seller receives appropriate compensation relative to the sold good. They are also staggeringly useful for the government as they reduce corruption in these sales as it is hard to do a crafty behind closed doors deal in a room full of people.
Types of auctions
Auctions can be open or sealed bid, and first price or second price. An open auction is one where your bid is public to all other bidders, a sealed bid auction is one where your bid is hidden. A first price auction is one where the highest bidder pays the price that he offered, and a second price auction is an auction where the highest bidder pays the second highest bid.
In practice, these types of auctions boil down to either the English auction: a second
Cosimo T (L6)
price, open, ascending price auction, or the Dutch auction, which is a first price, open, descending price auction. Interestingly, the classic auction which one all thinks about when one hears the word auction is actually a second price auction, not a first price auction as one might assume. If there is no minimum increment for increasing your bid, if the highest my competitor bids is 100 USD, I can bid 100 USD and 1 cent, and thus I have effectively taken the second price. Now it must be stated that these auctions will all lead to the same thing provided that all bidders are risk neutral. A risk neutral person will, if offered 50 USD or a 50% chance at 100 USD or nothing, not care which one they choose. In basic auction theory all people are modelled as risk neutral, however in real life this is far from the truth and very few people are risk neutral.
Auction strategies
In theory, first price sealed bid auctions are just as good as second price auctions however the calculations that determine your optimal bid are complicated and thus issues arise when using this bidding system. First price auctions have a slight problem in reality as the optimal strategy is to bid lower than you value the good. Bidding higher than you value the good will only lose you money and bidding how much you value the good is not optimal in this scenario. An, albeit unrealistic, example of this is: if I value a good at 50 USD, and I know that the second highest bidder values it at 40 USD, I can lower my bid to 41 USD in order to save 9 USD and still get the good. While in real life you will not know how much the second highest bidder is bidding, this example still shows that the optimal strategy is to deflate your bid. One obvious problem that arises from this is that the seller has less consistent payouts which are lower than they might be in a
different auction format. Therefore, missing out on revenue. However, another problem is this: say that I still value the good at 50 USD and deflate my bid to 45 USD, but my competitor who originally valued the good at 40 USD now values it at 46 USD and bids 46 USD. Even though I valued the good more than he did, my competitor now has it. Not only is this a problem for me, but it is also a problem for everyone as this is not allocatively efficient and thus leads to negative externalities on the people. He who values the good the highest has the lowest costs of using the good, thus if someone who doesn’t value the good as much wins the auction, the increased costs of production get shifted onto the people, making goods more expensive and reducing supply.
Second price auctions deal with this very effectively, however; in a second price auction it is most optimal to bid exactly how much you value the good. Say that once again I value a good at 50 USD but my competitor values it at 40 USD, since I know I will pay the price of 40 USD, my risk of not getting the good only increases as I move my bid closer to 40 USD. Thus, lowballing the bid adds no benefit to the bidder. But what about raising my bid by a huge amount? Since I know I will be paying the second price anyway. Let’s say that once again the good has a value of 50 USD to me, I bid 1000 USD in order to be sure that I get the good, I will likely win the bid but the value of the good to my competitor turned out to be 999 USD, I now have to pay 999 USD for a good that was only worth 50 USD to me, thus inflating our bid isn’t optimal either. Especially as it leads to the aforementioned negative externalities on the economy. So, our optimal strategy in a second price auction is to bid exactly how much we value the good.
The winners curse
In very rare circumstances, where the good is of an unknown but common value, a phenomenon known as the winner’s curse can occur. An example of this is buying the rights to
drill for oil via auction. We assume that the value of the oil is the same to the many oil companies bidding for the drilling. The oil companies will all have researchers and experts telling them how much oil they think is there but since they are all in essence guessing, the findings of the researchers will vary massively. The companies whose researchers tell them that there is lots of oil there will likely bid higher as they believe lots of oil is there. However, the researchers of those who bid highest will have thus estimated a far higher value than the average researcher thus it is likely that there will not be as much oil as these researchers thought and therefore the bid will be far too high. So, in spite of winning the bid they have lost money, as they overestimated the volume of oil present, and now look foolish.
Auctions help governments and firms find a middle ground in terms of price, are allocatively efficient, and reduce collusion and corruption in governments. They are thus extremely useful and are applied in far more fields than one would originally think. A financial example of this is for initial public offerings, (IPOs) these are what happens when a company wants to list themselves on the stock market. A price for the shares must be worked out so; in order to do this, companies work with banks to find buyers and auction off the shares to find a suitable price for them. This practice, along with countless others, would be almost impossible without auctions, which is why they are such an important and practical tool in today’s economy.
Sources used:
The winners curse by Richard H. Thaler
Thinking strategically by Avinash K. Dixit and Barry J. Nalebuff
Auctions: an introduction by Elmar Wolfstetter
What were the socio-economic effects of the Spanish Flu?
The Spanish Flu arrived in 1918 and swept the world in three dangerous waves over the course of the year in spring, autumn and winter killing millions and changing countries attitude to healthcare forever.
‘The virus undermined the basic functions of society, disrupting economies, destabilising nations and contributing to social unrest’ Niall Johnson.
However, for the majority, this disaster has been an overlooked part of history. When looking at the 20th century you see two world wars, the rise and fall of communism and some dramatic episodes of decolonisation. However, the Spanish Flu epidemic and the accompanying deaths are often ignored.
Around 50-100 million people died in the Spanish Flu killing more than the First World War (17 million) and the Second World War (60 million) and possibly more than both combined. However, being so close
Esme L (Sh)
to the end of WW1 these deaths are often amalgamated into war time affects and ignored, even though in many countries many more died from the flu than the war.
In 1918, although there were cars, mules were preferred; telephones were rare, and movies were silent. Long distance communication was by telegram or ever carrier pigeon and although there were submarines there were no commercial aeroplanes. It was a period of technological advancement but most of the world had not caught on yet! So, when people started dying in their homes unrest was caused. The virus had not been discovered yet, instead people thought it was a bacteria more specifically Pfeiffer’s bacillus, which led to ineffective safety measures and dangerous cures.
Misinformation was spread – people believed that the illness was a punishment from God, which led people to rank religious rituals
and behaviours over health measures even going as far as having communal prayers and gathering for processions as happened in Spain, making the situation much worse. Some Allies even thought it was German biological warfare or trench warfare, which led to mistrust and fear. Most governments were reluctant to report what was going on, being afraid that it could show weakness to the enemy, which increased the effect of the virus dramatically. However, not all countries censored their news. Spain, often thought to be where the virus started due to the name the Spanish Flu, was neutral in the war, so reported the virus as it came into the country. This meant that people blamed Spain for the pandemic.
In the period after the Spanish Flu the world was still recovering from the Great War. Governments’ responses to the flu had ranged from country to country. For example, in the USA quarantine measures were put in place and public activities and areas were closed e.g. schools and churches, the wearing of masks was also enforced in some areas. However, in other parts of the world like Sweden measures were much less strict, while there was a health campaign nothing was enforced, and no schools were shut as it was believed that it would reduce panic and maintain some normalcy. This is similar to how they responded as a nation to Covid. Worldwide, there was social unrest as the virus had exposed gaps in government’s systems and public health infrastructure, showing the need for government responsibility. The huge economic impact also highlighted the need for advances in science and investment in healthcare.
The mishandling of the pandemic caused anger towards those in charge as shown in South Africa. The black population had been disproportionately affected by the virus due to worse living conditions and lack of healthcare access, this widened the gap between the white and black communities. The white communities thought that the black communities had spread
the virus, which led to huge racist movements and started paving the way to apartheid. These deaths also caused the economy to suffer as it was mainly the black population working the fields and mining the natural resources. Similar things happened in India, which was still under colonial rule when the pandemic hit. Around 13 million Indian people were killed due to the population density and cramped living conditions. Again, the British in India blamed the natives showing the lack of knowledge of epidemiology at that time. These deaths increased labour shortages and had huge agricultural impact with fewer people working, while the country continuously struggled with economic decline. This fuelled the anger and emotion towards colonial rule and planted the seeds for India’s independence.
The pandemic forced governments to take responsibility for their healthcare systems and measures. The virus, which had not been discovered in 1918, was discovered in 1933 as a direct result of the Spanish Flu which compelled scientists to work harder at identifying the cause of such a damaging illness. We now know this was the H1N1 virus probably originating from an avian flu. This discovery also made other advancements possible, like the flu vaccine which was eventually made in 1940. In countries like the UK and the USA, the healthcare infrastructure was improved massively with more access for a wider range of people and proper protocols for quarantine, sanitation and disease were made and published. Even in India, after such damage had been caused by the flu, the British government laid down some regulations which influenced modern day India’s health measures.
The deaths of so many forced social boundaries to be broken in many countries, the class systems were brought closer together as the poorer got richer and the richer poorer. There was more opportunity for the working class to get better jobs and demand pay rises and due to the labour shortages, the employers had to agree.
While flu is thought to affect the young and the old more than any other age this particular pandemic was deadly for the age groups of 20-40 and in the US the life expectancy dropped by 12 years from 51 to 39 this meant that the working generation of that time was dramatically weakened having severe economic consequences. There was also a rise in employing women, as so many young men had died in the war added to the overall shortage of labour due to the flu. This as well as the role women played in nursing the sick and injured during the war, was recognised and indirectly supported the women’s right to vote (over the age of 30). The vote was passed in 1918 in the UK, around the time of the deadly autumn wave of the virus. The inequalities in society shown by the pandemic and subsequent social mobility contributed to socialist ideas being promoted, changing the lives of working people across the world.
In conclusion, the Spanish Flu had huge effects on society and the economy across the globe and still does today. The severity of the pandemic, misinformation and bad regulations put in place by the people in charge caused panic and fear in communities and showed gaps in governments response systems. People lost trust in authority and the workers strikes and resistance movements further harmed the already weak economy. Social norms were changed as science and technology was forced to improve and even artwork and literature is thought to have been influenced by the anxiety and depression caused by the illness itself. More recently Covid 19 again affected us in many ways, again highlighted the dangers of misinformation and showed weaknesses in our governments, leading us to wonder whether we will ever learn from history, or will we again be struck unaware by another deadly pandemic?
How the Swiss Banished the Goitre
Most of the historical public health initiatives that are still in use today are based on the prevention of infectious diseases through sanitation and vaccination, however the identification of a widespread deficiency and the measures taken to rectify it had profound implications for a whole country. At the beginning of the 1900s, Switzerland was plagued with ancient, strange medical conditions, most famously the goitre. A goitre is a bulge of flesh sticking out from the neck, sometimes so big it caused the bearer a wheeze when they spoke. These conditions did exist in other countries; however, they were much more uncommon. In 1921, almost 30% of Swiss conscripts had a goitre, and for every man, three women suffered from the condition. Another condition that affected many was what was then known as cretinism but now referred to as Congenital iodine deficiency syndrome. In some parts of Switzerland, one in ten babies were born with this condition, which caused those affected to grow to just over a metre tall, be unable to speak or hear and be incredibly brain damaged. This had disastrous effects on the country, as this was a time when young children were expected to help the family, so the birth of a cretin could be a catastrophe.
Many scientists and medics flocked to Switzerland to attempt to understand these strange conditions; however, their investigations were unsuccessful. Many different ideas arose around the matter, and in 1876 when a list of the most promising theories was published, it contained 40 different hypotheses. The problem was so severe that in Deisswil, a suburb of Bern, 94% of men had goitres. Many top European scientists attempted to solve this problem and failed. As many new sciences were beginning to explain many diseases, researchers
Henry W (Re)
raced to discover a micro-organism that caused the goitre. However, it wasn’t until a young GP named Heinrich Hunziker stood up to speak at the Zürichsee Doctor’s Society meeting that a revolutionary idea was put forward. Hunziker proposed that everyone was looking for the wrong thing. He said the cause of the conditions was not a germ or defect but the absence of something.
Your thyroid is a gland, shaped like a butterfly, that sits just below the skin of the neck. This gland is responsible for producing two hormones that influence almost every cell in the entire body, triiodothyronine and thyroxine. Both hormones contain iodine, but the body cannot create iodine, so it must get the element from somewhere else, mainly from food but also from the air. You only need an exceedingly small amount, but without it, there are dire consequences. When the body senses a lack of iodine, the thyroid expands to filter iodine more effectively from your blood. Over time, this growth becomes a goitre.
By the time Hunziker declared his theory, iodine was widely renowned as a cure for many diseases. However, it was also feared as a deadly poison. This is because it often caused a condition known as the Jon-Basedow effect, characterised by bulging eyes and agitation. Hunziker, on the other hand, talked about iodine as if it were an essential part of your daily diet. This was a very controversial statement, and opposers of Hunziker’s work
Heinrich Hunziker 1879-1972
believed that he was attempting mass poisoning, and this belief would prove difficult to shake in some areas of Switzerland later on. Hunziker said that the goitre was not an infection or a disease, just an enlarged thyroid. The solution to this? He claimed that all the Swiss needed to cure this nationwide issue was a tiny, daily dose of iodine, taken in an everyday commodity, salt.
Over the next few years, scientists got to work, trying to prove this theory before releasing the iodised salt to the general public, most notably a scientist named Otto Bayard, another young country doctor. Bayard devised an experiment; he prepared five different concentrations of iodised table salt to give to five families who all suffered from the goitre and documented their progress over five months. When he returned, all the families had not only not been poisoned but they also all had much slimmer necks. Bayard continued his experiments until he found what he considered the perfect dose in 1921 when he was asked to present his results to the Swiss Goitre Commission. Many still strongly disagreed about the reason that the iodine worked, but the evidence was irrefutable.
The result of implementing iodised salt is seen as one of the most successful public health measures ever put in place and today it is used by more than 88% of the world population. So why is this story not more commonly known? Bayard and Hunziker have been almost completely forgotten, even in their home country of Switzerland. I believe it has something to do with a man named Dr Eugene Bircher. Bircher had originally voted in favour of using iodised salt, however on 20th July 1922, he published an article in Swiss Medical Weekly in which he launched an astonishing attack on the Goitre Commission. He said that using iodine was ‘downright careless’ and talked about the risks of the Jod-Basedow effect. An obvious reason for his discontent was that before Bayard’s experiments, Bircher created an extremely expensive seven-day goitre treatment, called Strumaval, which had become almost obsolete.
Unfortunately, Bircher was a very influential man in Switzerland at the time, and so up until his death in 1956, the annual sale of iodised salt was less than 10% of all the salt sold in his home canton of Aargau. I believe that this story shows what a nation can achieve when everyone is working towards a common goal, but also it unfortunately shows how much of a negative influence one person can have on a whole nation.
In June 1922, the Swiss Goitre Commission formally recommended implementing iodised salt to the cantons, initiating the first-ever food fortification programme. By 1930, wherever the salt was used, Goitre almost completely disappeared. This was the first attempt of a government to improve the lives of an entire nation by adding chemicals to the food supply. Another more recent example of this is the British government adding fluoride to some of the water supplies in the country, and 1 in 10 people in the UK have fluoride added to their drinking water.
Otto Bayard 1881-1957
Research by Goitre Commision on Iodized salt
The Problems Associated with Bovine Tuberculosis in the UK
It is estimated that 10.6 million people worldwide contracted tuberculosis (TB) in 2021, with 1.6 million people being killed as a result. TB is therefore a hugely prominent issue worldwide, affecting global public health. In fact, it is so dangerous that it is the second most fatal disease worldwide after COVID-19. Whilst there are few cases of TB amongst humans in the UK, bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is hugely prominent among UK cattle herds. Due to the high animal mortality rates bTB produces in both cattle and humans, it is imperative that the UK keeps the spread of infection under control to ensure that this fatal disease does not become uncontrollable.
TB is caused by the genus Mycobacterium which contains nearly 200 species. Most of these species only cause disease in organisms with a weakened immune system. The group of
Hettie B (L6)
species that causes TB in humans and animals is known as the Mycobacterium complex (MTC), and crucially contains Mycobacterium Bovis which causes bTB and Mycobacterium Avium which causes TB in birds. bTB spreads between cattle primarily through respiratory methods, where a cow inhales tiny droplets from another cow coughing or sneezing and then this bacterium reproduces rapidly inside the body. As the bacteria reproduces, a granuloma forms made of dead macrophages and other types of white blood cell. This cluster of dead cells will eventually calcify and become surrounded by granulated tissue to form a fibrous capsule known as a lesion. During post-mortem examinations of cattle infected with bTB, the lesions are the main indicator of infection.
In some parts of the world, it remains easy for tuberculosis in cattle to transfer to
Regional
tuberculosis in humans. However, due to the routine testing of cattle, pasteurisation of all milk for human consumption and a vaccine for TB in humans, TB is not a significant public health issue in the UK at present. A few decades ago, most UK cases in people were due to a reactivation of a latent infection in those who likely contracted TB before the widespread pasteurisation of milk which began in 1922. Nowadays, cases in the UK are mostly due to being born abroad in a place where TB is a prominent disease or having travelled to a place where TB it is present. However, despite the few cases of TB in people in the UK, bTB is still a prominent issue for animal health, farming economics, and international trade agreements.
In 1921 there was a vaccine created for TB in humans by artificially developing a strain of Mycobacterium Bovis known as Bacillus Calmette-Guérin. This vaccine is used globally in people and recently in badgers too. However, scientists are still working on making the vaccine effective for use in cattle.
Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) does not obviously present itself through visible symptoms and it takes a long time for the infection to cause the death of a cow. As a result, testing for it is crucial in reducing the spread in cattle populations. However, the main test used in the UK is not nearly sensitive enough. Testing for TB in the UK is carried out every six months in high-risk areas, annually in moderate risk areas, and every 4 years in lowrisk areas. To complete the testing, two sites are shaved on the neck of the cow and the thickness of the skin at both sites is recorded. On one of the sites, dead Mycobacterium Bovis bacteria is injected and on the other dead mycobacterium avium is injected, which is the avian strain of TB. Four days later, the skin reactions to the two injections are measured. If the thickness of the skin at the first site exceeds the thickness of the skin at the second site by more than 4mm, the cow is determined a reactor and is classified as having bTB. This is because if the
cow’s immune system has already produced an immune response to the bTB bacteria because of a previous infection, the cow now produces a secondary inflammatory response which causes a large lump to develop at the first injection site.
However, this test is not very sensitive and approximately 20% of cattle infected with bTB are missed in one skin test. One reason for this is that the test cannot detect cattle that have contracted TB very recently as the immune system of the cattle have not yet had time to produce an immune response to the bacteria. As bTB tests only happen every 4 years in some places, this leaves considerable time for infection to spread through a farm and spread to other farms before the TB is identified. As well as this, if cattle have previously been infected by both Mycobacterium Bovis and Mycobacterium Avium, this can cause a cross-reacting immune response. This can lead to false negatives as cattle infected with Mycobacterium Avium are less likely to be detected in the skin test.
bTB is particularly controversial due to the suspected role of badgers in spreading it through eating cattle feed, drinking from water troughs and in some cases even biting cattle. It was first suspected in the 1970s that badgers were a large cause of TB spreading to cattle, and since this first suspicion various reports have been produced suggesting that badgers are the most prominent wildlife reservoir for TB. As a result, in 2011 the UK government gave licenses to cull badgers in certain high-risk areas. By 2021, around 210,500 badgers had been culled. However nowadays there still is not a scientific consensus as to whether this culling will decrease bTB levels in the longterm. Instead, some scientists concluded that the main cause of bTB was other cows, and that only 5.7% of bTB cases stemmed from badgers. In fact, a study has shown that vaccinating badgers against TB is more effective than culling them, prompting the government to plan to end badger culling by 2029.
The emotional and economic strain put on farmers if they have a positive test for bTB is huge. If farms have a positive test, they lose numerous cattle to slaughter and there is a reduction in yields on the farm. For farmers for whom the viability of their farms is increasingly uncertain due to increasing costs that were worsened by post Brexit bureaucracy and loss of export markets, and cost inflation resulting from the war in Ukraine, having a positive bTB test is devastating. Despite some compensation for cattle that have had to be compulsorily culled, the financial impact for farmers is extreme. A study produced by the University of Exeter outlined that the money lost by just 60 cattle having to be sent to slaughter due to a positive bTB test was around £56,000 in milk sales for a dairy farmer. It is therefore no surprise that recent surveys are reporting increasingly concerning levels of poor mental health of those working in agriculture.
In conclusion, despite an effective human vaccine against TB in the UK, bTB still causes a significant amount of financial and emotional stress and suffering for UK farmers. This will only be relieved when scientists can develop an effective bTB vaccine that can be widespread amongst cattle populations.
The Impacts of Tourism and how it effects
Low-income countries
Many people like to travel, including yourselves but there are huge impacts good and bad that take place because of tourism. This article will be on the effects of tourism on Low Income Countries. It will focus on Economic, Environmental, Social, and Infrastructural impacts. An LIC is a low-income country –some examples include Nepal, Ethiopia, and many territories over Africa. An LIC is defined as ‘countries with a gross national income per capita less than $1036 dollars.’ Tourism contributes a huge amount of money into the global economy, it gives countries the opportunity to develop their resources and technology. Although there are many benefits to tourism, it is not all good, there are positives and negative impacts of it.
There are many positive economic impacts, an example of this is job employment. With an increased rate of tourism, there are lots of jobs available. There is an increase of transportation, hospitality, spending and food requirements so people are given the opportunity to be employed as drivers, farmers, hotel owners, cooks, and shop owners. This means that there is less homelessness in the country. If more people are employed and earning, those people then use the money earnt to buy food and resources. An increase in sales means a rise in money made by shops, overall, it increases gross national income. Tourism also helps Low Income countries make more money from foreign exchange. Foreign exchange is ‘the conversion of one country’s currency into another’ and it is not always equal. Countries make money from foreigners exchanging their money to its own currency. This helps governments have reserves for expenditures and debt.
Agatha R (Re)
Tourism increases profits for the government. Governments tax businesses benefitting from tourism, such as hotels and tourist attractions like museums, cafes, and restaurants.
However, there are also negative economic problems created by tourism. During coronavirus there was a huge drop in tourism to almost nothing due to lockdowns. This had monstrous effects on the economy due to overdependence on tourism. For example, in Ethiopia in 2018, tourism and travelling created £5.73 billion and in 2021 tourism produced £2.012 billion . During the coronavirus pandemic, economies struggled as lots of countries relied on tourism levels for their revenue. In Barbados, tourism was down ninety percent, and it struck the economy hard.
Due to tourism, rent, everyday prices and housing values increase as communities want to make money off tourists and there is high demand. This happens in supermarkets and shops. This increases taxes as more money is made. This effects the local communities as things are more expensive and they cannot afford to buy things anymore.
There are also many environmental impacts from tourism. Lots of high-income countries have made their revenue in industrial and urban ways. Low-income countries are often less developed and have more appealing landscapes than them. This generates huge amount of tourism due to fascinating views, wildlife, and animals. Tourism creates awareness for wildlife and raises money to support and preserve at risk locations by producing funds for the conservation of nature, such as national parks
and rainforests. It also spreads awareness for environmental issues by showing the people the dangers and threats of climate change.
However, tourism leads to water shortages due to a high number causing high demand. Tourist attractions like hotels use a large amount of water and this puts strain on local resources and usage, which then limits water usage for nature and residents.
Increase in littering, pollution, waste, and fires, are all effects of tourism which negatively impact wildlife and habitats causing a decline in populations. There is also soil erosion, where trails are left by people walking and climbing, disrupting ecosystems. With more hotels, houses and buildings needed, because of visiting tourists, more trees are cut down causing deforestation and more land is cleared. Coral reefs are damaged because of boat hiring and scuba diving from tourists who are inexperienced. Littering on beaches can then be digested by wildlife and decrease fish and bird populations. The governments of low-income countries struggle to manage this due to a lack of investment towards environmental conservation, allowing the problems of tourism to further grow and effect the local community.
Tourism has positive social impacts. It helps spread the culture and traditions of local communities and beliefs. People visit religious places or learn the local ways of life, they then return home and spread it to the people around them. This helps preserve the culture and keep up traditions of indigenous people. Foreign
people gain a greater understanding of the locals’ ways of life and learn about how different people are given certain advantages from birth, for example living standards. People in Nepal might be living in slums while there are other people, like tourists living in ‘proper’ houses that they own themselves. This gives people an appreciation of what they have.
In contrast there are also disadvantages to the social impacts of tourism. Cultures are sometimes overlooked as tourists are prioritised because the low-income countries and places visited need the money. Overcrowding can cause rifts between tourists and residents as the tourists disturb their daily lives and can cause hostility from the residents towards them. This then can cause an increase of crime rates as people might need to steal food or medicine to survive.
There can also be a richer and a poorer side of an island. This is common and can cause disadvantages for the impoverished people.
Slums in Nepal
This is because the richer side will have more money and be prioritised over the lower class.
Tourism decreases the number of resources available to the inhabitants as more resources are needed. For example, food, medical resources, and hospitality can be rationed when tourists are present. This is seen in Nepal when it is the season to climb Mount Everest, along the way, food prices are raised which effects the local’s food intake and supply. This also puts strain on the local’s access to healthcare when there are accidents. This limits the availability and can cause an uprise of poverty.
There are also infrastructural impacts, such as an increase of roads, airports, public transport, and communication networks. This benefits tourists, allowing them to visit tourist attractions and helps residents, assisting them with their daily lives. More airports and roads can increase accessibility for tourists and allow visitors easy access to the whole country.
Modern buildings are created which encourages new technology and enhances tourists’ experiences. This creates more jobs and housing opportunities for local people. Although this is not always a positive. Ancient
and older buildings are removed and replaced. Buildings are put up quickly and rapidly, causing unsuitably built buildings. They are constructed poorly and can cause problems later. Rapid growth of infrastructure could increase the population and cause congestion on healthcare and public services. Buildings built for tourists, use money which could have been used to benefit the local community in the future. Things like education and healthcare should have priority but this is not the case.
In conclusion, there are many impacts on Low-income countries but some positive and others negative. I think the most positive part of tourism is for the economy, this is because it creates a large revenue and profit for LIC governments. Tourism produces a huge amount of money for the country and spreads their cultures globally. Although there are positive impacts in environmental, social, and infrastructural, they are outweighed by the negatives. In future to increase benefits of tourism, LIC’s should prioritise the local community first then focus on a sustainable way forward to maximise the benefits of tourism. They need to preserve their cultural heritage, environment, and choose durable building methods.
Diagram showing World Income
Time travelling: Is it possible?
As an element of science fiction and a topic of growing scientific interest, time travel has captivated people for years. The concept of travelling through time presents countless opportunities, from racing into the future to revisiting the far past, alongside multiple difficulties. Therefore, what are the requirements for time travel, and what are the consequences?
Time Travel: Forward Direction
To time travel, either gravity, space, or speed must be changed. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) regularly engage in one of the most basic forms of time travel. Because of the ISS’s fast speed, time moves slower for them than for anyone on Earth. Einstein’s theory of relativity states that faster-moving objects travels slower than slower-moving ones.
As the ISS travels at the speed of around 17,130 miles per hour, the crew members experience time differently to those on Earth. This tiny difference illustrates a fundamental concept of time travel: time is not absolute. The pace at which one moves decides this. Even though the difference is only milliseconds, an astronaut who spends a year in space will have aged less than someone on Earth.
Real-life astronauts, such as NASA’s identical twins Scott and Mark Kelly, have been employed to test time dilation theories. Over the course of their careers are astronauts, Mark accumulated 54 days in space, compared to Scott’s 520 days. Scott is now five milliseconds younger than his sibling since he has had more experience travelling across space at fast speeds. Even though these temporal alterations are minor, they offer an insight into the intriguing potential of time travel in the future.
Time travel using speed
An item or person would have to move at the speed of light to make a jump into the future. Time would move far more slowly for someone travelling at 99.9% of the speed of light than it would for someone on Earth, according to the theory of relativity. For example, an astronaut would spend about 200 years on Earth if they travelled at those rates for a day.
Although this type of time travel is theoretically feasible, it requires advanced, undeveloped technology. But once this technology is created, it may be as easy as taking a fast-paced space flight to go centuries into the future. This allows human civilisation to undergo significant modifications while only ageing a few days. Therefore, speed is the key to forward time travel; the quicker you go, the slower time passes for you. However, the problem lies in the fact that nothing can reach anywhere near the speed of light due to any physical limitation. Therefore, unless we can develop a technology that allows us to overcome that restriction, this method may not be possible.
Travelling Back in Time
Time travel forward is quite easy compared to backwards, which is full of difficulties. For example, paradox that occurs when someone attempts to change the past. The ‘grandfather paradox’, which poses the question: What would happen if you went back in time and killed your grandfather before your parent was born? is the most well-known. This would be impossible because once you killed your grandparents, you would not exist.
This paradox highlights the problem of time travel, where even minor adjustments might have huge consequences that would completely shift the path of history. These paradoxes, according to some scientists, reduce the possibility of reverse time travel. According to some, the universe could self-correct, preventing any change in the chronology. Regarding the grandfather paradox, it is a possibility that the universe might stop you from killing your grandfather, or that the grandfather you see after turning back time is not actually connected to you.
The Tipler Cylinder
The Tipler Cylinder, named after astronomer Frank Tipler, is another hypothetical time machine. The model includes an endless, long, circular cylinder with a mass ten times that of the sun. A spaceship on a precise course inside the tunnel may go back in time because of the cylinder’s huge gravity, which would distort space-time.
Although this concept could work, there are a lot of challenges. One challenge is that existing technology cannot build an endlessly long cylinder, and there will never be enough material available to support such a large construction. Moreover, even if such a cylinder could be constructed, the possibility of success is still quite remote, and the danger of travelling through distorted spacetime is immense.
Amos Ori’s Time Machine
Another approach to time travel that uses a space-time loop introduced by theoretical physicist Amos Ori of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. According to this idea, time is collapsed upon itself by gravitational waves in a doughnut-shaped vacuum created in space. Theoretically, a time traveller may come at one moment and leave at another.
The traveller could only go back as far as the moment the machine was originally turned on, which is a restriction of this type of time travel. Therefore, even if the machine were to function, it would only be able to travel to the period after its activation, not the far past. Furthermore, the accuracy needed to regulate gravitational fields for this kind of time travel is much beyond our current technical capabilities.
Time Travel and the Universe
One main concern about time travel is the possibility of paradoxes that might destroy the universe. As previously said, paradoxes such as the grandfather paradox illustrate a significant danger to the concept of backward time travel. While some scientists believe that changing the past might disrupt the natural law of the universe, others think that time travel is impossible.
The latest ideas imply that the universe is more mysterious than previously imagined and that paradoxes may be resolved in a way we do not completely understand. Still, the concept of time travel continues to fascinate everyone.
Conclusion
Although the concept of time travel is exciting, it is not yet possible. The concept of time travel may one day become a reality if we have the necessary technology. For now, we can only speculate about the possibilities. Time travel is a unique concept that is just beyond our reach at the present.
The Forgotten Volcanoes
As a brief introduction, I would just like to describe the nine types of volcanoes you would find on Earth or in the solar system. You have probably heard of the first three, but have you heard of the rest of them?
The well-known volcanos:
• Stratovolcanoes, also known as composite volcanoes.
• Cinder cone volcanoes, small, steep, and conical.
• Lava domes are dome-shaped (as the name implies) and have one large crater.
The volcanoes most people have never heard of:
• Fissure volcanoes are where eruptions occur along linear cracks in the volcano.
• Caldera volcanoes are large bowl-shaped depressions formed after the collapse of a volcano.
• Submarine volcanoes come in lots of different shapes and sizes but are always found underwater.
• Subglacial volcanoes have flat tops with steep sides. When they erupt, they spew meltwater instead of lava.
• Complex volcanoes have multiple vents or a mix of different volcanic structures.
Jon S (Sh)
And finally, there are shield volcanoes.
Shield volcanoes? What are those? Many people, when you ask them to draw a volcano, will simply sketch a stereotypical cone shape (like Krakatoa) and assume that all volcanoes look exactly like that. But this is far from the truth. In fact, there are many types of volcanoes, and the one I’m going to focus on here is the shield volcano.
Shield volcanoes are the largest volcanoes on Earth, scattered across the globe. They are also the widest and tallest. Shaped somewhat like a warrior’s shield, they have a nearly flat summit. They are built by repeated eruptions that occur over incredibly long timespans, sometimes a million years or more. Still, despite these characteristics, many people don’t realize they exist. As Stephen O’Meara, a volcanologist and astronomer, explains, ‘Shield volcanoes, like those in Hawaii, are nature’s slow but steady builders, their low viscosity lava flows spreading calmly over the landscape, laying down layer after layer of basalt to construct the broadest and most massive volcanoes on Earth and beyond.’
To show just how large shield volcanoes are, here is an example. In Seattle, Mount
Photo by U. S. Geological Survey. Graphic modified from “A Dynamic Landscape Formed by the Power of Volcanoes,” by Rebecca H. Ashton, M. S. Thesis, Oregon State University, 2003.
Rainier stands at about 4,270 meters tall but only spans about 16 kilometres in width. Mauna Loa, by contrast, is 160 kilometres wide and about 9,000 metres tall from top to bottom. Mauna Loa last erupted in 2022, highlighting its active nature and potential for vast lava flows. Mount Rainier, though less recently active, poses risks due to heavy snowfall and glaciers, which can trigger dangerous mudflows for nearby communities.
Shield volcanoes are considered less dangerous than composite volcanoes, which are more explosive and violent. Shield volcanoes primarily pose threats through lava flows, which move slowly compared to other types but release high levels of sulphur dioxide, harmful for humans to breathe. Shield volcanoes also tend to erupt more often than composite volcanoes.
During my research, I focused on the Hawaiian Islands, known for their unique geographical distinction as islands almost entirely composed of shield volcanoes. Here is a short description of the main volcanoes that make up Hawaii:
• Mauna Loa. Rises about 4,170 meters above sea level and covers about 5,271 square kilometres. It is the largest volcano on Earth by volume and area. David Clague, Marine Geologist and Volcanologist gives a description of Mauna Loa as ‘Mauna Loa’s massive, shield-like slopes are formed by repeated, high-volume lava flows that build its immense size over time.’
• Kīlauea. Rises about 1,247 meters above sea level. One of the world’s most active volcanoes, Kīlauea has been erupting continuously since 1983, affecting the local environment and people who live nearby.
• Mauna Kea. Rises about 4,205 meters above sea level, but its base is about 9,144 meters below sea level. Mauna Kea is considered sacred in Hawaiian culture, and its summit often experiences snowfall.
• Hualālai. Rises about 2,521 meters above sea
level. Although it last erupted in 1801, Hualālai is still considered active, with its last eruption marked by explosive activity.
• Kohala. Rises about 1,669 meters above sea level. Kohala is the oldest of Hawaii’s volcanoes, and although it is now extinct, it features lush valleys and scenic hiking trails, including the famous Pololu Valley.
• Lōihi. Approximately 3,058 meters tall from its base on the ocean floor, but only about 975 meters above sea level. Lōihi is still growing and is expected to eventually appear as an island, though this process will take thousands of years. Its underwater geography offers valuable research opportunities.
Shield volcanoes, however, are not confined to Earth. Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano discovered, is a massive shield volcano on Mars that stands more than 20,000 meters tall – over twice the height of Earth’s biggest volcano! ‘Shield volcanoes on Mars, such as Olympus Mons, tell us a story of planetary evolution – their immense size is due to the absence of plate tectonics, allowing lava to pile up for millions of years in the same location,’ explains planetary geologist David Rothery. Mars also has other shield volcanoes, including Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons, Ascraeus Mons, and Alba Mons. Venus, too, is home to shield volcanoes like Maat Mons, Sif Mons, Gula Mons, and Ozza Mons. Even the Moon has one: Mons Rümker, a large dome-shaped shield volcano. There may be other shield volcanoes throughout the universe yet to be discovered. For now, these are the only ones we’ve seen, but with advances in space exploration who knows how many more will be found?
In summary, I think the shield volcano should not be forgotten and that they should be recognised in a world that has forgotten their very existence. In the future, I would hope that when people are asked how to draw a volcano, they don’t draw Krakatoa. I would hope they would draw the biggest and arguably most impressive volcano type, the shield volcano.
The ‘Granham Casuals’ –Pioneers of Marlborough College Football
Lukas M (L6)
Whilst the Granham Causals aren’t extremely distinguished outside of Marlborough College, one glance at the football team that has such a large legacy and rich history behind it will not just shed light on how significant this Marlborough College team is, but also how the game of football has developed as a whole within schools in the United Kingdom. After officially being introduced to the College in the early 1870s with the launch of ‘Association’ football Rules, there has been ample adversity that the football enthusiasts of the College have had to endure. Unlike the modern day, back in the 1870s, football was not always the ubiquitous and well-loved sport it currently is within schools, highlighting the commitment and perseverance from those involved in ‘Casuals’ franchise to fight for the right that pupils can play the game they adore which is football.
After the introduction of the ‘Association’ rules, football as a game among the pupils of Marlborough College, was becoming increasingly popular due to its relatively simple rules and easy-to-play nature. So much so, that in 1873, the suggestion came up in a board meeting that the Lower School should dedicate a minimum of one day a week to the game. This would be a considerable step in the right direction for football to become an official sport which would ultimately cause football to be recognised by the College as an actual sport. However, this idea was quickly struck down as it was met with a comprehensive amount of objection. The initial reasoning for this came down to a few factors. The first being that it would “water down” the game of Rugby which also stemmed and developed in Marlborough from an early period of time (1853). The primary argument hindering the development
of football within the College was that by introducing football, according to an Old Marlburian (OM), it would “divide our zeal” and as a result “lessen our reputation”, essentially saying that football would reflect poorly on Marlborough College. Looking back at such claims, one can acknowledge the degree of error in them. These claims indicate quite evidently the negative outlook on the sport during that period in time within schools across the country. This can be explained as football was a relatively new game in 1870s with the oldest official football team in history, ‘Sheffield Football Club’, being created just 13 years before in 1857. Another concern would be that it would ‘confuse pupils’ in terms of rules. However weak an argument this is, it was still used, argued, and potentially was the gateway to the first major hurdle in the progression of football at Marlborough College which was the decision to permanently change the rules to Rugby Union rules, thus eliminating the Rugby vs Football competition entirely in favour of Rugby.
In spite of these hardships, football did not die out, its impact on those involved was too great to be abolished by these rules. According to the Marlburian Magazine, during the late 1870s and the 1880s it was documented in great depth the widespread discontent of the alteration of these rules by the committee at the time. This led to different boarding houses playing football competition against one another, an upstanding tradition still being carried out to this day. However, the interhouse matches alone did not seem to satisfy the footballers at the time, more action needed taking. So, in 1884, the boarding house of C2 staged a protest in which they refused to play the sport hockey after it managed to get a fixture against East Surrey Hockey Club playing under the ‘Marlborough College’ name. This was a feat that football hadn’t managed to do up until this moment in time. This protest seemed to last around half a decade as only after the boarding house Cotton joined in on the
movement in 1889, was a vote held for pupils in November of that year. As expected, football came out with an extremely large majority. Yet, despite such a seemingly large victory in terms of football’s growth, hockey managed to come out on top when it was recognised as a ‘school game’ in 1891. The exact origin and basis of such a decision is unknown. This action clearly conveyed the magnitude of ‘prejudice’ the sport had developed up until 1891. From 1891-1952 little changed in terms of the growth of Marlborough football, until the founding of the M.C.A.F.C (Marlborough College Association Football Club) by Michael Gliksten who was a member of the College at the time where a singular match was played under the name for charity. This was arguably among the most important matches in the Granham Casuals history despite losing 8-3 to Marlborough Town, it gathered around 175 spectators including the Master of the College Thomas Garnett. However, it was thought his presence was more due to the sake of the College’s reputation than actual interest in football. In 1954, due to further opposition, to replace Marlborough College the ‘Granham Casuals’ name came into existence, one that has stuck for the next fifty years. The reason for the name Granham Casual which seemingly has no relevance to the College at all, is that during the ages when football was looked down upon, students were restricted from playing on the main College sports grounds and were sent to play up on Granham Hill which is near the College Campus and is currently adjacent to where the Marlborough College 1st XI train on the Athletics Track. The Granham Casuals weren’t allowed to play under the Marlborough College name due to the fact they weren’t properly acknowledged as an actual school team. Therefore, matches could only be held on Sundays against local teams only and little to no help was provided from the College.
Over the next few decades not much changed, the negative outlook on football as a game persisted and was reinforced by the 1985
Heysel Stadium Disaster and other acts of hooliganism or violence instigated by football fans. This supported the already strong notion that football was a ‘common’ game. Despite such poor treatment to the Granham Casuals side, moral was strong as Kyle Burrows the Captain of the Casuals from 1989-1990 called the team “outcasts who found themselves on a football pitch” showcasing the collegiality and acceptance the team and sport has for anyone who is willing to play. With the positive attitudes, positive change eventually came in the late 1990s when the English National Football team hosted the 1996 Euros and popularity for the sport skyrocketed. As a result of this, with the crucial work of Colin Smith and Colin Fraser, the Granham Casuals played their first matches against other public schools, Stowe and Bradfield, in 1997 whilst simultaneously developing a great rapport with Swindon Town FC who provided coaching and equipment to the Granham casuals. This relationship is still being utilised and exercised to this day. Eventually in 2004, for the first time in the
history of the Granham Casuals, the side competed under the Marlborough College name alone.
This year marks the 20th year that the Granham Casuals have been able to compete under the Marlborough College name and whilst all the teams do so, the underlying culture and history of the ‘Granham Casuals’ has not gone unnoticed, nor has it been forgotten. The history of this team shows the resilience and influence the game has. It brings people together and despite facing multiple tribulations has held strong. Undoubtedly, growth of football at the college has not finished yet. In particular, the introduction and rapid growth of girls’ football is becoming increasingly evident as the years progress. With over 150 years of illustrious past behind them, the Granham Casual heritage continues to reach new heights, acting as a detailed account and recollection of the history of the game of football.
Is the County Championship dying and does it matter?
The County Championship, currently known as the Vitality County Championship, is the only domestic first-class cricket competition in England and Wales. It was established on the 16 December 1889, when the secretaries of the major clubs gathered at Lord’s to decide the following season’s fixtures. This makes it one of the oldest running sporting contests in this country alongside Wimbledon and the FA Cup. Today, it is organised by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) as a two-league system. All matches are played over four days and are two innings per side, making it the only form of professional cricket in England similar in format to a Test Match. The tournament is contested by 18 county clubs, with 10 teams in division one and eight in division two. Two teams are relegated/promoted each season.
Will J (Re)
Despite its long-standing presence, questions are being raised about the future of the County Championship in the light of the shaky financial structure of many counties, poor attendances and the rise of Twenty20 and other cricket franchises. It is true that a lot of matches are only attended by a few hundred county cricket fans, especially those matches held during the working week, so you could say that the County Championship is dying, although given that the attendance has never been that high, you could say that the County Championship isn’t dying but that white ball cricket is just rapidly increasing. If the County Championship is dying, does that matter and what role could the County Championship play in the future of English cricket?
The established view is that the County Championship largely exists to develop talent for the England Test team. The County Championship is the only form of red ball cricket in England apart from Tests. Due to this, new players can force their way into contention for England selection by their performances and existing players can use the early rounds of the County Championship to address any flaws in their game that were identified in the winter Test series and to show their effectiveness at red ball cricket around their franchise commitments. This appears to work as the England Test team is No3 in the world and has won more than half of their 50 Test series, home and away, since 2008-09.
The connection between the County Championship and English Test cricket selection is still important but in the modern era, with more investment in pathway programmes, its role has changed. James Anderson and Joe Root, the highest Test wicket-taker and highest Test run-scorer in English cricket, were called up for the England Test squad through their performances in the County Championship after having played 2 full seasons in the County Championship. New players, such as 20-year-old fast bowler Josh Hull, are still identified by their performances in the County Championship and Josh Hull was called up for his Test debut against Sri Lanka in September. However, Josh Hull only played 10 first class games before he was called up which highlights the change of this relationship and that players can be identified in different ways.
Part of the appeal of the IPL and other Twenty20 franchise tournaments is the prospect of superstar-filled sides going head-tohead. The County Championship cannot offer the same, as top players prioritise the money they can earn from franchise cricket and drop out of the County Championship in the summer months. However, some top players across the world still do value the County
Championship. This year, the former West Indies captain Jason Holder played for Worcestershire for the first five rounds of games, Australian spinner Nathan Lyon played for Lancashire until July, and former South Africa captain Dean Elgar opened for Essex for the whole season. The early rounds also saw English big names in action, with Joe Root and Harry Brook playing for Yorkshire, Ollie Robinson turning out for Sussex and England Test captain Ben Stokes playing for Durham for the first time since May 2022. There is clearly a role for the County Championship in helping Test players from across the world keep on top of their game, but regardless of this, most top players value the money they can earn in franchise cricket over staying on top of their red ball game. This creates the sense that the County Championship is dying as most top players no longer prioritise it.
The ECB itself recognises its importance and has said it values ‘the primacy of Test match and County Championship cricket which provide the ultimate test of cricketing skills’. However, a question sometimes asked is whether all 18 counties can exist in the modern era as some counties might become only white ball counties for financial reasons. However, the ECB chief executive, Richard Gould, has been quoted this year as saying ‘The depth of our talent pool, both in terms of men and women, is our superpower at the moment. It increases competition. It provides more opportunity for talent to come through, so I don’t see any backward step in terms of 18 first-class counties’. Should the number of counties be reduced then the number of opportunities for young cricketers would decrease which would impact on the numbers able to show they should be considered for the national teams.
Those who have suggested that the County Championship will shrink over time have pointed to the increasing dominance of franchise cricket which started with the IPL. The fear is that successful franchise owners will
look to increase their ownership by investing in different countries Twenty20 leagues and rebrand the teams to create global franchises. If this were to include an English county, it is doubtful that the owners would want to focus on the County Championship. The GMR Group already owns stakes in various other Twenty20 franchises around the world, including the Delhi Capitals in the IPL and WPL, the Pretoria Capitals in South Africa, the Dubai Capitals in the UAE, and the Seattle Orcas from Major League Cricket in the USA. In September, they bought a majority ownership stake in Hampshire County Cricket Club in a deal worth £120 million and the aim is to complete a 100% takeover in the next two years. The Hundred team, Southern Brave, play at Hampshire and GMR are clear favourites to acquire full ownership of this team too from the ECB. Some may criticise Hampshire for walking away from their county roots but Rod Bransgrove, Hampshire’s chairman, saw it as facing reality, ‘Becoming the first English cricket club to join an international cricket group will open exciting new opportunities as we embrace the globalisation of this great sport.’ Hampshire is one of three counties in private
ownership and is therefore open to sale whilst others are still member-run. Given how reliant the counties are on ECB funding, it is highly likely that other counties will look for private investment if they can and that is likely to come from franchises already interested in investing in cricket and creating a white ball dominant sport. More global mergers of this type are to be expected and could easily mean that some of the current counties will diminish or even stop their involvement in the County Championship.
After 135 years, it is perhaps unsurprising that the County Championship is facing significant change. The financial concerns and a likely reduction in the number of counties committed to the County Championship gives it the appearance that it is dying, however, with its ongoing link with the development of Test cricketers from England and around the world, it is unlikely to die completely. The sadness is the loss of tradition and the reduced opportunities for talented young players to play the four-day format and prove their ability to play Test cricket for their country to the selectors. On balance, it is reasonable to believe that the County Championship is declining but won’t die completely as its importance cannot be undermined.
Can animals speak?
Children have always loved stories involving people talking to animals, whether it is Dr Doolittle being able to talk in the animals’ language, or Alvin and the Chipmunks being able to use human speech. But the question is can animals really speak ? Human beings have a tendency to believe themselves to be the only creatures capable of speaking to each other. But what about other animals that have been communicating often from an earlier period of time in the history of our planet? It is clear that all animals communicate and that many do so in in a highly sophisticated way, both with their own species and with other animals, such as in forms of warning or defence. But is non-verbal communication the same as what we think of as human speech or are these fundamentally different concepts?
The English dictionary contains a plethora of definitions for speech. But the essence is to be able to communicate in a language. The question that follows is what constitutes a language? In the 1960s an American academic called Charles Hockett created a list of characteristics which he called the ‘design features’ of a language. The list contains thirteen features, the final four being what he considered to make the difference between human communication and that of other animals.
They are:
• Discreteness, meaning a collection of distinct elements such as words or sounds that can be joined to convey novel concepts.
• Grammar, which is the framework of rules that explains how to combine these elements.
• Productivity, being the capacity to use a language to generate a limitless number of messages.
• Displacement, which is the ability to discuss
Cordi J (L6)
topics that are not immediately in front of you such as the past and the future, and even fiction.
Whilst many animal communication systems contain none of these four more complex features, there are certainly more than a few which utilise some of them. Some insects such as honey bees communicate in a highly intricate and specialised manner that demonstrates displacement. Honey bees can perform a type of dance that involves flying in consecutive figures of eight, with the angle and duration of the dance considered to show others the direction and distance of nectar sources they have found. Similarly, prairie dogs, burrowing rodents native to the grasslands of North America, have an alarm call which can convey to their pack members encoded information such as the size, shape and colour of any known predators.
Although no animal utilises a language in the wild in the way that humans do, there are however a few which seem to possess the ability to learn it. Great apes, our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, are a clear example of this, which also illustrates that an animal’s level of intelligence does not necessarily correlate to its ability to communicate verbally. Verbal communication is particularly dependent on neural connections between the brain and the larynx, which is the hollow muscular organ that provides air passages to the lungs and holds the vocal chords in place. Apes lack quantity of these connections, limiting their ability to speak. However, many apes have been taught sign language which has in turn allowed them to communicate effectively with their keepers, in a way displaying the feature of discreteness identified by Charles Hockett. A notable example is Koko the Gorilla who was kept at
San Francisco Zoo until her death in 2018. Koko was able to use up to 1,000 different signs as well as reportedly combining signs to make words, such as signing ‘finger’ and ‘bracelet’ to mean ‘ring’. However, although she was able to use these words in an appropriate way, she seemed to struggle with grasping the ability to form fluid sentences with correct grammar. At the time those who were more sceptical argued that her keepers were being over optimistic in their interpretation of what she was doing. It is possible that Koko may have simply guessed at what sign was necessary to receive a reward and therefore just used learned responses, rather than actually comprehending the human language and communicating like a human.
The debate about whether apes can speak or only carry out a form of mimicking is more obvious in the case of parrots. Like humans, parrots have many of the necessary neural connections and thus sufficient physical capability to make the sounds we recognise as words. But, again, does their imitation of words count as speech? In the wild, of course the human language is of no use to parrots. Instead, they use their voice in extravagant vocal displays to impress others in attempt to find a mate. So why might domesticated parrots want to imitate human speech? A possible answer is that they have a desire to fit in with their surroundings, which in turn improves their chances of survival. Most parrots will imitate their owners by saying phrases such as ‘I love you’ or ‘how are you’ when somebody comes to greet them. But it is still unclear whether talking parrots have just learned to expertly mimic human behaviour or whether they actually understand what they are saying. Their apparent understanding may just be associating things together, for example, a pat on their head meaning ‘I love you’. Having said this, according to Irene Pepperberg, an American animal psychologist who conducted a thirty-year research project with a grey parrot called Alex, if taught correctly parrots can indeed understand what
they are saying to a certain extent. For example, Alex was able to identify an object such as a key regardless of the shape or colour of the one being shown to him. Alex also understood the concept of nothing or zero, as when presented with two identical objects and asked what the difference was, he could answer ‘none’.
When discussing communication in the animal kingdom, aquatic mammals such as whales and dolphins are most probably the first that spring to mind. Whales are famously known for their enchanting songs. Over the past few years scientists have made some ground breaking discoveries concerning communication between sperm whales, and the potential use of a phonetic alphabet. Sperm whales are most commonly found in the depths of the ocean away from sunlight. Due to the darkness of their preferred habitat sound is crucial to their communication. However, on closer analysis the rhythmic clicks that sperm whales make may be more complex than previously thought. Through observation of whales in social situations, researchers can clearly hear them making clicking noises known as codas. Scientists are beginning to think that like humans they form words through combining phonics and in turn phrases from combining words. They are seen to form patterned phrases by making these clicks with different rhythm, tempo and inflexion. It has also been observed that if two sperm whales are producing clicks at the same time they seem to be trying to mirror one another, perhaps like how humans often naturally try to match the energy and vibe of those they are talking to. Scientists have begun to use AI and machine learning for deep analysis of codas and social interactions between Wales in an attempt to decode this ‘alphabet’ as they have discovered that this form of communication has more depth and dimension than we had been aware of. As this study advances, it seems likely that researchers will continue to discover more and more about
this striking species. If they do manage to decipher this ‘alphabet’ it raises an interesting ethical question: whether humans should use this to help whales, for example, by warning them about manmade danger such as fishing nets. Do we as humans have the right to communicate with animals, especially ancient species that have been on earth for many centuries more than us?
Despite this recent research with whales, the basic questions remain. While many species show some of aspects of the four final characteristics that Charles Hockett defined to constitute a language, we are yet to discover whether any animal on their own has a form of communication encapsulating all of the features in the classic definition of a language. Furthermore, while it does appear that certain animals can be taught human language, their use of it is still limited and it is not certain that they are doing something more than a sophisticated form of mimicking.
Antibiotic Resistance and Superbugs
Amelie W (L6)
Antibiotic resistance (ABR) is one of the world’s most pressing public health problems. ABR occurs when bacteria develop defences against the antibiotics designed to kill them. A superbug is a strain of bacteria which is resistant to several types of antibiotics. These pose a significant threat to life, the economy, and the healthcare industry. Antibiotics have been the most common method of treating infection since the late 1940s, so as more and more bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, the rapid development of new antibiotics and alternate treatment methods is vital to prevent an increase in life threatening infections. This article will explore and explain some of the causes, costs and consequences, and plans to mitigate the problem of ABR.
Antibiotic resistance is caused by the overuse and misuse of antibiotics, as when used incorrectly, the bacteria begin to reproduce and in turn, begin to mutate more frequently. Mutated bacteria become increasingly resistant to antibiotics, and therefore are more likely to survive and reproduce, whilst the non-mutated bacteria die out due to natural selection. Bacteria can reproduce rapidly, doubling every 4-20 minutes depending on the species, meaning that an entire population with the advantageous mutation will be produced quickly. This process repeats and eventually the whole species will become resistant to that specific antibiotic.
Multiple species of bacteria may also evolve to become resistant by DNA exchange, which occurs as bacteria exchange bits of DNA among both related and unrelated species. As a result, antibiotic-resistant genes may be passed from one bacteria species to another, causing the other species to go through the same process of natural selection until that species also becomes
totally resistant to that antibiotic. Superbugs emerge when this process repeats with many different types of antibiotics, resulting in a species of bacteria which is extremely difficult to kill with current medications. This most commonly happens within hospitals and can therefore be contained. However, superbugs can also spread outside of hospitals, for example, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). To avoid developing antibiotic resistant bacteria, it is advised that antibiotics are not overused or misused. They should only be taken as prescribed by a doctor, as missing a dose, stopping a course of antibiotics early, or sharing antibiotics will increase the risk of bacteria reproducing and mutating.
The consequences of ABR are becoming increasingly prevalent and severe. Deaths from MRSA have risen from 261,000 associated deaths and 57,200 attributable deaths in 1990 to 550,000 associated and 130,000 attributable deaths in 2021. This is the largest increase in deaths among the superbugs. The increase in number of ABR bacteria and superbugs leads to an increase in deaths from otherwise treatable
Colorized image of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria from a scanning electron micrograph
infections. It is estimated that superbugs could cause almost 40 million deaths worldwide over the next 25 years. According to the World Health Organisation, by 2050, superbugs will be the leading cause of death on the planet, as they estimate that there will be more deaths caused by superbugs than by cancer. In 2019, ABR contributed to 4.95 million deaths, and was directly responsible for 1.27 million deaths globally. As well as being a public health crisis, ABR also presents significant economic challenges. Over the next 25 years, the World Bank estimates that ABR could cause US$1 trillion in additional healthcare costs, as well as causing US$3.4 trillion gross domestic product losses in the next 5 years. ABR poses a threat to the healthcare, veterinary and agricultural industries, as it creates demand for more expensive and intensive care in hospitals and for vets and reduces agricultural productivity. This clearly demonstrates how the consequences of ABR are both socially and economically significant and underlines the need for prevention as well as alternative healthcare solutions.
In attempt to reduce the impact of the increase in number of ABR bacteria and superbugs, there are currently 43 new antibiotics in clinical development by the top 50 pharmaceutical companies. Each of these antibiotics has antibacterial properties against some of the most serious bacterial infections, meaning that new antibiotics may be able to work against species of ABR bacteria and therefore will reduce their risk. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Eravacycline in 2018, for the treatment of intra-abdominal infections, and Cefiderocol in 2019, which treats complicated urinary tract infections. Eravacycline has shown to be more potent than the antibiotics that have previously been used for treating intra-abdominal infections. The FDA also approved three new antibiotics, oritavancin, dalbavancin, and tedizolid, which aim to treat acute skin infections actively caused by MRSA. However, despite these efforts to lessen risk and impacts
of this superbug, MRSA remains a high priority for the World Health Organisation, as they state that, ‘The morbidity, morality and healthcare costs due to MRSA cannot be underestimated, and it remains a major concern due to its persistent prevalence and potentially severe infections.’ This highlights how serious the consequences of ABR may be, as it cannot be stopped, only slowed down, meaning the eventual need for a different standard treatment for bacterial infections is inevitable.
In summary, it is evident that antibiotic resistance is a pervasive global threat that requires immediate action to mitigate. ABR is an unavoidable consequence of natural selection, and therefore scientists of antibiotic research and development continue to work towards discovering both ways to prevent ABR, as well as finding methods to treat infection that will continue to work into the future. If sufficient new antibiotics are not discovered and approved in the coming years, the end of the antibiotic era will be imminent.
To what extent does the racist context of Hergé’s Tintin affect our enjoyment of the books in 2024?
Tintin has become one of Belgium’s most popular literary characters with museums, wall art, statues, and a direct influence on the Belgian football strip to his name as Georges Remi explored the world through his children’s illustrations. Born in 1907 in a suburb of Brussels, Remi chose the pen name of Hergé in 1924 by using his reversed initials of R.G (which, with a French accent produces Hergé). He joined the boy scouts aged eleven, giving him a thirst for adventure and exploration leading to his creation of Tintin, a young reporter who finds himself embarking on cases all over the world. However, some of Hergé’s earlier publications of Tintin books have been
Faith S ( L6)
widely criticised, with several countries even refusing to print certain editions. These books have been challenged as recently as 2012, so the question remains: should we view Hergé, and by extension his books, differently because of this, or can they be read recognising the context of their time?
Although several of his books have been disputed, the main publication that people find problematic is the second of Tintin’s Adventures, Tintin in the Congo, published first in 1931 in weekly cartoon strips, with a later adaptation in colour in 1946. Tom McCarthy in his 2006 book Tintin and the Secret of Literature wrote that Hergé displays the
Congolese as ‘infantile and stupid’ as well as ‘backwards and lazy, in need of European mastery’. This comes across through Hergé’s portrayal of the Congolese as being less intelligent than their white colonisers as they struggle to use modern inventions and tools, in one case meaning Tintin must come to their rescue to fix an entire railway which they cannot accomplish. Whilst it could be argued that such things must occur within the storyline so that Tintin emerges as the undisputed hero, many would say that, as in later publications, this could be done more sympathetically and respectfully, rather than belittling the natives. There are also noticeable references to race in this book, one example being that after Tintin saves a Congolese village’s tribal idol from destruction, a local woman praises him saying ‘White man very great’. Another racial reference is Tintin’s enemy, a tribal leader, saying ‘Me myself kill miserable white man’. In one of the earlier comic strips, Tintin is also shown teaching a lesson to Congolese students, in which he says ‘Today I’m going to tell you about your fatherland: Belgium’, however this scene was changed to a maths lesson in the later 1946 collection. The illustrations of the Congolese people in this book raise arguments themselves due to the one-dimensional portrayal, lack of shading, and lack of individuality, as all are depicted as literally black with thick pink lips despite the range of shades of real skin colour, thus reinforcing racist stereotypes.
Another publication of Hergé’s that (admittedly less so) sparked argument on the portrayal of natives was Tintin in America, the book following Tintin in the Congo in its weekly publications from 1931-1932, in which Tintin finds himself in a Native American ‘Reservation’. In the story, the Blackfeet tribe are manipulated by the wealthy Chicagoan villain into thinking Tintin is their enemy, resulting in their attack, capture, and attempted murder of him. This is sometimes criticised as presenting the Native Americans as easily manipulated, gullible and naïve. Upon Tintin’s
arrival in ‘Redskin City’ in the original comic strip, a sign on the tourist office wall says ‘Don’t forget the poor natives’ with an arrow pointing towards a Native American sitting on the floor below it. However in the 1946 version this scene was modified, replacing it with Tintin pointing a camera in the Native American’s face saying ‘Look Snowy…A real Red Indian’. Despite most books being set in predominately non-white countries, the majority of the characters are white, and those that are not are very rarely reoccurring characters. The few non-Europeans are also very stereotypically drawn in their appearance and attire, with much less imagination or depth put into their characterisation than those of figures such as Captain Haddock or Bianca Castafiore.
However, many people would argue that the context surrounding Hergé’s writing relieves him of much of the blame. For example, when he started publishing Tintin, it was as part of Le Petit Vingtieme, the children’s subset of a Belgian newspaper of which Hergé was editor but was run by Catholic priest Abbe Norbert Wallez. Due to Hergé’s love of the outdoors and fascination with Native Americans following a study of them in Boy Scouts, he wished for his first of the Tintin illustrations to be focused on these people, to ‘reflect his concerns regarding the treatment of the American Indian communities by the US government’. However, Wallez had an agenda he wanted to convey through Hergé’s Tintin comics. His first priority was to warn against the socialist thinking of the USSR, therefore making Hergé’s first publication Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. As well as this, when Hergé was finally allowed to create Tintin in America, despite his wish to explore the Native Americans and reject the wild and savage stereotype that was common in Western films, only a small portion of the book is set amongst the tribe, the rest fulfilling Wallez’s wish to warn against capitalism as Tintin battles wealthy and corrupt corporate villains. The second adventure, Tintin in the Congo, was also
influenced by Wallez, as he wanted to inspire Belgians to take up administrative jobs there and encourage the colonial spirit. The Congo had been ruled by the Belgians since 1908 and there was a strong sense of paternalism towards the Congolese, a sense that they needed European direction towards a more civilised way of life. This was the accepted attitude towards colonialism at the time, and many argue that due to the limited knowledge and sources of information such as the diaries of missionaries and artefacts in museums, Hergé should not be held responsible for conveying the mindset of the time. In a 1975 interview with Numa Sadoul for Tintin the Complete Companion, Hergé defended himself saying ‘I fed on the prejudices of the bourgeois society in which I moved…it was 1930. I only knew things… that people said at the time’. Hergé also remembered one of the common paternalistic outlooks circulated by colonisers at the time when he when he recalled the belief that ‘Africans were great big children…Thank goodness for them that we were there’, showing the societal views that would have surrounded him whilst researching for this book. 1930s Belgium had very strong ideas of patriotism,
Catholicism, and morality, which is evident through Wallez’s power as a Catholic priest and the head of a newspaper. Some of these religious beliefs are reflected in Hergé’s books. For example, in Tintin in the Congo, the reporter is saved from the multiple attempts on his life by Catholic priests and missionaries who were there leading the plantations and mines at the time. The Belgian occupation of Congo is widely considered to be one of the most atrocious violations of human rights, so even the slightest offensive comment in these books can understandably be a cause for dispute.
There is also further controversy surrounding Hergé’s affiliation with the Nazi regime which occupied Belgium during the time of his publishing. When the Germans took over Belgium on 10th May 1940, having already swiftly implemented similar restrictions in Austria two years before, all expressions of opinion fell under Nazi control. Le Petit Vingtieme was censored and cancelled, as were many other newspapers and magazines, meaning that Hergé turned to Le Soir, a German-run paper, to publish the rest of Tintin’s adventures. Due to this, many people
believed that Hergé was a Nazi sympathiser, which was not helped by some of his antisemitic comic strips. One cartoon as part of The Shooting Star portrayed two Jewish men welcoming the end of the world as it meant they could escape paying back their debts, conveying the Nazi’s stereotypical view of Jews as money lenders. On the other hand, this interaction was scrapped when making the 1946 collection, indicating that Hergé perhaps only included it to please his German paymasters. Speaking to Numa Sadoul in regard to the backlash against The Shooting Star’s antagonist Blumenhein, Hergé once said ‘All I actually did was show a villainous financier with a Semitic appearance and a Jewish name… I have shown lots of villains of various origins… who could have predicted that the Jewish stories would end as we now know that they did’. Therefore, it could be argued that this was not intended as an antisemitic character, and that it just so happened that one of his villains resembled those that the Nazis despised. Despite this however, many believe that Hergé was still wrong for publishing this at a time when Jews were already hugely discriminated against, as Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier wrote in The Pocket Essential Tintin of 2002, ‘The Shooting Star remains to this day a blot on Herge’s record’.
So, should these arguments impact our enjoyment of Tintin in 2024? I think not. Many argue that any racist implications within Hergé’s cartoons should be viewed contextually, and I agree with this. Whilst reading some of the 1930s cartoon strips, and even some earlier 1940s publications such as those set in Congo and America, made me uncomfortable as today’s reader, I don’t think that it takes away from Hergé’s imaginative and funny stories of Tintin. Having researched Hergé himself, I also do not think he was intentionally racist, and as is shown from his 1975 interview with Numa Sadoul, it is likely that if he were writing now, his publications would be more sensitive to align with today’s society. I believe that the
influence of 1930s Belgium along with the forced alliance Hergé made with the German occupiers led to some compromises in his writing, however as many of the reprinting in 1946 and later displays, I think Hergé recognised the negative reception from some of his readers, making him reconsider and withdraw certain lines or scenes. I think this opinion is shared by others around the world, as illustrated by a Belgian court’s decision in 2012 not to withdraw the publication of Tintin in the Congo from print after a Belgian-Congolese student complained about its content in 2007. This conclusion is arguably biased being that Tintin is one of Belgium’s most loved fictional characters, however I believe that they were right in making this decision as it allows for research to be made on times in which different views were considered. However, feeling obliged to take some action after what became known as ‘Tintingate’, many bookshops such as Waterstones moved the book to an over-16 area, and almost all copies are now printed with a large front cover banner saying ‘Collector’s Edition’ as well as including a foreword adding some of this contextual knowledge to inform the reader of the time of its publication.
Overall, whilst I agree that it is good to be aware of the context of Hergé’s writing and the influences that he may have had in producing some of his works, the historical criticisms should not distract from the ridiculous and amusing adventures of this fun reporter and his canine companion, therefore meaning that we should continue to read and enjoy these humorous illustrations.
