We faced mile of unkept grass with the texture of sodden green spaghetti as we staggered along the St Augustine way; it doesn’t look as if it has been in use since the dear saint walked to Canterbury in the seventh century.
I kept sane- just – by thinking of ZANE’s Clubfoot work, which, although it is not quite the crown of ZANE’s work – that is our pensioner programme – it’s certainly our orb and sceptre.
It began around eleven years ago when I managed to persuade my friend Chris Lavy to pay a visit as our guest to Zimbabwe. Chris is a remarkable man who has spent much of his career building hospitals in Southern Africa. He is an orthopaedic surgeon and a world expert in the correction of Clubfoot in children. We formed a partnership. Now there are 13 sites around the country; we have completed over 6,600 treatments, allowing children whose previous lives were hideous to jump for joy.
We allow donors to choose what work to support and we are so grateful for their generosity; but to be able to watch today a team of footballing children when only one year ago they were walking on the sides of their feet or on their knees is a rare privilege.
History’s Unintended Consequences
As that halitosis-ridden bastard Adolf Hitler shot himself, he would have been furious to know that the unintended consequences of his ghastly career included the birth of the EU and NATO – and for goodness’ sake, the flourishing of the State of Israel.
Before Hitler invaded Russia in 1941, the country was in a state of chaos. Stalin simply had to get his act together, which he did rather well, and Russia has remained rather grimly together ever since. Meanwhile, Hitler’s war drained the UK of wealth, leaving it unable to sustain its empire after the conflict ended. What an astounding series of unintended consequences!
(As a side note, the first third of Hitler’s life was an abject failure. Then came a time where everything he touched turned to triumph, followed by a last period marked by total disaster. And he died at 56! Sebastian Haffner captures his unique career profile in his short book The Meaning of Hitler.)
Brexit Backstory
Did you know that without Paddy Ashdown, Brexit would never have happened? I outraged a LibDem table at a fundraiser with this story (with ill-disguised glee)!
In 1997, Paddy Ashdown lobbied the new PM, Tony Blair, to embrace his two passions – proportional representation (PR) and to remain in the EU forever. Blair agreed on staying in the EU, but inevitably disagreed on PR. However, after relentless lobbying from Paddy – and much to the objection of then Home Secretary, Jack Straw – Blair introduced PR in the EU elections.
Nigel Farage had been waiting in the wings. Until then, he’d been the patron saint of lost causes – but now he spotted an opportunity. UKIP took one seat, then two… then three. With each gain, publicity grew – boosting what many saw as the ludicrous idea that Britain might actually leave the EU. David Cameron, realising the Conservative Party was being hollowed out by UKIP, called a referendum in 2016. And the rest, as they say, is history…
This saga is detailed in Jack Straw’s Last Man Standing, and in Michael Crick’s biography, One Party after Another: The Disruptive Life of Nigel Farage.
Potatoes and Plagues
Henry VIII’s inability to find a competent divorce lawyer led to the founding of the Church of England – fancy that!
Meanwhile, when a shady Genoese adventurer conned the Spanish Crown into financing a voyage to outmanoeuvre the Portuguese, this brought about unintended consequences on a grand scale. Europeans gained new and unknown goods from the Americas – and in return, they received a few things they hadn’t bargained for from us.
Without Columbus’s sailing trip, there would be no potatoes in Ireland, no baked beans in England, no cassoulet in France, no tomato sauce in Italy, no polenta in Venice and no Ferrero Rocher for stockbrokers. There’d be no turkey for Christmas – or cranberry sauce to go with it – and you certainly couldn’t pop out for a curry, because there’s no curry without chilli.
Until Columbus arrived, the Americas had no bacon, beef or cheese – and no McDonald’s! There were no chickens, so forget Kentucky Fried Chicken. There were no dogs or cats, and they were even rat-free – until these pests emigrated via the ships that followed Columbus. There was no latte because there was no coffee. And no one was getting run over by a stagecoach, because wheels hadn’t been invented there yet – nor had horses been introduced to pull carts.
However, the Americans did have one gift to bestow on us, and it did for Lenin, Donizetti, Schubert and Nietzsche – syphilis! They also gave us tobacco, which killed millions with lung cancer (and ruined many amorous moments through stinky tobacco breath).
We took our revenge by gifting them smallpox, measles, flu, typhus, bubonic plague, diphtheria, whooping cough, chickenpox, yellow fever, scarlet fever and leprosy… and malaria as a treat.
Fair Exchange?
From America, we received the following plants: potatoes, maize, tomatoes, cacao (for chocolate), rubber, tobacco, peanuts, pineapples, cassava, sweet potatoes, vanilla, beans (such as kidney, lima and pinto), squashes, pumpkins, bell peppers, sunflowers, avocados, papayas, cranberries and blueberries.
In return, we gave them wheat, barley, rice, oats, rye, sugarcane, coffee, bananas, citrus fruits, olives, apples, pears, chickpeas, lettuce, onions, garlic, turnips, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, beets, radishes and kale.
And what about animals? All we got from America were turkeys. From us, they received cats, dogs, rats, horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens and donkeys.
The Dark Triangle
The American climate was great for growing sugarcane, but harvesting it required a huge workforce. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough Aztecs or Incas left standing after our diseases had ravaged their populations – enter the Triangle Trade.
African chiefs sold weaker neighbours in chains to European traders who took them to the Americas as slaves. There, the traders picked up a cargo of sugar, which they took to Boston where the locals turned it into rum. The rum was then shipped back to Africa to trade with the chiefs for another cargo of their neighbours…
So, finger-pointing blame for the slave trade is complex. Without Columbus, there would be no slave trade – at least, between Europe and America.
If you’d been there, what would you have done?
