In 1914, Ernest Shackleton’s expedition set out to cross Antarctica from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea. Its ship, Endurance, was trapped in the ice, which gradually crushed her. Sources differ on the date she finally sank.
The men reached Elephant Island in April 1916. Shackleton and five others sailed a small boat, the James Caird, to South Georgia to get help. On 30 August 1916, the Chilean ship Yelcho rescued the men left on Elephant Island. All of them were rescued.
John Maynard Keynes is often quoted as saying: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Quote Investigator could trace no source for it. The earliest attribution to him it located came from the economist Paul Samuelson, quoted in the Wall Street Journal in 1978.
Keynes did express a similar idea. In a 1924 essay on investment policy for insurance companies, he warned against an investor who “refuses to change his opinion merely because facts and circumstances have changed.”
On 23 June 1925, in a House of Commons debate on the Finance Bill, Winston Churchill said there was nothing wrong in change if it was in the right direction. Then he added: “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”
In his lecture “Political Education,” given in 1951, the philosopher Michael Oakeshott compared political activity to a voyage. “In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea,” he said. “The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel.”
In Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, the shipwrecked Crusoe goes back to the wreck and builds a raft to carry what he can ashore. When he finds the carpenter’s chest, he does not stop to open it: “I got it down to my raft, whole as it was, without losing time to look into it, for I knew in general what it contained.”
England’s team at the 1966 World Cup became known as the “wingless wonders.” The name is not quite accurate. The manager, Alf Ramsey, did not give up on wingers at once. Terry Paine, Ian Callaghan and John Connelly all played in the early matches.
Ramsey then changed to a 4-1-3-2 formation for the quarter-final against Argentina. England played the rest of the tournament without a winger and won the final.
On 12 July 1945, the economist John Maynard Keynes announced on BBC radio that the Arts Council of Great Britain would be “a permanent body, independent in constitution, free from red tape.” Keynes is also credited with the line: “The task of an official body is not to censor, but give courage, confidence and opportunity.”
Keynes arranged for the council to report to the Treasury. This established what came to be called an “arms length” relationship between arts policy and the government of the day.
On 6 May 1997, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, announced that the Bank of England would control interest rates. On 20 May, he explained the arrangement to the House of Commons. “The Government will set the inflation target for the Bank,” he said. “The Bank will have operational responsibility to achieve the inflation target.”
Decisions “on what actions need to be taken to achieve the target,” he added, “will be taken by a Monetary Policy Committee.”
In P. G. Wodehouse’s novel Leave It to Psmith, Psmith places an advertisement in a newspaper: “Leave it to Psmith! Psmith Will Help You. Psmith Is Ready For Anything.” It offers to manage affairs, handle business or take the dog for a run. It accepts any job, “Provided It Has Nothing To Do With Fish.”
In Carltona Ltd v Commissioners of Works, decided by the Court of Appeal in 1943, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Greene, described how government departments work. The powers given to ministers, he said, “are normally exercised under the authority of the ministers by responsible officials of the department. Public business could not be carried on if that were not the case.”