Necker Island (British Virgin Islands) would survive their castaway adventure for at least three weeks, but as McCullin later recounted, "because of our gathering weakness ... out of temper, and out of water, we hoisted the red flag and were taken off in the early hours of the fifteenth day". According to McCullin, there was nothing idyllic about the desert island: "The mosquitos and other insects were more venomous and persistent than any I had encountered in Vietnam or the Congo." Richard Branson's "Extreme Tech Challenge" has been hosted annually at Necker Island since 2015. Described as one of the largest technology competitions in the
Jacques Necker the Estates-General to be a facility designed to help the administration rather than to reform government". Two weeks later Necker seems to have sought to persuade the king to adopt a constitution similar to that of England and advised him in the strongest possible terms to make the necessary concessions before it was too late. According to François Mignet "He hoped to reduce the number of orders, and bring about the adoption of the English form of government, by uniting the clergy and nobility in one chamber, and the third estate in another." By this refusal he became the ally