“Answering the apparently simple question “How old is Germany?” is far from simple. But let me venture this bold claim: the last three decades have been the best in all that long and complicated history. If you can think of a better period for the majority of Germans, and their relations with most of their neighbours, I’d be glad to learn of it. In today’s world, roiled by populism, fanaticism and authoritarianism, the Federal Republic is a beacon of stability, civility and moderation – qualities personified by Chancellor Angela Merkel.
But the national and regional challenges that Germany has faced over the last 30 years pale in comparison with the global ones it will face over the next 30. Unlike some other democracies, including southern European members of the Eurozone such as Greece and Spain, this German democracy has not yet faced the test of a really major economic crisis. That is a result of its own great economic strengths, but also of the growth of export markets such as China opened up by globalisation, the advantages of having the euro (rather than a less competitively valued Deutschmark), and a reservoir of cheap skilled labour in east-central Europe. There is no guarantee of equally favourable geo-economic circumstances in the years to come, nor of a benign geopolitical environment…”
“From the moment you wake up and first check your phone, to the marketers that infer your mood from your music choices, to the smart speaker that shares your private conversations, or the television that listens in on them (from the terms and conditions of a Samsung smart TV: “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured”), there is nowhere to hide – or even just be – in this hyper-connected hellscape.”
“The lifetime skills guarantee and flexible loans to support bitesize learning are a strong start but to really shift gears, this must be backed up by meaningful progress on evolving the apprenticeship levy into a flexible skills levy,” she added.”
“The first step towards revolution may simply be becoming more aware of how freely you hand over your data, and to whom. Did you need to click “yes” to that cookies pop-up? Should you tell all of Twitter where you are? Does your fridge really need to be connected to the internet? When asked for her email address, Véliz will often give noneofyourbusiness@privacy.com, “to make a point”.”
“… the law was clear that an adult child “should not be able to take his parents to court to obtain finance”.”
“These “protected” lands are wildlife deserts, sheepwrecked, grousetrashed or reduced to blasted wastes by the deer kept on overstocked “sporting” estates. Our national parks are a national disgrace, dominated by elite hunting interests and highly destructive forms of grazing that are wholly financed by taxpayers.”
“The government’s promises are not made to be kept. They are made to assure us, to distract us, to persuade us to put away our banners and go home quietly like good citizens, because the situation is under control. Hope is the fire extinguisher governments use to douse public anger. But public anger is the only effective defence of the living world. Keep the flame burning.”
“The next Liaison Group Forum meeting will be on Thursday 1 October 2020, 1.00–2.00 pm. It will be conducted via web conference. To register your interest please email cropnutrients.info@angloamerican.com.“
“the last meeting had taken place in September 2019. Since then Anglo American had completed the takeover of Sirius Minerals. GE acknowledged that some local shareholders were disappointed and stressed that this was not the outcome that anyone at Sirius had set out to achieve. GE explained that there had not been a viable alternative and that the takeover had secured the future of the Project, ensuring that the benefits to the area would be realised.”
“Anglo American has abandoned plans to construct the intermediate shaft for its North Yorkshire polyhalite mine using drill and blast techniques and announced plans to use “blind boring” techniques instead.
In a letter to residents near the shaft at Lockwood Beck seen by NCE, the mining giant said that work on the shaft using the new technique would start immediately and will finish next year.
The Lockwood Beck shaft is 32km from the main mine site at Woodsmith and was originally planned to be the location of an underground cavern for launching and receiving of tunnel boring machines (TBMs). Anglo has confirmed to NCE that the TBM currently driving the material transport system tunnel from Teesside will also be used for the second part of the drive towards Woodsmith.
The firm said that the increased advance rate of the TBM meant that the Lockwood shaft would just be used for ventilation allowing it to use the simpler shaft sinking method.”
Meanwhile:
“Anglo American has confirmed its Crop Nutrients business has ended the contract of its shaft sinking contractor, DMC Mining Services UK Ltd, at the Woodsmith polyhalite project in the UK.
Anglo, which only took ownership of the asset earlier this year, said DMC staff were expected to transfer to Anglo American under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations, and construction progress was due to continue.”
“Derek Bastiman doesn’t take much prompting to wax lyrical about the beauty of his home borough of Scarborough, insisting it has the beating of any coastal area up and down the country.
But the former estate agent, who has served a combined 67 years in local government in the area in various forms, says the attractiveness of the area has presented its own problems..
the county and parish councillor said his offer to form “a rainbow coalition as we did up in the early 2000s” was supported by the Greens and a cluster of independents.
“And it was a genuine offer to park politics, you have your battle every four years, park your politics now and go into it and try and get the best out for the people who put us there to start with, but they didn’t want to know, so we remain an effective opposition, and that’s what we’ve got to do.”.”
“A university spokesman said: “We are fully supportive of the [lockdown] decision.”Services such as wellbeing support and the library will remain available to our students online.”Our security teams will increase patrols to support the lockdown and we will take disciplinary action against any students found to have breached requirements.”
“”But the high street has got to contract and become more focused on where it is and become a real interesting place to go to shop, where interesting shops are, not usual run-of-the-mill shops.
“So, from an economy side, yes, the high streets will improve, if they accept that they’ve got to contract and shrink.”
He goes on to sing the praises of the diverse offers from the boroughs three main resorts. Filey ‘has its own charm because it has no amusements as such…there isn’t a plethora of kiss me quick hats and cash machines’, while Whitby ‘will always be popular for all the right reasons’.
Scarborough, he says, “will always be the queen of the walking places, because we’ve got two fantastic bays, we can offer the peace and redevelopment of the north side and you can have the south side with south bay and the amusements”.”
“Councillors had agreed the wording of a local development plan to guide planning decisions. But when it was sent out for consultation it had been changed.
The original wording precluded unconventional hydrocarbon extraction – or fracking – until there were guarantees that it would not affect the environment or public health.
The council’s chief executive Alison McCullagh acknowledged the rewording of the public consultation had “impacted adversely” on public confidence in the process.
“It’s apparent that the arrangements in place for document oversight and control were not as robust as expected,” she said.
The original wording had stated the council “will not permit exploitation of unconventional hydrocarbon extraction until it is proved that there would be no adverse effects on the environment or public health”.”
“Heat is a Cinderella problem – more than a third of UK carbon emissions are created by heat production. Ministers are being pressed to announce a date when gas home boilers will be phased out. Industries want incentives for low-carbon heat, and Mr Johnson’s UN remarks suggest he has been persuaded by the well-funded lobby trumpeting the role of hydrogen in heating and some transport, although that looks expensive.
The nuclear giant EDF is suggesting that nukes might be harnessed to generate heat, but there’s scepticism about this.
The government is also under pressure to stop buildings being demolished where possible, because new building materials create a lot of carbon emissions.”
““Her Majesty has always been a trooper and you won’t hear her complain, but those of us who know her because our family tree is also a bamboo can see just how dire things are.”
““If you think that turning out your lights and night makes you safer, then that’s your choice. But I know my rights. If I want to keep my lights on, I will.”
The interviewer then points out that by keeping his lights on, Mr Williams is endangering not just himself, but his neighbours as well.
Williams countered, “Only if you believe in this blitz. Look, even if there is a blitz, it’s not as bad as everyone makes out. Bombs aren’t that bad, they just knock down the occasional wall. But they’re the sort of walls that would have fallen down anyway.”
The interviewer then asks what advantage the government would gain from making people turn their lights out at night, to which an enigmatic Mr Williams replies simply – “control””
“Optimism is essential in politics. But the borderline between optimism and wishful thinking is easily overstepped.”
Oh Dear.
Pure Coincidence.
“”It’s an alignment, really, of someone’s extraordinary life and performance… and how he spoke not only to his own community but to a wider community and it just happened to dovetail with where we were taking some of these songs.””
“The word Uluru translates as Great Pebble.
The Anangu people put great cultural significance on the rock, which changes colour throughout the day, most noticeably when it glows red during sunrise and sunset.”
Eeek
“Sunak ended on a rousing note, saying the public could not continue to “live in fear” and “lives can no longer be put on hold”.”
“Author: Local Democracy Reporter, Carl GavaghanPublished 1 hour ago
The Prime Minister has been urged by district council leaders in North Yorkshire to shelve plans to break up councils in order to allow them to focus on the Covid-19 pandemic.
The seven district councils claim that in July, councils they were to believe as part of the government’s reform agenda that devolution for North Yorkshire could only be delivered if local government reorganisation happened.
Since then the seven district and borough council leaders have been working on plans that would see their councils disbanded.
The leaders have worked with independent experts to prepare a possible local government model for councillors across all the districts and boroughs to vote on, if reorganisation were compulsory.
However, given that the country remains in the grip of a global pandemic, the district and borough council leaders have now asked that government reconsider and allow devolution without the need for reorganisation.
The view of district and borough council leaders is that there “could not be a worse time to dismantle or disrupt local councils” when they are part of the front-line response to the Covid-19 crisis.
On behalf of the borough and district council leaders in North Yorkshire, Leader of Hambleton District Council Cllr Mark Robson said:
“There is no doubt the Covid-19 situation has worsened nationwide and this will inevitably put extra pressure and new demands on district and borough councils to further support our communities and businesses as we work through this crisis together.”
“On Thursday, a Cornish-based company announced that it had found lithium – a component in electric car batteries – of a “globally significant” grade just north of Redruth.
The company said the lithium in hot salty springs deep underground had the potential to turn Cornwall into the UK’s hub for battery materials and create hundreds of jobs. It even said there could be enough lithium in Cornwall to meet all the UK’s demand if and when the country moves from fossil fuel vehicles to electric ones.
The company, Cornish Lithium, believes that commercial production could start within three to five years, and claims the find could lead to a string of battery plants being built in the far south-west of England.”
“Located on the promenade to north of the Heugh Battery Museum, the amphitheatre is viewed as one of the town’s most valuable cultural assets.
Photographs dating back to the early 1900s indicate it was used for a range of public events, community celebrations and entertainment with seating built in to the retaining wall, a Victorian bandstand and a café.”
“…. in a newsletter to residents that the authority had “given notice” to Benchmark that it would not renew its development contract when it ends in December.
Scarborough Council has now denied this claim.”
A fairly hefty storm
““Signing the contract with GE Renewable Energy is not just great news for Dogger Bank and GE, but for the wider offshore wind industry, marking the first time a 13MW turbine will be installed in the world.”
“Our Government has utterly failed to protect the Dogger Bank, and all our marine protected areas, from destructive industrial fishing. How can you continue to allow bottom trawlers to plough the seabed in a protected area designed specifically to protect the seabed? It beggars belief that this Government continues to call itself a ‘global ocean champion’ when it leaves its own seas at the mercy of destructive industrial fishing.
“Allowing bottom trawling in a protected area established to protect the seabed is equivalent to allowing bulldozers to plough through a protected forest. This must stop. Our Government won’t act, and we can’t sit idly by while they allow supposedly protected parts of our oceans to be destroyed.
“One source said: “Horizon is a development company with no track record in nuclear construction, commissioning or operations.
“Building this capability from scratch in a nuclear context is a huge task, riddled with risk and uncertainty for investors.”
“”At the same time Hitachi is a nuclear equipment manufacturer with no experience of long term operations as a utility.”
They said this made the Government wary about whether the scheme was deliverable on the price and timescales being proposed.
They added: “The killer reason, in my view is this. If you are government looking to invest circa £20bn in a first of a kind nuclear development, why Horizon?””
“It’s an extraordinary possibility – the idea that living organisms are floating in the clouds of Planet Venus.
But this is what astronomers are now considering after detecting a gas in the atmosphere they can’t explain.
That gas is phosphine – a molecule made up of one phosphorus atom and three hydrogen atoms.
“On Earth, phosphine is associated with life, with microbes living in the guts of animals like penguins, or in oxygen-poor environments such as swamps.
For sure, you can make it industrially, but there are no factories on Venus; and there are certainly no penguins.”
“Unforeseen events, chance meetings and bizarre coincidences aren’t just minor distractions or specks of grit in our well-oiled lives,” he explains. “The unexpected is often the critical factor – it’s often the force that makes the greatest difference in our lives.”
Even in the rigorous world of scientific research, the power of the unexpected is often at play. “Studies suggest that around 50% of major scientific breakthroughs emerge as the result of accidents or coincidences.”
vandalsblog 