Not so illustrious tree preservation

Back in 2014 I reported that Hull was trying to get the old aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious as a museum/attraction in time for it’s year as European City of Culture (the fact that 66% of people in Hull wanted out of the EU makes it difficult to come to terms with the fact that they are more than happy to benefit from taking this year of tourism*). As an update to my post of 2014, the ship was sent off to Turkey late last year in order to be recycled. The reason was that it would have cost far too much to preserve.

There were a number of bids (one even came in from Gibraltar) but they were all too low. So, rather than leave her to slowly rot into the Solent, the Royal Navy sold her. And then they filled her parking spot with Big Lizzie.

And while I’m dredging up old posts…in 2016 I wrote about the end of the civil war in Colombia. Well, there is a strange kind of consequence as a result of its ending: Deforestation! It seems that when FARC, the killer guerrilla group held sway, the forest was not to be touched. Okay, they might have been ruthless killers but they had rules about trees. They were, to all intents and purposes, the local government and, obviously, what they said went.

Now things have changed completely and one of the effects of the peace is illegal logging. The problem is so bad that the Colombian government is hoping to work with the (no longer) FARC separatists to help protect millions of hectares of forest. The trouble is that with an end to hostilities comes the return of the population to their homes. These once displaced people have no jobs or income. They see dense forest as a means of survival. It’s not always about people trying to get rich, these people have a genuine need.

I’m not sure what will happen in Colombia but one thing is for certain, once the South American forests are gone, it’ll be a lot harder to breathe. Mind you with climate change heating everything up anyway, suffocation might be an alternative.

There were no such problems here in Farnham. While it was the hottest August day so far this year, I was stuck in my office working on Mirinda’s Assignment 4. And I cooked up a Japanese feast for dinner as a sort of celebration for her finishing the assignment before we go away.

* Concerning Hull…they were in a very deprived state back in 2014 due mostly to the death of their fishing industry back in the 1970’s but suddenly, a saviour turned up. German firm Siemens opened a massive factory, making the huge blades for wind turbines.

Suddenly there were 650 new jobs and things looked a bit better with money filtering out from this economic upturn. Then came the Brexit vote and Hull wanted out, wanted some sort of self determination, believed the lies.

No sooner had the vote been counted than Siemens announced it would probably close the factory and move to a European centre. Given they wanted to supply turbine blades to all over the EU (meaning even more jobs for Hull), it would be ridiculous to work outside of it.

As Steven Bayes, a Labour councillor in Hull for 32 years, says the vote to leave the EU was like “turkeys voting for Christmas.”