Britain Announces Marine Reserves

Reported in The Times today, September 15, 2016:

Four vast marine reserves are to be created around remote British islands in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Foreign Office will announce today.

Commercial fishing will be banned permanently in a million square kilometres of ocean teeming with sharks, turtles and whales.

Destructive methods of fishing will be banned in another million square kilometres.

The bans come into force immediately around Pitcairn in the south Pacific and St Helena in the south Atlantic.

Reserves will be created around Ascension island in the south Atlantic by 2019 and Tristan da Cunha, also in the South Atlantic, by 2020.

Britain will pledge £20 million over the next four years to manage and enforce the new reserves, which will be known as marine protected areas.

Enforcement is expected to include occasional visits by a patrol vessel but will largely be undertaken by a “virtual watch room” that merges satellite tracking and imaging with fishing vessel databases.

Agreements will be sought with other countries to blacklist any vessels caught fishing illegally, meaning that they could be impounded when entering a port.

Sir Alan Duncan, the Foreign Office minister, will announce the creation of the reserves at the Our Oceans conference in Washington hosted by John Kerry, the US secretary of state.

Before the conference, Sir Alan said that the new reserves would double the area of ocean under protection around the UK Overseas Territories to about four million sq km, an area greater than the landmass of India.

Obama and Marine Protection

President Obama will declare the first fully protected area in the U.S. Atlantic Ocean when he addresses the Our Ocean conference on Thursday.

He will designate 4,913 square miles off the New England coastline as a new marine national monument.

This follows President Obama's latest declaration to protect the Pacific.

Three weeks ago, Barack Obama created the world’s largest marine protected area by expanding an existing ocean reserve off Hawaii to cover 582,578 square miles.

It quadruples the size of the Papahānaumokuākea marine national monument, which was originally designated by George W Bush in 2006 and was declared a World Heritage site in 2010.

My Space, Your Space, Where Space

When I write in my blog I am in my space. When I talk in, for example, Facebook, I am in that space.

I have said for years that the next big thing will be when you and I can be each in our own spaces and yet converse.

So I read Tim Cook's observation with interest:

Augmented Reality gives the capability for both of us to sit and be very present, talking to each other, but also have other things — visually — for both of us to see. Maybe it's something we're talking about, maybe it's someone else here who's not here present but who can be made to appear to be present.

Alexander McQueen Cuts Up A Dress

There was a retrospective about Alexander McQueen on television about year ago.

A garment cutter at one of the Paris fashion houses recounted how McQueen came in, took a pair of scissors and cut up a dress that he described as boring.

The cutter was appalled until he saw the results and saw McQueen's genius in creating a new dress in a few minutes with a pair of scissors and all by hand.

Running On Empty Money

Talking about his new book, James Altucher says at one point,

Wealthy people own valuable assets. The middle class and poor simply rely on salaries.

That's strange. One of the hallmarks of being middle class is that you have cash. You have this ability to take advantage of situations because you have cash to invest.

in my mind, if you don't have cash you are a worker.

Maybe it's a USA thing, but in the UK it's clear. Of course we have a pseudo-middle class living on borrowed money - but with average debt to available income running at 132%, that can't go on forever.

And if the average is 132%, think how high it must be for some people.

Turkey And The EU

When Britain was going through its tug of war over the EU referendum, one of the hot topics was immigration from Turkey when that country joins the EU.

In 2013 I wrote about how the EU had made Turkey's accession to the EU conditional upon Turkey improving its human rights record. I said how pathetic it was that the country might improve its human rights in order to get into a club rather than that it would improve its human rights record to better improve itself as a nation.

In 2014 I wrote about how the EU executive was pushing for Turkey's accession to the EU. I suggested it was because of a fear that the country would be pulled into the vortex that is Syria and Iraq.

Now in conversation with Andrew Marr on television in March of this year, the German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said with a knowing look that it will be a long time before Turkey is accepted into the EU.

No sooner said than the news is full of the new deal that is being hammered out. Turkey will do its part to stop the influx of refugees from Syria in return for financial aid and a speeding up of its accession to the EU. Meanwhile, the newspaper Zaman has been subverted and taken over by State officials and the regime is becoming more and more repressive.

And now Britain doesn't have to worry about immigration from Turkey - at least if it can negotiate a deal with the EU that doesn't take it back exactly where it was when it was a member.

But still for me the big question is not about immigration but about allowing Turkey - a country that has a dreadful human rights record - to accede to the the EU.

Can't See The Wood For The Trees

Can't see the wood for the trees
In the darting movement of things
Can't see the whole of it
The soughing of the wind in the boughs.

This poem was inspired by a mindfulness class that I took. At the break, we went outside and I felt quite trippy and watched the wind move the branches in the trees. For a little while I could see all the movement rather than bits of it.