Author: DB

Hopefully, now that mankind is staring in the face of the destruction and sees it can kill it all, we are waking up to see that we cannot stride the Earth as though it is beneath us but must care for it as it cares for us.

..when you could squat

To The Guardian
One reason why sleeping rough was a rare sight in the 1970s was because squatting was then legitimate, with about 30,000 squatters in London alone in 1979. Subsequent governments made things harder, and the enactment of section 144 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 effectively made squatting illegal.

Kevin Bannon (former squatter), London

Squatting is not illegal in non- residential properties. On Fair Street here in Cambridge squatters have taken over a public house where the tenant landlord moved out when trade collapsed during the pandemic. They have put a notice on the pub wall to say that the premises are not within the 2012 Act

Report from the News section of The Week

Noriyuki Kamesawa’s job is not a happy one, says Richard Lloyd Parry in The Times. Based in Osaka, he makes his living cleaning up after a kodokushi. The term, meaning “lonely death’ refers to the growing number of people who die alone in their apartments, and go undiscovered for weeks or months. Often, it iS only when a neighbour reports a foul odour that the body is found. Until a few years ago, Kamesawa’s company dealt with such cases only rarely; now, he handles about a 100 month, fifth of which are suicides. Partly, the rise is down to Japan’s ageing society: more people are living and dying alone, in big cities, with dwindling opportunities for human contact but it’s also product of digitalisation. “It used to be that everyone read a newspaper, and if it wasn’t picked up from your post box, neighbours knew something was wrong,” Kamesawa explains. “Now everyone reads on a screen.” The clean-ups can be unspeakably grim: the sights and smells that greet the cleaners are horrifying; their protective suits are stifling in the summer when temperatures can reach 40°C; and the stench of decay lingers in their hair and clothes. But they approach the task with solemnity lighting incense on arrival, and saying a prayer for the spirit of the person whose remains they are about to clear. “When started doing this, I used to feel a little upset by it,” says Kamesawa. “But this is our job. Even [the relatives] do not want to see this scene. We close down the space where the deceased person lived. We make it empty. That is how we pay our respects.”

The Week, 4 December 2021

Looking up the Ring Of Kerry and seeing this on Wikipedia

The Ring of Kerry (Irish: Mórchuaird Chiarraí) is a 179-kilometre-long (111-mile) circular tourist route in County Kerry, south-western Ireland. Clockwise from Killarney it follows the N71 to Kenmare, then the N70 around the Iveragh Peninsula to Killorglin – passing through Sneem, Waterville, Cahersiveen, and Glenbeigh – before returning to Killarney via the N72.

The Ring is a popular day trip and numerous bus companies offer circuits during the summer months. As the narrow roads make it difficult for tour coaches to pass one another, all tour buses run in an anti-clockwise direction, travelling via Killorglin first.

Some recommend that car owners travel in the opposite direction, going first to Kenmare to avoid delays caused by tour buses. Others advise travelling counter-clockwise to avoid having to pass the buses.

In 2008 satellite navigation systems were blamed for directing bus drivers in a clockwise direction around the route.

What makes a cake a buckle?A buckle is a single-layer cake with berries or cut-up fruit in the batter, giving it a “buckled,” or indented, appearance. So a blueberry buckle is a buckle with blueberries in the batter!

I clipped this news report but don’t recall where:

Even before COP, there were commitments from Ecuador’s president to extend the protected area around the Galapagos Islands by 60,000 km2 to reduce the impact of extensive fishing that occurs around the edges of the current protected area.

Further protection for an important migratory route for many species including tuna, hammerhead sharks and whales has been agreed by Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Panama.

This new area, named the ‘Eastern Tropical Marine Corridor’ will be a significant contribution to achieving the Global Ocean Alliance: 30by30 initiative to protect 30% of the world’s ocean by 2030. This came after Colombia’s president announced plans to increase marine protected areas by an enormous 16 million hectares in 2022.