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Details: Written by: Richard_McKie; Parent Category: Travel; Category: Europe; Published: 19 August 2013; Hits: 37370

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In May and Early June 2013 we again spent some time in the UK on our way to Russia. First stop London. On the surface London seems quite like Australia. Walking about the streets; buying meals; travelling on public transport; staying in hotels; watching TV; going to a play; visiting friends; shopping; going to the movies in London seems mundane compared to travel to most other countries. Signs are in English; most people speak a version of our language, depending on their region of origin. Electricity is the same and we drive on the same side or the street. Bott Wendy and I have lived in London in previous lives, so it's like another home.

But look as you might, nowhere in Australia is really like London.

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Travel

Cambodia and Vietnam

In April 2010 we travelled to the previous French territories of Cambodia and Vietnam: ‘French Indochina’, as they had been called when I started school; until 1954. Since then many things have changed. But of course, this has been a region of change for tens of thousands of years. Our trip ‘filled in’ areas of the map between our previous trips to India and China and did not disappoint. There is certainly a sense in which Indochina is a blend of China and India; with differences tangential to both. Both have recovered from recent conflicts of which there is still evidence everywhere, like the smell of gunpowder after fireworks.

Fiction, Recollections & News

More on 'herd immunity'

In my paper Love in the time of Coronavirus I suggested that an option for managing Covid-19 was to sequester the vulnerable in isolation and allow the remainder of the population to achieve 'Natural Herd Immunity'.

Both the UK and Sweden announced that this was the strategy they preferred although the UK was soon equivocal.

The other option I suggested was isolation of every case with comprehensive contact tracing and testing; supported by closed borders to all but essential travellers and strict quarantine.

New Zealand; South Korea; Taiwan; Vietnam and, with reservations, Australia opted for this course - along with several other countries, including China - accepting the economic and social costs involved in saving tens of thousands of lives as the lesser of two evils.

Yet this is a gamble as these populations will remain totally vulnerable until a vaccine is available and distributed to sufficient people to confer 'Herd Immunity'.

In the event, every country in which the virus has taken hold has been obliged to implement some degree of social distancing to manage the number of deaths and has thus suffered the corresponding economic costs of jobs lost or suspended; rents unpaid; incomes lost; and as yet unquantified psychological injury.

Opinions and Philosophy

A Carbon Tax for Australia

12 July 2011

It's finally announced, Australia will have a carbon tax of $23 per tonne of CO₂ emitted. This is said to be the highest such tax in the world but it will be limited to 'about 500' of the biggest emitters. The Government says that it can't reveal which these are to the public because commercial privacy laws prevent it from naming them.

Some companies have already 'gone public' and it is clear that prominent among them are the major thermal power generators and perhaps airlines. Some like BlueScope Steel (previously BHP Steel) will be granted a grace period before the tax comes into effect. In this case it is publicly announced that the company has been granted a two year grace period with possible extensions, limited to its core (iron and steelmaking) emissions.

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