PURE BLOG – Page 10 – Critical Research Journal

Someone in my network, asked whether we thought the just appointed Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, should attend the COP27 in Sharm El Sheik, as he has said that he won’t be going.

I don’t, frankly, trust Sunak to ‘sort out’ anything (domestic or global). While accepting that there are some international elements to the UK’s current range of challenges (economic recovery from COVID being one), the majority and the magnitude of them all, are down to the ideology of successive ministries since May 2010, which built on that of Thatcher from 1979 to 1990. Similar politics have been followed elsewhere but these are all largely domestic choices in origin or impact. Sunak is simply the next in this line of far right ideologues.

While our escalating environmental and humanitarian crisis is global in its impact, and there are many countries that need urgent help, the more affluent economies know what needs to be done and need to get on with these things. I am not convinced that the COP platform is going to survive much longer. It has done as much as it can.

Sunak has said that he will reverse the decision of Truss to promote fracking, but it is still unlikely that he will beencouraging further development of wind and solar power. He has removed the climate change brief from Alok Sharma.

I do wish that Britain would be represented at COP27 by someone with a long-term perspective and the potential to influence both our political leaders and the public. At the moment there is a vacancy for that role – no political leader has the longevity (Alok Sharma had shown a growing commitment to the issues but has now been constrained) and the Nation’s Favourite, David Attenborough is 96 for goodness sake! So, personally I would move this to the remit of the Permanent Representatives to the UN and begin a process of negotiating a more powerful UN body to replace the toothless COP structure.

It was Carl Jung who first coined the term, ‘synchronicity’ to describe meaningful coincidences in our lives.

Many years ago, I took a group of students to the Isle of Wight collecting specimens. As I reversed the university’s minibus on a forest trail miles from any road, it fell over a concrete lip so that one of the rear wheels was suspended over a deep ditch. We piled out and some of the students tried valiantly to prop it up. It was a hopeless task, and I began to contemplate a long hike to a telephone (this was pre-mobiles), knowing that the AA would not help as we were on private land. At that moment, over the brow of the hill came the Weston-Super-Mare Tug of War team on a ‘training camp’ for the weekend. Minutes later, they had lifted the minibus and put it back on the track. This is, to me, an example of synchronicity.

If you believe in a supernatural being, then they were surely looking over us that afternoon.

Not all coincidences have such a practical bent. Some are described by believers in a ‘universe’, as providing a nod in our direction when we are making significant changes in our lives. They represent, such folk say, a gentle endorsement (or the opposite) for our course of action.

This week, I am in transition. I left one job (on the 1st) and am about to start another (on the 4th). The one I am leaving was something I enjoyed enormously but I had become concerned that the organisation was not aligned to my personal values. I don’t know if the new one will be any better, but it felt right to move on.

Yesterday, the 3rd of May, would have been my mother’s 93rd birthday. She died 9 years ago, just a couple of months after I had started the job that I am now leaving. Her first name was Betty – not short for Elisabeth, which caused some trouble for her at school where they wanted her to conform to their own expectations of children’s names!

In the afternoon, we went for a walk along the towpath of the Oxford Canal which runs close to home. While there are some boats that moor up permanently or, at least, for prolonged periods, there are others that pass through stopping only for an evening before continuing their journey. One such boat, heading south tonight, had chosen an idyllic spot and the solo female navigator had popped her deckchair on a concrete platform overlooking the adjacent River Cherwell and was making a roll-up, chatting on her tablet, and enjoying the setting sun over the valley.

It’s hard to see on this photograph, but the boat’s name was… Betty.