CO2 shortages could lead to disruption in the supply of many packaged foodstuffs including fruit and bread; meat as CO2 is used to anaesthetise animals for slaughter; decaffeinated coffee; fizzy drinks, beers and ciders. The government has struck a deal with a US firm that supplies 60% of the UK’s food grade carbon dioxide (CO2) to restart production after food shortages warnings.
Brexit – having left the EU the government seems to be going out of its way to further distance us from our neighbours – latest spat is Johnson making up the gist of a conversation with the Dutch PM. Trade deals that have been ratified are almost all just Xerox copies of what we had via the EU. Johnson is talking up links with Asia (apart from China), hence the Aukus Pact. His geography is appalling – transporting goods half way round the globe is not environmentally friendly. Like Raab “I hadn’t realised how much traffic went through Dover” and Greyling awarding contracts to use Ramsgate which is too small for the ferries.
Did all the Cabinet drop geography for history? I have no problem with history as a subject generally but suspect that public schools concentrate on maps of the empire and battles, rather than the real world – after all they do not live in our economic or social world. My love of geography is renowned (a deputy head at school said if he cut me I would bleed geography – later I wondered if he was plotting to find out when I resigned with 3 dis notice!) – and I think one of my first memories was a UK Geographical Magazine with a map of Africa on the front with all the new names. The Cabinet probably still think of Tanganika, Bechuanaland, North and South Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Upper Volta, Belgian Congo, Gold Coast, French Togoland, French Dahomey, as well as British Guiana.