In the news

It’s been braking badly for a while.

Surgeon in Brighton used a swiss army knife to operate on a patient.

Not sure to post here, wtf or the knife porn thread

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62g7ed3qzxo

EDC thread surely

just proves people who carry knives to cut up fruit are psycopaths

Microplastics densifying microbial biomass in the oceans.

For me, this is the worrying bit "he could not find a sterile scalpel."

Great advert for Victorinox.

This is the right decision, and long overdue.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/03/britain-to-return-chagos-islands-to-mauritius-ending-years-of-dispute

Yeah interesting
I expect there will be a disappointing element along the lines of the airbase being leased to the USA, India or China

Thought that was the surgeon covering his for his actions, like the organ transplant surgeon marking the organs with his initials . But really scary if true, that no scalpels were available.

Does the .io TLD get deleted?

No, it's independently owned/run anyway.

.su didn't disappear when the Soviet Union collapsed.

The IANA are unlikely to break thousands of websites just for a bit of politics. It'll move from ccTLD status to gTLD status.

Personally I'd be more concerned about .ly domains. I avoid bit.ly links purely because there's a significant risk of meddling from Libya if they wanted to.

Forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't handing sovereignty to the Chagossians themselves, rather than to Mauritius, have been the ideal here?

(but presumably, this wouldn't have kept the airbase for the US and UK, so was a non-starter in any negotiations)

As I understand it, the British government split the Chagos Islands out from Mauritius when the latter was granted independence.

So returning it seems a logical step. Personally, I'd give the Chagossians the right to choose how they want to move forward, but given the widespread dispersion of them in the intervening 60 years, I think allowing those who want to return to do so should be the priority.

wouldn't handing sovereignty to the Chagossians themselves, rather than to Mauritius

The Chagossians are quoted in some reports as excluded from discussions so it does seem like nobody cares about them.

All seems a bit irrelevant since the military base will remain on the biggest bits of land for at least 99 years and the whole lot will be under water before that.

Both Farage and Tugendhat opposing the agreement, showing their true colours.

Would not expect anything less.

So much get rid of the immigrants, and we want our island back.

Diego Garcia seems to be excluded from the deal so we will leave the Americans in charge of that till their lease expires in 2036 at which point I assume it will be renewed for another 50 years

Just read in an article this morning that the islands were uninhabited until the late 18th century when the French brought slaves over to work on coconut plantations. The Chagossians are th descendants of freed slaves.

I'm not saying that this negates their claims (they've earned ownership of the islands you could argue) I just found it interesting.

Conservatives - recreating that Falklands feeling but with better weather.

Conservatives - recreating that Falklands feeling but with better weather.

I know it goes without saying, but they really are morally bankrupt, Cleverley started this process back in 2022 and also agreed that if anybody is displaced as part of this process they could come to the UK, watch they bitch and moan if anyone does

Apparently Tuggers is leveraging this, and criticising Starmer for continuing 'Cleverley's policy'. Nice.

With Labour scraping around for every penny, spending £22 billion on an unproven solution, which amounts to handing money to fossil fuel companies so they can continue BAU is so incredibly disappointing.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/04/labour-to-commit-almost-22bn-to-fund-carbon-capture-and-storage-projects

I mean, it is spending over 25 years so less than £1Bn per year…

That feels like the kind of budget that can do long term testing to see if it’s a viable part of the climate solution.

It was announced today that the UK will transfer sovereignty of the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius. Assuming this happens before March, this means when the sun sets on the Pitcairn Islands (18:50 Local time: UTC-8, 02:50 London time: UTC), the sun will have set on all British territory for the first time in over 200 years.

bring back queen victoria !

If they were announcing billions of pounds on insulating homes, or increasing battery production, or building EV charging infrastructure across the country, or installing solar panels on every building, or massively ramping up wind production, or any of a hundred other tested, viable schemes, and then announced £22 billion funding for CCS, then fine.

But they haven't. They are leading their green budget proposal with this. Such a massive miss.