The latest efforts from the US to move us smoothly into WW3 have disturbing knock-on effects around the world, some very close to the bog in fact. The dystopian world in which we now live, where the massively inept Boris Johnson provides the British interface to the world, has seen escalations in tension between the US and Russia to the point where Trump’s administration announced very tough sanctions against some of Russia’s finest oligarchs last week.
One of those great self-made men, tirelessly working for the common good, is Oleg Deripaska. His company took ownership of a massive alumina processing plant, which lies on the Shannon river between the house on the bog and Limerick over 10 years ago. It employs loads of people around the area (I think nearly 500), and we know quite a few of them.
The plant takes in bauxite, processes it into alumina using lovely chemicals that definitely do no harm to anyone (I think caustic soda is an excellent exfoliating cream), then ships it out to be made into aluminium. Which customers in the US might not be able to buy anymore (and the US suppliers of caustic soda may be blocked too). I mean, they might not be able to pronounce the word ‘aluminium’ correctly, but still… [side note: aluminum was one of the names Sir Humphry Davy tried out before the One True version was settled on by everyone except the US and Canada].
Anyway – eek.
The featured image definitely isn’t a shot of someone having poured petrol over dead knotweed, then throwing a lit match at it. All of those Mythbusters-type things claiming that throwing a lit cigarette at some petrol wouldn’t do what it does in films… feel free to come to my ‘lab’ (insurance and fee permitting).