still growing

Brief escape from work at home for a brief walk into town to pick up some messages. Walk back home along St Leonard's Crags to admire the ever growing St James replacement. It is as I suspected the golden turd will dominate the skyline. I am really surprised they got away with that.

In the evening I listened to Sir Geoff Palmer at the virtual Cockburn Conversation on monuments. He had plenty to say on Dundas who seems to have been mostly interested in power and money as many members of the establishment then and now. Sir Geoff Palmer's argument is that the gradual abolition was a ploy to kick slavery abolition into the long grass to continue exploiting fellow humans. Slavery was abolished shortly after Dundas had to resign from political life after he was impeached due to embezzlement. It was also interesting to hear what he had to say on David Hume - he provided the intellectual support for racism that allowed part of our fellows to be treated like animals. I was prepared to give David Hume the benefit of my doubt but I must admit I don't know enough. It is clear that we need to have an honest look at all aspects of our history since it is that history that shaped our world today. Having said that, I do think that people can have achieved great things whilst being totally despicable in other aspects. That is probably human nature but we do need to know and acknowledge all aspects of important people.

I was particularly interested to hear Palmer's answer on the impact of slavery in Jamaica today. I had imagined it was enduring social issues - but no - it's environmental issues that arose during the exploitation of the land to grow sugar cane and coffee powered by slave labour. This in the context of today's news that the world's richest 1% is emitting more than double the CO2 of bottom 50%. It's the same story - exploitation of humans goes hand in hand with the exploitation of our environment.