Brexit Increased intolerance. US-Europe Split widens. White House Scraps NASA Carbon Monitoring

Wisteria at the Norris Museum

UN special rapporteur on racism, Professor Tendayi Achiume, said that Brexit has contributed to an environment of increased racial discrimination and intolerance in the UK. This has extended into worrying hostile policies towards immigrants, unequal treatment of black and muslim communities by the police and the judiciary. The professor of law at University of California, Los Angeles, reported that “Many with whom I consulted highlighted the growth in volume and acceptability of xenophobic discourses on migration, and on foreign nationals including refugees in social and print media.”

What is remarkable about Damian Gayle's report in the Guardian is that it does not appear to have hit the other news media yet. Perhaps they are waiting for her full report on her 11 day visit to the UK to the Human Rights Council in Geneva in June 2019.

Newsnight did report tonight on another example of the "hostile environment". It was the banning of asylum seekers from continuing their studies in the UK. Agencies from different parts of the UK had come across asylum seekers being given their immigration bail letters with explicit statements forbidding them to study. Now that the item is in the open, the government has confirmed that asylum seekers DO have a right to continue their education and studies and take exams unless and until their applications have been refused. The guidelines to civil servants on this matter are being revised accordingly.

The rejection by President Trump of the UK's, Germany's and France's arguments to stay within the Iran Deal has widened the rift with Europe. Prime Minister Theresa May spoke with the President reiterating the UK's commitment to stay within the deal and, according to a government spokesman,  "The Prime Minister raised the potential impact of US sanctions on those firms which are currently conducting business in Iran. They agreed for talks to take place between our teams." The biggest impact in the UK will be for the major airplane manufacturers, who have billion dollar deals with Iran. They use many US sourced components and are therefore susceptible to the imposed trade sanctions.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said European companies should not have to pay for the US decision.

The White House has also quietly scrapped NASA's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS). If you don't measure greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, you jeopardize plans to verify the national emission cuts agreed to in the Paris climate accords, according to Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of Tufts University's Center for International Environment and Resource Policy in Medford, Massachusetts.  "If you cannot measure emissions reductions, you cannot be confident that countries are adhering to the agreement. Canceling the CMS is a grave mistake."

The Cambridge climate was still bright and sunny this morning but decidedly chilly as I set off to St Ives today. The big challenge was to capture the beautiful wisteria in bloom at the Norris Museum. I took numerous pictures and tried a few panoramas as well in the morning. I was hoping to repeat the procedure when the sun had moved around a bit more. I wanted fewer shadows in parts of the gardens, but the clouds forecast for the weekend scudded over the sky. In the meantime, I finished researching the cartographers for a set of web pages on historic maps.