Breaking Waves: Ocean News

It could have been better designed, but Rachel Reeves’s inheritance tweak will help farmers with mud on their boots Should multimillionaire landowners benefit from a tax break designed to help small family farms pass down their land to their children? This is a hotly contested question, given last week’s budget. Labour has reintroduced 20% inheritance tax for farms that are valued at more than £1m, meaning the children of farmers will no longer inherit land tax-free. Granted, 20% is still only half of the standard inheritance tax rate, and it probably sounds more than generous to an ex-miner, foundry worker or shipbuilder. But today, £1m would only buy you about 40 hectares (100 acres) of farmland, which is far short of a viable farm. Farming is a long-term business that requires substantial assets and often makes only meagre returns. Farming families have not had to consider tax planning for family succession since 1992. As a second-generation farmer, I support much of the budget. But on the inheritance tax threshold, I thought, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, had got it wrong. The positive reading of her decision is that she was trying to close a loophole whereby wealthy people buy up farmland and pass it, tax-free, to their children. If that was the main objective, though, the threshold should have been set substantially higher than £1m. Guy Singh-Watson is the founder of the organic veg box company Riverford and a member of Patriotic Millionaires UK. He grows organic vegetables on 60 hectares (150 acres) in Devon and 120 hectares (300 acres) in the French Vendée. He sold Riverford in 2018 to its 1,000 employees, and the company is now 100% employee-owned Continue reading...

Prospects of strong outcome appear dim but there is hope the talks will address pressing issue of climate finance More than 100 heads of state and government are expected to land in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, over the next few days and the first thing they are likely to notice is the smell of oil. The odour hangs heavy in the air, evidence of the abundance of fossil fuels in this small country on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Flaring from refineries lights up the night sky, and the city is dotted with diminutive “nodding donkey” oil wells raising and lowering their pistons as they draw from the earth. Even the national symbol is a gas flame, epitomised in the shape of three skyscrapers that tower over the city. Continue reading...

Country’s foreign minister says UN climate summits have produced ‘no results’ as Pacific nation takes the rare step of withdrawing from upcoming Cop29 Papua New Guinea’s decision to pull out of an upcoming UN global climate summit due to frustration over “empty promises and inaction” has prompted concern from climate advocates, who fear the move will isolate the Pacific nation and put vital funding at risk. Prime minister James Marape announced in August the country would not attend Cop29 in “protest at the big nations” for a lack of “quick support to victims of climate change”. Then last week, foreign affairs minister Justin Tckatchenko, confirmed Papua New Guinea would withdraw from high-level talks at the summit, which begins on 11 November in Baku, Azerbaijan, describing it as “a total waste of time”. Continue reading...

Newfoundland Memorial Univeristy team find white masses are likely material used to clean pipes in oil industry When the chemist Chris Kozak finally got his hands on a sample of the mysterious blobs that recently washed up on the shores of Newfoundland’s beaches, Project Unknown Glob officially began. At his disposal, Kozak and a team of graduate students had the “gorgeous” new science building and “world-class facilities” of Newfoundland’s Memorial University to run a battery of tests on the white, doughy blob. Continue reading...