Monday, October 31, 2016

Canada and the EU show what a new trade deal can do!

Useful video to improve familiarity with trade deals & all their up and down sides, not that they want to cover the down sides at kick off. http://europa.eu/!FN83jX

Of course no mention of tariffs, perhaps no tariffs at all, just more open and fairer access to markets to aid collaboration. 

Market share ambitions are not promised to anyone, the counter being no protections are promised, they are just there to compete for & to allow customers to decide whats best now so that they tell the providers where they need to do better next time! 

#CETA 

Free markets, free market access, transparent accountable

http://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2016/10/30/canada-and-eu-sign-historic-trade-agreement-during-eu-canada-summit

Canadas - Quick Facts
  • In addition, the leaders issued a joint statement following the Summit that outlines commitments and key areas of focus for Canada and the EU in coming years. The statement focused on shared values and interests including peace, democracy, prosperity, protection of human rights, rule of law, environment, inclusion and cultural diversity.
  • CETA will provide Canada with access to the EU’s more than 500 million consumers. Canadian workers throughout the country stand to benefit significantly from increased access to this 28 country market which generates $20 trillion in annual economic activity.
  • The elimination of EU tariffs will assist sectors in every region of Canada, including advanced manufacturing, agriculture and agri-food, automotive, chemicals and plastics, fish and seafood, forestry and value-added wood products, metal and mineral products and technology.
  • EU-Canada summits are held as agreed upon by the Prime Minister of Canada and the presidents of the European Council and European Commission.
  • This year marks the 40th anniversary of the signing of the first Canada‑EU Framework Agreement (1976) and the establishment of the EU’s diplomatic mission in Ottawa.
  • Canada’s trade and investment relations continue to grow with the EU, the world’s second largest single market, and Canada’s second largest bilateral trading partner. Of Canada’s 21 priority markets for investment attraction, 11 are in the EU.


Note to self: Must look through relative sizes of trade flows by country https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/statis_bis_e.htm?

Canada and the EU show what a new trade deal can do!

Useful video to improve familiarity with trade deals & all their up and down sides, not that they want to cover the down sides at kick off. http://europa.eu/!FN83jX

Of course no mention of tariffs, perhaps no tariffs at all, just more open and fairer access to markets to aid collaboration. 

Market share ambitions are not promised to anyone, the counter being no protections are promised, they are just there to compete for & to allow customers to decide whats best now so that they tell the providers where they need to do better next time! 

#CETA 

Free markets, free market access, transparent accountable

http://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2016/10/30/canada-and-eu-sign-historic-trade-agreement-during-eu-canada-summit

Canadas - Quick Facts
  • In addition, the leaders issued a joint statement following the Summit that outlines commitments and key areas of focus for Canada and the EU in coming years. The statement focused on shared values and interests including peace, democracy, prosperity, protection of human rights, rule of law, environment, inclusion and cultural diversity.
  • CETA will provide Canada with access to the EU’s more than 500 million consumers. Canadian workers throughout the country stand to benefit significantly from increased access to this 28 country market which generates $20 trillion in annual economic activity.
  • The elimination of EU tariffs will assist sectors in every region of Canada, including advanced manufacturing, agriculture and agri-food, automotive, chemicals and plastics, fish and seafood, forestry and value-added wood products, metal and mineral products and technology.
  • EU-Canada summits are held as agreed upon by the Prime Minister of Canada and the presidents of the European Council and European Commission.
  • This year marks the 40th anniversary of the signing of the first Canada‑EU Framework Agreement (1976) and the establishment of the EU’s diplomatic mission in Ottawa.
  • Canada’s trade and investment relations continue to grow with the EU, the world’s second largest single market, and Canada’s second largest bilateral trading partner. Of Canada’s 21 priority markets for investment attraction, 11 are in the EU.

Friday, October 28, 2016

Post Brexit (vote if not actual exit) narratives are changing! I wonder why!!??

Here are some examples that pop up as the UK produces stronger GDP growth and shows growing optimism from investment from abroad:

Guardian on CAP: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/28/grouse-shooting-estates-shored-up-by-millions-in-subsidies

Tim Harford - on freedom to trade: https://www.ft.com/content/8705e392-96ce-11e6-a1dc-bdf38d484582?segmentId=ba4d2695-98da-a596-8fa6-6cf65dfd72ac

The BBC - Big Bang; the unique sustainable strength of the city: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37751599

Some would say, the nature of the way some are falling in line by trying not to say what they have to say and by ensuring they catch and remain relevant is very interesting to observe!

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

official from IEA: Renewabled beat Coal to #1 energy producer top spot!

in 2015!!

Official from IEA https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2016/october/iea-raises-its-five-year-renewable-growth-forecast-as-2015-marks-record-year.html

https://www.ft.com/content/09a1f984-9a1d-11e6-8f9b-70e3cabccfae

So much further to go, quickly, for baseload and for climate change mitigation!

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Bristol Channel and Kepler want to do a king Kanute, NOT!

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/kepler-claims-tide-is-turning-for-power-in-the-severn-estuary-907ch7bwr

Interesting! Being something of a sailor, (a qualified yacht day skipper) after Canada with the Bay of Fundy, the Bristol channel has the 2nd highest tidal range in the world at 12M. Engineering for and exploiting neaps and springs MHWN & MHWS would be pretty cool for the UK and the planet. Once again these benefits like solar and photosynthesis ie sustenance for all life in general, we have the sun AND the moon to thank for this tidal power. Lets use it, so long as we don't adversely effect ecosystems, and I don't mean the annual Severn-Bore surfers, although the great Tsunami of 1607 does come to mind as well!

Monday, October 17, 2016

How are ordinary people rewarded as countries help their counterparts abroad? #Globalisation

Very good read from Prof Sachs:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/10/16/the-truth-about-trade/UWtu8jpAo8LTsTFlffaZ0K/story.html

Applies to europe and its single market, where is the pain and the gain most felt. Seem obvious, hence their problems. Then there are the BRIC's cosy'ing up to each other again.

Transparency and accountability is the key, not hiding behind size and complexity. Incompetence or corruption, you decide in the context of what Trade deals are and what they do and dont do!

The rewards should be through the taxes earned by govt, put back into more and better education, health and infrastructure. We need to help the poorest around the world and keep advancing the less poor and it shouldn't require dogma and politics just well planned policy.

Big brands getting it! PepsiCo goes healthy and ethical!

Social, economic and environmental effectiveness is dawning on everyone and as it does, outcomes and reputations are becoming so much more obvious to all. The citizens, the communities, the businesses and the governments all know they can not hide from their responsibilities. Its called perfect information, transparency and accountability follows!!

https://www.ft.com/content/43ebdbf0-918a-11e6-a72e-b428cb934b78
PepsiCo is to spend billions of dollars to develop drinks and snacks and reformulate existing ones with lower sugar, salt and fat content, as consumers demand healthier options and regulatory pressure intensifies amid an obesity epidemic.

Compliance means regulation where needed, ethics, social, environmental and prosperity responsibility. Triple bottom line works for everyone. https://www.ft.com/content/43ebdbf0-918a-11e6-a72e-b428cb934b78

America votes November 8th 2016, 4 weeks time!

The next few weeks and especially the result will be very itneresting to see how much pull the past has for the future, the near past:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0KNku34G2Y

Hillary was always going to walk it in my view and I think in the republicans view, that why they let Trump stir it up and stir everyone else up into thinking otherwise!

I remember my posts for the previous two elections, how time flies. Obama did push for all he said.

http://nickhorslen.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=obama

Because or in spite. Politics and action.

Friday, October 14, 2016

London Tech investment

This will be interesting to watch unfold, huge VC and startup opportunites

SoftBank and Saudi Arabia plan $100bn tech fund

Partnership to be based in London will be investing over 5 years

https://www.ft.com/content/0370a5f4-9191-11e6-8df8-d3778b55a923

Global health data visualisation, for reference.

Good stuff, seen before but context interesting to observe develop

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/10/daily-chart-7?fsrc=scn/li/te/bl/ed/theglobalburdenofdisease

and dont  forget
http://ghdx.healthdata.org/

http://www.healthdata.org/data-visualization/health-related-sdgs



Floating currency - a good read!

Imagine being Italy, looking at Greece and then Germany and then saying: why are we here, who set our currency value for us in this very Italian situation?

https://www.ft.com/content/c8ebe416-914f-11e6-8df8-d3778b55a923

Phama: Rivers, Antibiotic resistance, supply chains and governance

In the context of TB in India and AMR around the world this issue is far bigger than just supply chain and good governance, it could have hugely negative impacts on global health and poverty eradication.

https://www.ft.com/content/8a7ed3a6-7128-11e6-a0c9-1365ce54b926

Monday, October 10, 2016

The retreat of mortality – 20th and 21st century trends David Coleman University of Oxford

Sometimes when researching issues you can stumble on real interesting presentation slides that just make you want to know more!

The retreat of mortality – 20th and 21st century trends David Coleman University of Oxford

http://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/spi/demographics/2012-02-02_coleman_mortality_slides.pdf

Friday, October 07, 2016

Something I wrote on LinkedIN this week, covers the TBL and International development for all of us.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/people-planet-prosperity-light-arrives-new-everyday-sets-nick-horslen?trk=pulse_spock-articles

Combined with some other links I placed on facebook, useful data and visualisations, just for reference:

http://unsdsn.org/ and www.sdgacademy.org all there free for all! As are other tools and data



Having recently had the opportunity to share 1:1 with other influential people my thoughts about what I've been busy doing over recent years and what I intend to do going forwards, its been an enlightening experience for me. It gave me the opportunity of listening to others listening to me. The latest person I spoke to on this encouraged me to share this experience across my friends and associates, so here goes!
Some listeners asked me "why don't more people understand this", "how comes it all ties together so clearly", but then we get to "if the picture is so big how do you focus in on the discrete activities that you as an individual can do to make a difference?". All very good questions and I wonder about them just the same!
So I thought how do I encapsulate those discussions, those idea's and principles, the big picture and the finer detail, in a succinct way to share and invoke wider discussion and collaboration.
Sure, while I've been busy with work in technology and health, I've been blogging since 2004, I've been active on social media since 2007 and a lot of what I have shared has deliberately been a combination of my business, science, development and altruistic interests, interspersed with personal details from my passion, my activities and my family. I hope this has always encapsulated and shone a light on a core theme behind everything that I do, my triple bottom line quest, to understand people, planet and prosperity and to examine the evidence of what is effective and to try and take pragmatic as well as strategic steps to participate and support the progress that is happening across the globe. Progress that is too often hidden but from time to time and in certain quarters shines through so clearly and brightly.
I start with the understanding that the world now is a better place for more people than at any time in history but we are not where we could be. So the opportunity to accelerate and catch up to where we should be is in part my quest and I see a lot of plans and progress towards that target, somehow a fifteen year target seems sensible, ambitious and realistic. So why 2030?
2030 is fifteen years way, as was the year 2000. A lot of progress in the last fifteen years teaches us what can be achieved in the next fifteen years. That achieved in the past was achieved without what we have today, the latest in understanding, knowledge, technology, resource and infrastructure, core persisting assets that are crucial to the momentum and acceleration.
If I look to the issues of our world, the people, the planet and the need for shared prosperity its not easy to miss that things have changed just in one lifetime, my lifetime and I've only just passed into my second half. As one of the generation who most likely can live to the age of one hundred, my second half is going to be as interesting as the first. I hope that is true for everyone around me.
I hope very much that others share in the interest and the progress, I see no reason why they wont especially when it is discussed and better understood. However I am aware that there are so many people who are not in the same position to help themselves in the way that I and others around me are, nor were they in their early lives. However the stepping stones for everyone are better understood now, with a combination or social justice, economic and environmental development and sustainability.
If in the last fifty years we've seen the reduction of the number of people living in extreme poverty from over 50% of the global population to now well under 25%, if we can take half of that population out of extreme poverty as we have done, then we only have to do it again and we will be close to eradicating extreme poverty in our life times. Extreme poverty at the $1 a day level isn't just a monetary notion, as much as anything its about people who have insufficient access to the basic stepping stones for human life and human progress. It is so clear now in my mind at least that without sanitation and clean water, food and nutrition, good health is difficult. Without good health and healthcare, life and learning is inhibited. Without education little real progress is made towards social development and economic development and so civil society misses out on the contribution of each essential citizen who can then participate. We all miss out on the potential of these people who can then demand fare participation for and by all.
Each of these steps contribute to the individual and the collective progress within communities and countries and as healthy, educated and empowered people work and grow they expect their leaders and their governance to grow. They learn to hold themselves and others to account, to provide better levels of accountability and transparency, better rule of law and better inclusion, opportunity and progress for all. They help lock progress in and ensure value persists and becomes a sustainable assets.
So stepping from water and sanitation to nutrition and health, education and gender equality, to work and commerce, law and order, governance and accountability these steps are all tangible and real. The timeline for some may be longer than for others, the progress will vary from time and place, but the linkage is clear both in the top down big picture but also in the bottom up detail of every day experience, needs, actions, support and progress.
Creating the persisting assets of healthy people and healthy supplies or food and water is well understood. Building the persisting assets of healthy and educated people coming from investment in healthcare and educational infrastructure, all link to the persisting assets of society, including commerce and trade in the form of roads and ports, power generation and utilities, these are the things that allow the poorest people and countries to move beyond a hand to mouth existence and to enjoy the progress that all other communities and countries have enjoyed over the last one hundred years of their own global and local development.
To take that to another level of detail, we see the progress from education, gender equality, human rights, economic development and inclusion and these are all founded on the need for sustenance from food and water but especially from good health. Eradicating health problems and diseases in one area not only lightens the load on the constrained resources there, it also prevents it from over spilling on others. That applies from everything from Malaria to TB, water borne parasites and infections to diabetes and heart disease. The health improvements of just this latest generation shows again that with the world population having doubled, the infant mortality rates have fallen (in relative and absolute terms) and the life expectancy for people everywhere has grown.
This is all good news especially when we look into the detail and see that with more education and more gender equality, then women are making the most difference, now and for the future. Their choices, more free and enabled choices, allow them to study longer, work better and start families later. When they do start their families they tend to keep the family sizes smaller and so the average family DNA footprint has reduced close to the known average of just over two children per parent pairing. At this stage if adults only leave the same number of children behind them then global population starts to reach a steady state and with the progress of an ageing population the planetary population will start to stabilise and level of at between ten and twelve billion by the later part of the century. That is clearly in everybody's interest when we consider the constraints on resources and the planet.
If anything is going to deal with the issues of scarce resources, global emissions and climate change, the inevitable movement of people and potentials for disease transmission or for conflict, it is these stepping stones to progress. Progressing together to help those suffering the most today and ensuring the progress of all people tomorrow. Tapping into a level of enlightened self interest, can leverage all the social, economic and environmental interests of people in diverse communities. People everywhere with talents and aspirations in their own unique fields driving progress in medicine and commerce, technology and learning, agriculture and arts, communities and nations.
You don't have to subscribe to any political or philosophical view to see that each persons own unique contribution to the state of their own society, their own environment and reaching out to help others with small individual contributions, aggregating up to huge collective efforts, both in terms of technological and educational development, but also in terms of economic investments and assistance, such as ODA and aid from tax payers through governments.
With increasing levels of accountability and transparency, better understanding not just of incomes but outcomes, clearer learning from good governance and stewardship, all area's from health and education, water and sanitation, inclusion, trade, asset management and infrastructure development, all these area's work together to support the local and global need and have helped people to focus on what is effective.
As community always do, emerging from their own narcissistic and nepotistic tendencies towards more developed thought and action, with clearer articulated strategies and progress, so, more concise and better understood narratives and discourse emerges. Conversation, collaboration and sometimes challenges between people of shared intend but perhaps always slightly differing insights, experiences and experimental intent, these need not slow things down. Quite the reverse. Policy differences and priorities are overcome with understanding, with data, with outcomes and results. Best practice drives innovation and learning. Effective is the key word for all. The alignment of the results and understanding, drives further shared intent for development and progress.
Whats not to understand! It clearly applies to every business worker and leader as much as any charity of government team. It applies to all adults and children and it applies to all people of ability or need.
Hence my interest in the triple bottom line of people, planet and prosperity. Hence my belief in the progress since the year 2000 with the MDG's, along with all global investment and progress. Hence my belief that the SDG's emerging from this learning, the Sustainable Development Goals are a great platform. The SDG's are already signed up to by all the nations of the United Nations targeting 2030, it makes perfect sense.
The proof of the pudding is always in the eating, so lets eat, lets take it in and lets work to apply it as individuals, as communities, as companies, as institutions and as nations. Working and learning for the good of our neighbours and fellow members of this small beautiful planet.
It starts everyday with www.globalgoals.org and more people can learn each day online though so many platforms of which this is just one. Take a look at this post for 06/10/2016:
This Thursday! Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs for a live webinar session in our Meet our Leaders series. Ask questions, get answers. Learn about Prof Sachs' passions and personal journey with#sustainabledevelopment and the #SDGs. Join the live event by clicking here:http://bit.ly/MoLOct2016 
Please dont just think about it, take a little bit of it, own it, learn about it and act on it for the good of all!!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: I chose not to reference all my sources due to my own editorial skills, but be sure they are out there. If you would like to have them please ask but in principle the links above and sites like www.gapminder.org and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo along with others, from individuals at the simplest of levelshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHEfRAooih8 to communities at various levelswww.globalcitizen.org they tell the same story and present the essential data, the facts, the evidence we need. I can also recommend a search on google for "the global fund" or "GAVI" or "extreme poverty" or just visit the UN, World Bank and leading NGO and development websites and business communities like www.Bteam.org

Wednesday, October 05, 2016

Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2016: Taking on Inequality. Leave no one behind!

New report from the World Bank will prove a good read

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/25078/9781464809583.pdf

SpaceX Mars rocket model so far

This video gives a glimpse of whats coming, pilgrim fathers and all that!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qo78R_yYFA

Lots more online http://waitbutwhy.com/2016/09/spacexs-big-fking-rocket-the-full-story.html?utm_content=buffer52ecf&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
http://waitbutwhy.com/2016/09/spacexs-big-fking-rocket-the-full-story.html

Elon Musk certainly doing his stuff so far with SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity and Hyperloop so reason to believe he will keep going!