A TRIBUTE TO HRH THE PRINCE PHILIP, DUKE OF EDINBURGH

Selina Seesunkur April 12, 2021

By Ahmereen Reza OBE

HRH The Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich, passed away peacefully at Windsor Castle on Friday at the age of 99, exactly two months and one day short of his 100th birthday.

Prince Philip was born in Corfu, Greece, at villa ‘Mon Repos’, the Greek Royals’ summer home, on 10 June 1921. His father, Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, was the son of King George I of the Hellenes. His mother, Princess Alice, was the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, Princess Victoria of Hesse and the Rhine, and Louis Alexander Mountbatten, First Marquess of Milford Haven. He was raised in Great Britain and was educated at Gordonstoun school in Moray, Scotland. He subsequently attended the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth where his two great passions of sailing and leading would shine through.

The Prince first met Princess Elizabeth in 1934, at the wedding of his cousin Princess Marina of Greece to the Duke of Kent. Princess Elizabeth’s cousin Margaret Rhodes later wrote in her autobiography that she “was truly in love from the very beginning.”

The young couple exchanged letters and crossed paths, and the Prince occasionally spent weekends and Christmas at Windsor. He was, according to Princess Elizabeth’s governess Marion Crawford, “always in a hurry to see Lilibet”. The Prince proposed at Balmoral in the summer of 1946 and their wedding took place at Westminster Abbey on 20 November 1947.

In the Second World War, Prince Philip was decorated for his service with the Royal Navy. He was mentioned for his bravery, which included manning the HMS Valiant’s searchlights during the 1941 Battle of Matapan. As First Lieutenant of HMS Wallace in 1943, the Prince Philip helped to save his ship from a night bomber attack. His wartime achievements also earned him the Greek War Cross of Valour. Prince Philip continued in active service with the Royal Navy, commanding the frigate Magpie, until Princess Elizabeth’s accession on 6 February 1952. In 2011, to mark his 90th birthday, Elizabeth conferred on him the title and office of lord high admiral, the titular head of the Royal Navy.

The Prince was a keen flyer, earning his RAF wings in 1953, his helicopter wings in 1956 and his private pilot’s license in 1959. During his four-decade-long aviation career, he completed over five thousand hours of flying, and was the first royal to fly out of Buckingham Palace in a helicopter. In 1957, the Duke became the first member of the Royal Family to cross the Antarctic Circle. He became the first royal to give a television interview, when in 1961 he was interviewed by Richard Dimbleby about the Commonwealth Technical Training Week and youth apprenticeships for BBC’s Panorama programme.

Throughout his life, Prince Philip engaged in many philanthropic endeavours. He maintained a keen interest in wildlife conservation, serving as president of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) from 1981 to 1996, and launched the Duke of Edinburgh Award for school children in 1956 . His International Award programme allowed more than six million young adults to engage in community service, leadership development, and physical fitness activities.

Together with Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan and Sir Evelyn Rothschild, The Duke of Edinburgh some years ago instituted the Inter-Faith Dialogue between the Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths. This group continues to meet regularly to discuss matters of common interest.

The Duke of Edinburgh is a prolific writer on environmental, technological, equestrian and animal subjects. His books include: Selected Speeches 1948-1955 (1957); Birds from Britannia (1962); Down to Earth (1988); and Survival or Extinction: A Christian Attitude to the Environment (1989).

Although he was a Privy Counsellor, the Duke had no other constitutional role. Until 1999, Prince Philip was a member of the House of Lords but never spoke there owing to his proximity to The Queen, who remains politically neutral.

Over six decades of exemplary public service, Prince Philip delivered more than five thousand speeches, visited more than 170 countries and was patron, president or connected with some eight hundred organisations . Most importantly, he will be remembered for his heartfelt devotion to HM the Queen, his family and to our country.

We extend our heartfelt condolences and prayers to HM The Queen and the Royal Family.

SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT BY UNSUBSCRIBING FROM EMAILS

Selina Seesunkur April 7, 2021

By Christine Wallace

Before writing this article, I used to be the kind of person who never deleted emails. I had an inbox of unopened emails in the hundreds if not thousands, knowing that most of them where subscriptions or newsletters I would never get around to reading. With roughly 294 billion emails having been sent and received every day in 2019, a figure set to only rise on a yearly basis, I don’t think I am alone in this. This raises the question of what, if any, impact do all these emails have on the environment? The answer is that, after taking in to account the energy used to send the email and the infrastructure needed in order to send it, every email sent creates around 4g of CO2 emission. As a result, 294 billion emails soon add up to just short of 1.2 million kilograms of CO2 emissions, an incredibly significant number when talking about climate change. A recent BBC article found that if everyone living in the UK sent one less email a day, it would equal tens of thousands of flights to Europe. Although this impact is still a scratch on the 51 billion tons of greenhouse gases we add yearly to the atmosphere, it is a step in the right direction on the UK’s legal obligation to reach Net Zero by 2050. Managing your emails is just one step you can take to lowering your individual electricity demand and one which we can all do quickly and at no extra cost.

There is another environmental benefit in unsubscribing to fashion-based subscriptions in particular. The impact of producing and making clothes is monumental to green house emissions. A single pair of jeans adds an equivalent of 33.4kg of carbon. In fact, the fashion industry contributes more to climate change per year than all international flights and maritime travel combined. Every year it uses 93 billion cubic meters of water, enough for five million people. It is not just the resources that go in to making clothes that is the issue, but also the sheer amount of consumption and waste that follows it. Every week 13 million items of clothing end up in UK landfills. By unsubscribing to fashion marketing, you are less likely to impulse buy and over buy, helping save both your money and the environment.

Unsubscribing, or even just clearing out your inbox, can also help the environment by reducing the server space used up by stored emails. The average number of emails in a person’s inbox today is 200, with each email size averaging 75kb, all of these stored emails are kept in data centres which require a large amount of energy to function. Roughly 2% of the world’s electricity is consumed by data centres and with data gathering continuing to grow this is expected to reach 8% by 2030. To put this into perspective, this is a greater energy consumption than some of the lesser developed countries. What makes this statistic more shocking is that only 6% of the data in those centres, including all those stored emails you have, is in active use. The result of this is simple, more fossil fuels are being burned to create the energy to keep your ‘data landfill’ functioning. Luckily, unlike the landfills those 13 million pieces of clothing go to each week in the UK, we as individuals can reverse our impact immediately simply by pressing the delete button.

In its efforts to tackle climate change the world is making progress on relying on renewable energy sources to power our day-to-day activities, which may leave some thinking that as individuals we do not need to lower our energy consumption. However, as the world population grows, our way of living demands more energy and as lesser developed countries move closer to the living standards of developed countries, we need to lower our personal consumption and develop more energy efficient technology so that our consumption of electricity does not out scale our ability to produce it cleanly.

Read more articles by Christine Wallace

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WHAT’S SO WRONG WITH RENTING?

Selina Seesunkur March 31, 2021

By Hattie Turner

As I’ve reluctantly inched closer to thirty, more and more of my friends have become homeowners. Some have now sold their first home and are onto their second. Consequently, I’ve always felt a little behind, still living in a rented flat while others pick out carpets for their spare bedrooms and discuss the merits of the £800 KitchenAid. My biggest purchase this year has been a milk frothier. I don’t even drink coffee, but just fancied having the odd ‘posh’ hot chocolate.

In the UK over the last fifty years, it’s been the default action for adults of a certain age to buy a home. In fact, since 1971 between 50-75% of employed adults owned a house at any given time. Politicians constantly talk about ‘generation rent’ but in reality, we are still largely a country of homeowners. It’s easy to see why. Living in a home that is yours is almost a cultural symbol of having made it. It’s the yardstick by which others measure you against. Come tooth and nail, people scrape together every penny to achieve that revered accomplishment. This is made easier still when government-backed schemes such as the Help to Buy ISA and the newly introduced 95% mortgages means you can essentially buy an entire house for just a few thousand quid. You just have to forget about the crippling 35-year mortgage repayments.

But more than prestige and financial motivation, living in your own space has many more untold benefits. Autonomy being one of them. If I wished to paint the walls bright pink or nail some questionable artwork to the walls, who’s going to stop me? Perhaps I’d like a husky for a housemate. That freedom, albeit acted upon in a slightly different way to these examples, is very liberating, and can be a huge plus for buyers.

All these positives point towards buying being the logical choice as a long-term accommodation strategy, but - without wanting to sound too Carrie Bradshaw - I can’t help but wonder whether being a long-term renter is so bad? The average house deposit in the UK in 2020 was £47,838. The average rental price in the UK in the same year was £700 per month, meaning you could live in a rented property for nearly six years before you’d paid the equivalent as those with the deposit. That’s without even considering the mortgage repayments, repairs, solicitor and surveyor fees, possible service charges and leasehold fees, all of which hang heavy on the purse strings.

There’s also the argument that flexibility trumps security. When buying, you’re in essence committing yourself to a long-term loan repayment for many years. You’re planted somewhere for the foreseeable future and it’s difficult to just up sticks and leave on a round-the-world tour without worrying about whether the last-minute tenants you found aren’t disregarding your stringent coaster policy.

Besides, don’t think that flexibility only extends to jetting off around the world to find yourself. And whilst the pandemic has changed this a lot, it also used to make you more employable. Unless you’re happy to let your house out promptly, are you stuck to applying for jobs in your direct vicinity, knowing you can’t be too flexible as a homeowner? Perhaps renters and their adaptability give them somewhat of an advantage.

Channelling my inner Ray Liotta, problems are easy enough to solve as a renter:

‘Fancy exploring a different part of the city?’ ‘No problem, I’m renting.’

‘What about the busted boiler that needs fixing?’ ‘No problem, I’m renting.’

‘What about the sudden work transfer to New York?’ ‘No problem, I’m renting.’

Sure, moving house can be slightly arduous. You might look at your new shower and see a complex algebra puzzle. The previous tenants might have left some little surprises for you in the fridge. But when you’ve got a few suitcases full of clothes and a milk frother, it’s not all bad.