The Last Word

The Covid Pandemic has been awful for millions of people around the world, but as it starts to slowly recede into the rear-view mirror, we are trying to deal with a new and sometimes unrecognisable world.

Many of us enjoy a burger from time to time. You may even enjoy a ‘beefburger,’ and when thinking of a sausage, no doubt meat will be involved. So a recent legal tussle over what the vegetarian versions of these products should or could be called is of some culinary interest to us all. It also affects the cement industry, as we shall come to see.

Google Maps has a new feature, Timelapse, which stitches together satellite images to allow users to scroll back in time to 1984. As someone who is as old as the first images on Timelapse, this is sobering. Many locations around the world have changed beyond recognition: The melting of Greenland, the ‘advance’ into the Amazon, the growth of megacities like Dubai and Beijing, the disappearance of the Aral Sea... The images are equally shocking and unsurprising.

Firstly, I’d like to say ‘thanks’ to my colleague Peter Edwards for writing  the Last Word since the start of the pandemic. We’ll now be taking it in turns to write the column for the foreseeable future.

As the world winds its way back to ‘normality’ following the Covid-19 pandemic, there is the prospect of increased social interaction. However, I now find myself somewhat bamboozled by the prospect of actually having full-on conversations with other people...in real life. This is especially tricky when the topics du jour have been covered. There’s only so many times you can discuss the latest case-numbers, Covid rules and how you see the future of office working, before needing to move on to other topics.