The President’s Column Dear Member
It’s very early here in Hobart, on a freezing cold August day. Catching up on correspondence before heading in to work I find myself thinking not of the day ahead but of the extraordinary and unnecessarily difficult times many people are facing around the world right now. Earlier flicking on the news, the first and only item across the stations is the terrible attack in Barcelona. This has replaced Charlottesville on most outlets as the lead story, which in turn has put into second place the unfolding events on and around the Korean Peninsula.
I can clearly recall drills at school teaching us how to prepare for and survive a nuclear strike. I’m a young pup of 48 and I’m still somewhat stunned that today there are two bellicose and seemingly unconstrained buffoons, amongst a group of lessor buffoons - with no sense of the consequences and implications of nuclear or any other type of war who genuinely seem willing to risk it, and the planet, for goodness knows what?
As any of you who have dealt with matters which attracted major media attention would know - the cameras and interest eventually
fixes on another subject, but many, many lives continue to be affected and much work remains to be done long after the media attention wanes. The suffering and pain doesn’t beam into our living rooms but it’s there, and real, and in many respects lasts forever.
No matter what side of the political spectrum you sit it’s hard not to feel deeply for the people personally caught up in these tragedies and events. What I think is harder is for us to genuinely grasp the effect of major conflict on whole peoples and the world, the generation that personally experienced the Second World War is passing and the collective memory of its horror is getting fuzzy. I for one could not think of anything worse than having to kiss my conscripted children goodbye as they leave for war, as my great grandparents had to do.
IIMS members have broad and deep life experience as I’m continually reminded when I meet you around the world, and are not just doers, but are thinkers too, abreast of the current events worldwide that are a daily factor in all of our lives.
Tension causes commodity prices to rise and fall, political changes affect trade agreements,
protectionism, free trade, trade routes, volumes. Confidence, economics, chaos, stability are all factors in a surveyor’s lot. It really doesn’t matter if you are a yacht surveyor or doing draught or any other type of surveys, anywhere in the world. Each and every branch of our profession is affected by world events, and to not take notice of them and attempt to anticipate them is to be tossed as leaves in a hurricane.
Its traditional to wrap up a column like this with a pat solution, or an exhortation designed to meet or overcome the challenges highlighted in the issues the writer raises.
I’ll have to disappoint you in this instance save to say that during these difficult times, I believe that working collectively together is important. You are members of a global association of like-minded professionals, who look at things in a methodical, common sense way. There is some sanity in this world. Please give your loved ones and children, wherever they are, a call and a real, or virtual, hug tonight.
Mr Adam Brancher President International Institute of Marine Surveying Email:
adambrancher@kedge.com.au
The Report • September 2017 • Issue 81 | 5
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