There are easier ways of escaping to the sun as autumn heralds a hard European winter

There are easier ways of escaping to the sun as autumn heralds a hard European winter. Hussein can also fight a bit, but he appears to have upset Harrison and that is a dumb pre-fight tactic. Harrison, Maloney and the promoter Frank Warren have talked intermittently since 2002 of an elusive and lucrative fight in America, but that still appears to be some way off.Harrison has admitted that the wait for a unification fight has been frustrating and this in turn has denied him the necessary motivation. The ban was lifted this week and Harrison insists the incident was blown out of proportion by people jealous of his success.There was talk of moving with his family to Spain to avoid the envious acts of his detractors and, at the same time, his manager, Frank Maloney, talked about taking Harrison’s fights away from Scotland unless box office support increased.Harrison and Maloney appear united in their appreciation of the fans who are expected at tonight’s fight. It has, however, been a difficult year for the quiet man of British boxing who quite correctly believes he has never received the recognition that he is due.Part of the problem is that Harrison has difficult fights at the wrong times and the blemishes on his record in the last two years have slowed down his progress. Harrison won easily that night and has returned to the same ring in front of far fewer spectators six times.Earlier this year Harrison was banned from all pubs and clubs in East Kilbride after a lurid encounter with a delegation of bouncers at one of the town’s night clubs. Scott Harrison is a reluctant boxing idol in his home town of Glasgow and, at the same time, he is the saviour of the sport in Scotland.

Harrison’s on-and-off reign as the World Boxing Organisation’s featherweight champion and his equally turbulent relationship with his fans continues tonight at the Braehead Arena in Renfrew, on the outskirts of Glasgow, when he meets Australia’s Nedal Hussein over 12 rounds.
It will be Harrison’s 10th WBO fight at his local venue, but, surprisingly, it is the first sell-out crowd of 6,000 since the March 2003 defence against Belfast’s Wayne McCullough. Once you add in the cost of pilotage, a lot of commercial ships aren’t going to use it.”. But the Sri Lankan government, financially crippled by years of war with Tamil Tiger rebels, and coping with last year’s tsunami disaster, is in no mood to argue with its far more powerful neighbour.So far, the only government opposition has come from the state government of Tamil Nadu, within India. Environmentalists insist Sethusamudram is not only an environmental disaster, but a white elephant as well.”When you talk about Panama and Suez, you’re talking about saving 18 to 22 days of sailing,” says Mr Gopal “Sethusamudram will save one and a half days at best. Local environmental groups are mounting campaigns against the canal, but the Indian government insists Sethusamudram will not damage the marine life.Sri Lankan environmentalists are furious that India did not even ask their government for its approval for a project that will have such a severe affect on Sri Lankan waters. “Sunlight is essential to the sea grass which the dugongs feed off.”As well as the dugongs, the Gulf of Mannar is home to sharks and sea snakes, and there have been sightings of humpback whales. “The sediment will make the water cloudy and prevent sunlight getting through,” he says.

“[This] will spread the sediment far and wide,” Mr Gopal says. “It will eventually smother the coral reef systems, and if they are smothered the reefs will collapse.”The Gulf of Mannar is renowned for its critically endangered dugongs Mr Gopal says they too will be affected by Sethusamudram. Home to more than 3,600 species, the Gulf of Mannar reserve has been designated as a world heritage site by Unesco.Unlike a land canal, work on Sethusamudram will never stop. Underwater silting means the canal will have to be constantly dredged to keep it open. He believes it will wreck coral reefs and affect the nearby Gulf of Mannar marine reserve.

Around Adam’s Bridge, the sea is shallow, varying from 10m deep to as little as 2.5m. India is using dredgers to cut a channel deep enough for ships.The problem, Sanjeev Gopal of Greenpeace says, is the large amount of underwater sediment that will be disturbed by this dredging. Local fishermen are protesting too, saying the project will kill fish stocks.”An old wish is finally fulfilled,” the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, said at a ceremony to begin the Sethusamudram canal project in July.A canal has been dreamt about since British colonial times. Unlike the Suez and Panama canals, which involved cutting through solid land, the Sethusamudram canal is a massive dredging operation. But the Indian government is cutting a shipping route through the shoals in what it is already touting as “India’s Panama Canal”. The finished canal, 167km long and 300m wide, will shorten the sailing time of ships from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal by more than 30 hours.
But environmentalists warn that the £300m project will be an ecological disaster, destroying precious coral reefs, and starving the endangered dugong, or sea cow. The way is blocked by a narrow, 18-mile chain of sand shoals.