At 81 years old, Peter Bate is more active than most people his age. For the past three decades he has worked as a teaching artist, sharing his expertise in landscapes and portraits with students from all walks of life.

Each week, he sets up his easel in his classroom in Austinmer, a small town on Australia’s east coast, and teaches them to produce vibrant works of art. His teaching method is rooted in demonstration, a hands-on approach that his students find both inspiring and instructive.

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Yet, it’s not only art that occupies Peter’s thoughts. Recently, he made a significant decision about his final resting place – one that reflects his deep respect for nature and the environment. Peter was one people of the first to buy a plot at Walawaani Way Conservation Burials, Australia’s first 100 per cent natural burial site.

Unlike traditional burial sites in Australia, Walawaani Way will only facilitate natural burials: bodies will not be embalmed in chemicals and coffins will be made from natural materials only. Native and fresh flowers will be allowed on the site, situated in a nature reserve on Australia’s eastern coast, but nothing that is not biodegradable such as plastic flowers.

The idea is that everything that is put into the ground will be beneficial for the soil. There are some hybrid cemeteries In Australia that have small areas for natural burials, but they are not dedicated to the regeneration of land nor for establishing protected forest for wildlife, as is the case at Walawaani Way.

When Peter dies, his final resting place there will be as picturesque as some of the scenes he teaches students to paint. The site is located on a mountain with incredible views looking onto lush green rolling hills and an estuary.

He came across Walawaani Way whilst reading the newspaper and, despite only having seen photos, decided to purchase a plot. Both he and his partner Rosemary will eventually be laid to rest there, next to each other. The pair have been together for 43 years. “She reckons you don’t get that long for murder!” he says.

Instead of gravestones, trees will mark each plot, although a stone or wooden plaque is allowed. As more people are buried on the site, it will be regenerated back to a living forest ecosystem.

“Neither of us wanted a big burial or funeral, we’re not into that,” says Peter. “This just ticked all the boxes. You’re giving something back, being in a nature reserve that’s trying to save animals like koala bears and Black Cockatoo from extinction.”

Walawaani Way is designed to be more than just a place to be laid to rest; but embody a philosophy of returning to the earth in a way that is gentle, respectful, and in harmony with nature. The beautiful setting makes it unsurprising that someone would choose to be buried here, but for Peter, whose art has always sought to capture the beauty of the natural world, the ethos felt like another way to give back to the environment that has provided so much inspiration for this work.

Walawaani Way was set up by Fiona McCuaig, who became interested in “green burials” after watching a documentary about a man’s search to find one. “I wanted to create a business that was going to create and protect habitat for Australian wildlife, especially the glossy black cockatoo, and creating a burial site seemed to me the best way to ensure its ongoing protection” she says.

The idea appealed to her because it combined two of her passions – property and conservation. She says that human bodies are full of minerals and beneficial properties for the earth, so natural burials nourish the soil, promoting vegetation to grow, which in turn provides food and habitat for future life on the planet.

“The last few years has seen a significant increase in death literacy and people are now realising that current end-of-life options are harmful to the environment. Instead, they want to leave a positive lasting legacy.”

She has faced many hurdles since starting the project eight years ago, but since opening sales in June this year has had a great response and hopes to have the first burial in the first half of 2025.

The cost of a plot starts at Aus $3,850 (just under £2,000), although additional funeral costs are likely to add up. However, this is cheaper than the average burial plot cost in the state of New South Wales (where the site is located) which sits at $5,788.

Despite making plans for his final resting place, Peter has no intention of going anywhere any time soon. He has students who have been coming to his classes for 15 years: “They keep coming back for more punishment,” he says with a mischievous smile.

He has now cut down to teaching just two art classes a week as “that’s about as much as I can comfortably enjoy” but has no plans to stop. He says he is not a particularly religious person, or someone who thinks about death often, so his decision to pick the site was as much about practicality as it was about the ethos.

“Now I’ve done this and got it out of the way, it’s all taken care of, and I can get on with living my life… We’re only here for a short time, I’m trying to pack as much in as I can.”

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November 5, by all accounts, is set to be America’s first “crypto election”. Hundreds of millions of real dollars have poured into pro-crypto political action committees. Kamala Harris has talked about encouraging “innovative technologies”. Donald Trump, her rival for the presidency, has decided that bitcoin isn’t “a scam” after all, embarked on a series of crypto ventures and promises to make America “the crypto capital of the planet”.

“The crypto voter is real, bipartisan and ready to engage this cycle,” the executive director of lobby group Stand With Crypto, founded and funded by America’s biggest crypto exchange Coinbase, enthused last week. (The group gives politicians grades for their crypto stance, and Trump — unusually — gets an A.)

But reader, I must level with you right off the BAT (a digital token): the crypto voter is not, in any substantive sense, real. Aside from the small group of men (OK, mainly men) whose livelihoods now depend on this digitally indigenous fluff, most Americans have rather bigger things to worry about — food prices, healthcare, the jobs market, or the general state of their nation, maybe.

The idea, therefore, that there is a “constituency” of crypto voters needing to be pandered to, whose top issue is making sure that exchanges and other companies aren’t too heavily regulated, is fanciful. And yet that is the narrative being pushed by the industry, along with some creatively interpreted statistics.

“Crypto is a national priority . . . 52mn Americans own crypto and want their voices to be heard in the upcoming elections,” claims Stand With Crypto (the 52mn is certainly contested). “Nearly nine in ten Americans believe the financial system is overdue for an update. Yet, US policymakers seem content on maintaining the status quo, rather than fulfilling their responsibilities.”

This, presumably, means making sure people like multibillionaire Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong can continue to get richer. Because if it’s really the crypto owners being considered here, they are doing just fine, thanks (or the ones lucky enough to choose an exchange that didn’t steal it all, anyway).

Despite the Biden-Harris administration being “very hostile” to crypto, according to Trump — “extremely hostile, like nobody can believe” — bitcoin has more than quadrupled in price since the 2020 election, reaching a record high earlier this year. The estimated value of the entire crypto market has almost sextupled. If it’s US jobs we’re talking about, industry figures show almost a third of the world’s crypto workforce is based in the US.

Crypto is also responsible for almost half of all corporate spending on the election so far, with the pro-crypto Fairshake super Pac having raised more than $200mn alone.

But while the fact that there is a huge amount of both crypto money and crypto rhetoric in this campaign is in no doubt, does either candidate really care? Let’s look at Harris’s own words. Until recently, there were none. But last Sunday at a Wall Street fundraiser, she finally said: “We will encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets, while protecting our consumers and investors.”

For all those getting excited about her sudden conversion — Stand With Crypto even graded her a B, for being “somewhat pro-crypto”, before downgrading after a backlash — let me make clear my own thoughts: Harris couldn’t give a flying Satoshi. She has promised nothing at all. Her comments were designed not to alienate the tech world by coming across as heavy-handed while keeping those who favour stronger regulation on side.

Trump has sold four collections of NFTs, and generously offers Americans the “chance to contribute to the campaign with cryptocurrency”. But if you think his interest goes beyond his own prospects, you too should brace for disappointment. He might be lauded by Coinbase’s chief policy officer for his “concrete and visionary positions” but he doesn’t seem to take the whole thing very seriously. “Have a good time with your bitcoin and your crypto, and everything else that you’re playing with,” he told July’s bitcoin 2024 conference.

Neither does Trump display much understanding — which, to be fair, he at least owns up to. At the launch of his and his sons’ latest foray into crypto, World Liberty Financial, he compared it to learning Chinese. What the company will do remains unclear.

Still, at least the venture’s “DeFi visionary” seems to get it. “Barron knows so much about this,” the former president said of his 18-year-old son. “He talks about his wallet. He’s got four wallets or something, but he knows this stuff.” Remember remember the fifth of November. Cluelessness, claptrap and grift.

jemima.kelly@ft.com

GOOGLE Flights have revealed a new tool that will refund your flight price difference if it gets cheaper before you travel.

The new feature offers travellers the lowest price guarantee when booking certain flights.

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Google announced: “No one likes to feel buyer’s remorse, and that’s especially true for a big purchase like plane tickets where the prices change from day to day.”

The new tool enables travellers to determine whether the price of their trip is low, high, or average for their planned trip.

Jetsetters can also set flexible dates to find the cheapest time to book.

Google is currently testing a new program that guarantees the cheapest option for your next flight.

However, if the price drops between the time of purchase and take-off, Google will pay the difference via Google Pay.

A Google blog post about the feature claimed: “These price guarantees are part of a pilot program available for select Book on Google itineraries departing from the US.”

Flights eligible for refunds through the app will be marked with price guarantee badges, indicating that Google is confident the price won’t drop further before take-off.

Therefore, travellers will be compensated for the difference through the Google Pay app if the price drops.

The refund policy will only apply to flights that are booked with Google and departing from the US.

Travellers should ensure there is a price guarantee badge before purchasing a ticket otherwise, they won’t be eligible for a refund if the price drops before takeoff.

It comes after a holiday booking expert has revealed the best way for passengers to save money when buying their flights.

Gilbert Ott is a frequent flyer and founder of the website God Save the Points, where he advises people on how to get the best deals on their plane tickets, as well as offering other tips and tricks.

As far as he’s concerned there are only really two days every year when passengers are guaranteed to find cheaper flight prices.

For the rest of the year, they have to use other methods to make sure they don’t overpay.

He told Mail Online that “Black Friday and Cyber Monday” were the closest thing holidaymakers would likely get to “a magical day to book travel”.

Instead, he recommends flying at certain times of the year to keep costs down, as well as getting to grips with online price trackers.

He continued: “To score the best flight deals, it’s often more about when you want to go than when you want to book, and setting price alerts to see when prices do change.

“Think about changing your travel plans to shoulder season months when airfare can be 43 per cent lower or better.

“Also, don’t be afraid to learn everything you can about Google Flights, so you can let the best deals you’ve searched for come to your inbox.”

He recommends setting price alerts as early as possible and relaxing while the price changes are emailed directly to you.

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The first cyber chief to fight an effort by the US Securities and Exchange Commission to hold him personally responsible for a massive Russian hack has called on global regulators to pass tougher cyber security laws.

Tim Brown, chief information security officer at SolarWinds, faced a landmark lawsuit that accused him and the company of misleading investors by not disclosing “known risks” and inaccurately representing the company’s security measures.

Speaking to the Financial Times in his first interview since the complaint was largely thrown out by a federal court in July, Brown warned that global cyber regulations are still “in flux”, which “absolutely adds stress across the globe” on cyber chiefs.

“When you don’t have rules to follow, it’s very hard to follow them,” said Brown. “Very few security people would ever do something that wasn’t right, but you just have to tell us what’s right in order to do it,” he added.

SolarWinds was a little known Austin-based IT supply chain company until it was breached by Russian hackers as part of a sprawling espionage campaign in 2020.

The SEC’s lawsuit came amid a push by the body to more aggressively target cyber risks under the tenure of chair Gary Gensler, as well as strong signals by itself and other authorities that individuals could be held liable for hacks.

Last year, Uber’s former chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, was sentenced by US authorities to three years of probation and fined $50,000 for covering up a data breach from 2016. It was the first criminal prosecution of a company executive over the handling of a data breach.

The SEC introduced new cyber rules last year around the disclosure of data breaches, as well as forcing public companies to outline elements of their cyber risk management processes, strategies, and governance in their annual reports.

Brown said he was hopeful that global cyber regulations were heading in the right direction. He said security professionals would benefit from a cyber equivalent of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed in 2002 after the Enron scandal.

“You have to remember, the cyber issues are 20 to 30 years old. Other regulatory issues are hundreds of years old . . . So we’re just kind of catching up on the maturity of that model,” he added.

The lawsuit, which cited internal communications between Brown and other employees at SolarWinds, has been seen as a watershed for the industry. Lawyers representing security professionals have warned it risked “chilling” cyber professionals’ internal efforts to improve company security out of fear that their comments could later be taken out of context and used against them.

District judge Paul Engelmayer ruled in July that the SEC’s attempt to apply accounting rules to cyber security processes was “not tenable”. He threw out most of the claims against SolarWinds and Brown, but upheld one claim of securities fraud based on a statement published by SolarWinds on its corporate website. 

A SolarWinds spokesperson said in a statement the company planned to fight the remaining charge, which they said was “factually inaccurate”. The SEC declined to comment.

Brown said the lawsuit, although personally uncomfortable, had helped to give corporate security professionals a voice at the executive level.

“It puts pressure on, but it’s also an inflection point,” he said. “It has elevated the [chief information security officer] position and made sure that boards are having these conversations.”

Brown this month joined the advisory board of Israeli crisis management firm Cytactic but said he was still committed to staying in his role at SolarWinds.

“As far as the incident at SolarWinds: It happened on my watch. Was I ultimately responsible? Well, no, but it happened on my watch and I want to get it right,” he said.

The company reported $193mn in revenue in the three months to June, down from $246mn in the same period in 2020, before the hack was disclosed. Shares have begun to recover from their lows in 2022, but are still down more than 40 per cent since the so-called Sunburst incident.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — As Donald Trump railed against immigrants Saturday afternoon in the Rust Belt, his supporters in the Deep South had turned his earlier broadsides into a rallying cry over a college football game as they prepared for the former president’s visit later in the evening.

“You gotta get these people back where they came from,” Trump said in Wisconsin, as the Republican presidential nominee again focused on Springfield, Ohio, which has been roiled by false claims he amplified that Haitian immigrants are stealing and “eating the dogs … eating the cats” from neighbors’ homes.

“You have no choice,” Trump continued. “You’re going to lose your culture. You’re going to lose your country.”

Many University of Alabama fans, anticipating Trump’s visit to their campus for a showdown between the No. 4 Crimson Tide and No. 2 Georgia Bulldogs, sported stickers and buttons that read: “They’re eating the Dawgs!” They broke out in random chants of “Trump! Trump! Trump!” throughout the day, a preview of the rousing welcome he received early in the second quarter as he sat in a 40-yard-line suite hosted by a wealthy member of his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

Trump’s brand of populist nationalism leans heavily on his dark rendering of America as a failing nation abused by elites and overrun by Black and brown immigrants. But his supporters, especially white cultural conservatives, hear in that rhetoric an optimistic patriotism encapsulated by the slogan on his movement’s ubiquitous red hats: “Make America Great Again.”

That was the assessment by Shane Walsh, a 52-year-old businessman from Austin, Texas. Walsh and his family decorated their tent on the university quadrangle with a Trump 2024 flag and professionally made sign depicting the newly popular message forecasting the Alabama football team “eating the Dawgs.”

For Walsh, the sign was not about immigration or the particulars of Trump’s showmanship, exaggerations and falsehoods.

“I don’t necessarily like him as a person,” Walsh said. “But I think Washington is broken, and it’s both parties’ faults — and Trump is the kind of guy who will stand up. He’s a lot of things, but weak isn’t one of them. He’s an optimistic guy — he just makes you believe that if he’s in charge, we’re going to be all right.”

The idea for the sign, he said, grew out of a meme he showed his wife. “I thought it was funny,” he said.

Katie Yates, a 47-year-old from Hoover, Alabama, had the same experience with her life-sized cutout of the former president. She was stopped repeatedly on her way to her family’s usual tent. Trump’s likeness was set to join Elvis, “who is always an Alabama fan at our tailgate,” Yates said.

“I’m such a Trump fan,” she said, adding that she could not understand how every American was not.

Yates offered nothing disparaging about Trump’s opponent, Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris, instead simply lamenting that she could not stay for the game and see Trump be recognized by the stadium public address system and shown pumping his fist on large video screens in the four corners of Bryant-Denny Stadium.

That moment came with 12:24 left in the second quarter, shortly after Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe ran up the right sideline, on Trump’s side of the field, to give the Crimson Tide an eye-popping 28-0 lead over the Vegas-favored Bulldogs.

Trump did not react to Milroe’s scamper, perhaps recognizing that Georgia, not reliably Republican Alabama, is a key battleground in his contest against Harris. But when “the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump” was introduced to the capacity crowd of more than 100,000 fans — all but a few thousand wearing crimson — Trump smiled broadly and pumped his fist, like he had done on stage in July after the bullet of a would-be assassin grazed his ear and bloodied his face.

The crowd roared its approval, raising cell phone cameras and their crimson-and-white pompoms toward Trump’s suite, where he stood behind the ballistic glass that has become a feature after two assassination attempts. A smattering of boos and a few extended middle fingers broke Trumpian decorum, but they yielded to more chants of: “USA! USA! USA!”

Indeed, not everyone on campus was thrilled.

“There is, I think, a silent majority among the students that are not with Trump,” argued Braden Vick, president of Alabama’s College Democrats chapter. Vick pointed to recent elections when Democratic candidates, including President Joe Biden in 2020, vastly outperformed their statewide totals in precincts around the campus.

“We have this great atmosphere for a top-five game between these two teams, with playoff and championship implications,” Vick said, “and it’s just a shame that Donald Trump has to try to ruin it with his selfishness.”

Trump came as the guest of Alabama businessman Ric Mayers Jr., a member of Mar-a-Lago. Mayers said in an interview before the game that he invited Trump so that he could enjoy a warm welcome. And, as Mayers noted, Trump is a longtime sports fan. He tried to buy an NFL team in the 1980s and helped launch a competing league instead. And he attended several college games as president, including an Alabama-Georgia national championship game.

Mayers also invited Alabama Sens. Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville. Britt, a former student government president at Alabama, delivered the GOP response to Biden’s last State of the Union address, drawing rebukes after using a disproven story of human trafficking to echo Trump’s warnings about migrants. Tuberville, a former head football coach at Auburn University, Alabama’s archrival, is a staunch Trump supporter.

Joining the politicians in the suite were musicians Kid Rock and Hank Williams Jr. Herschel Walker, a Georgia football icon and failed Senate nominee in 2022, traveled in Trump’s motorcade to the game.

Fencing surrounded parts of the stadium, with scores of metal detectors and tents forming a security perimeter beyond the usual footprint. Sisters of the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority showed their security wristbands before being allowed to their sorority house directly adjacent to the stadium. Bomb-sniffing dogs stopped catering trucks carrying food. Hundreds of TSA agents spread out to do a potentially unpopular job: imposing airport-level screening for each ticket-holder.

But what seemed to matter most was a friendly home crowd’s opportunity to cheer for Trump the same way they cheered the Crimson Tide, unburdened by anything he said in Wisconsin or anywhere else as he makes an increasingly dark closing argument.

“College football fans can get emotional and kooky about their team,” Shane Walsh said. “And so can Trump supporters.”

They didn’t even mind that Trump’s tie was not crimson. It was Georgia red.