They can do up the Westminster parliament at a cost of between £3.5 bn and £5.6 bn and rising; they can do up Buckingham Palace at a cost of £370 million and rising; they can renew a nuclear defence capacity that they don’t even control and can’t use independently, at a cost of £170 bn and rising… but apparently, they can’t keep the lights on at night.
What an utter joke the government is.
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MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
It’s a typical ploy, and it’s the way you stop toddlers from, oh, sticking their arms into the kitchen waste disposal unit – you distract them, you dangle a shiny object. The shiny object here being “waste” by local authorities / councils.
Shiny objects.
**CASSANDRA FREEMAN SPEAKS – GLOOM AND DOOM IMMINENT**
Turning the lights off at night in public spaces has the useful (to some) effect of acting liking a curfew, and curbing the freedom of assembly / association. If you make people afraid to go out at night because they will be plunged into the kind of darkness that prevailed until the introduction of gas streetlighting (see https://is.gd/orGsMW), they’ll hardly notice if a real curfew is imposed as part of “restoring order” after the Brexit galactofeck bites – in fact, people will be grateful because the Army will have “made the streets safe again”.
We all know that early attempts to introduce streetlighting in Early Modern times by obliging property owners to hang lanthorns outside their properties were ineffective, to put it mildly. Here’s a quote from the article I cited above. The date is 1800: “First Glasgow Lighting Department formed. … The department is one of the oldest services of the Glasgow Corporation. In 1800, the first Glasgow Police Act made the lighting of the streets a statutory duty. The streets were lit with oil and wick.”
Oil and wick? That must have made a huge difference… it was another 17 years before the first gas lamp was lit in Glasgow.
I suppose that putting out the streetlights will help if a no-deal or blind Brexit has the predicted effect of causing power blackouts or even rolling powercuts … damn those foreign blighters, eh, what?
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Well, who needs lights?
I mean if you are being robbed or burgled, isn’t it better that it happens in the dark and the burglar knocks his shin on something, screams out in pain and drops his spoils.
Fiendish cunning from the Tories.
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Then sues you for damages/injury.
Yes, that’s happened – and the burgler won.
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Yep, I remember reading about it. England?
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Well,voters in England seem to have decided that they prefer maintaining the crumbling edifice of empire to providing decent public services.
They elected these Tories and that is their right and choice.
However, having this choice imposed on us by a Westminster establishment who still control our budgets is
not democratically acceptable in Scotland.
The UK reminds me of the Soviet Union in it’s last death throws where a multi national state imploded leaving the centre still in denial about the realities surrounding them.
The Westminster establishment are desperately trying to hold the multi national UK state together but not for much longer.
When England becomes England again and no longer the UK,voters there will be exposed to the realities of electing Tories to rule over them.
All edifice and no substance.
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Well palaces and bombs are important to some people…even some Scots.
Me, I prefer that we light the streets and feed to poor, but to each his own, I guess.
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We haven’t had street lighting here in Leics after midnight on anything other than main roads for the best part of a decade.
This isn’t anything new for most English councils….
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HOw do people out after a night clubbing manage?
Or indeed, older people getting around, visiting in the winter when it gets dark at 5pm.
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Oh the city centre is lit up, once you hit the city/county council boundary then not so much.
We’re a couple of hundred metres from the M1/A46 in a “village” of 21,000 people and there’s houses all the way from the city to here without a break. Hardly rural 🙂
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Gawd. I’m agin excessive light at nights and the light pollution they cause, but not at the expense of safety – they actually turn off streetlights to save money? That’s just – crazy. Illegal under some jurisdictions, I’m sure. I mean, the authorities require drivers to turn on their headlights when – what do they call it – civil twilight(?) begins, but are under no obligation to turn on streetlights at night?
Maybe They think it’s “health and safety gone mad”. Shiny objects. False economy. Sheer idiocy.
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She walks home in the dark. The same woman who is “in fear of her life”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2789596/divorced-mp-forced-change-locks-install-panic-alarm-tells-hell-hands-trolls-fathers-4-justice.html
Sorry it’s the Daily Mail 😦
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Yep, of course… she’s fearless when she can make a point, but otherwise not to much.
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Apologies, this is well off topic but is important as it closes today!
https://consultations.trade.gov.uk/policy/consultation-on-trade-negotiations-with-the-us/consultation/subpage.2018-07-13.4839043360/
Ian
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Thanks Ian. Will complete
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Done. “Free trade” in pursuance of the neoliberal economic and social agenda…
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You’ve just got to love the Tory brass neck. They bail their pals out in the banks and impose austerity on us while simultaneously giving their pals more money through QE. This is then duly moved off shore with very little trickling back into the economy with absolutely nowt said about it. They then take us out of Europe impoverishing us further so they can relive the good old, never was such a thing cos they were shite, days of Empire. As if all that wasn’t enough they then sit with a poker faces sermonising at us in all seriousness that we need to make sensible economies because there’s no money and we need to be responsible.
There’s a wee voice in my head shouting that old saying ‘Don’t piss down my neck and tell me it’s raining’ for some reason and I can’t for the life of me think why.
What I have to say to all Torys be they red, blue or yellow can be written on the back of a postage stamp and looks something like this: F___k O__!
Im feeling uncharacteristically too well mannered today to write it in full but please feel free to fill in the blanks.
I know it’s all been said before but Jeezus H, will Joe Public never wise up to these guisers??
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Hear hear.
Never ceases to amaze me that Brits swallow all this crud without ever questioning if this is the best way to live.
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As i commented earlier this week.
Scottish power has sold on it’s thermal power stations to Drax of Yorkshire, as well as it’s hydro plants, they’re concentrating on WIND power.
The distribution staff have concerns that there isn’t enough capacity of generation to maintain the supply in all conditions.
In the past there was a large availability of quick start plant to guarantee the supply, we are now at something like 6% on a huge system.
Hunterston nuclear station is off for maintenance leaving just Torness as base load and I think Peterhead can be used, it’s gas fired from the North SEa.
SP export to englandland now via a DC cable their excess plant capacity.
So friends, IF we get a bad winter and the WIND stops we just may be in for a collapse of our grid.
I was involved with a grid collapse in Saudi, it took us 3, yes THREE days to reinstate the supply and they only have a small grid, the outlying areas have a local power power station.
SP have plans in place to supply their engineers with the necessities of life and fuel to allow them to get things back up.
So lay in the stocks for that possibility as well as brexit, candles and batteries for lighting, even stuff to burn to keep warm.
Remember you won’t be able to get fuel for your car as the fuel station won’t deliver as their computer system will not be running as well as the shops, contactless bank cards will not work.
Over the top, maybe.
The function of our government is to ensure the welfare of ALL the people not just some of us.
Heard some miniter this morning trying not to answer a simple question on UC.
Can you explain how NOT paying someone benefits for at least FIVE weeks is a help to them. The bumbling answer was that Food banks are used by people in work.
You’ll have had your democracy and our civilisation.
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Timely warnings, Dave.
I think everyone should be prepared for power cuts.
Get in torches and spare batteries. Get inp plenty of food, and if you have a safe place, and can afford it, get some money out and secrete it so that you can buy stuff, if there is stuff to buy.
It all sounds melodramatic, but it won’t go to waste, and if the worst comes to the worst we may need it.
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Some years back my part of Argyll along with half of Arran had no power for about 5days due to significant heavy snow blocking the only road in or out!
Following that each community council had a review and now has emergency packs in most areas. I know there are many generators around and many more bought after that.
We, like many here made our own plans and are able to survive easily, and help elderly neeburs too for a time but not indefinitely.
Scary that it may actually be needed sooner than anyone cares to imagine…
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Times like that bring out the best… and worst… in people.
Great community spirit.
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The “black start” nightmare… Of course it’s not a black start if you have external sources of electricity to draw on. Such a pity we don’t have the Norway interconnector going yet – and a (secret?) deal in place with the Norwegians to keep the power flowing even as Westminster crashes us out of the EU… In the longer term, an interconnector with Iceland would help too, as would additional generating capacity on the rigs themselves which could be hooked up to the grid. Annoying that undersea electricity transmission has to be HVDC over any significant distance, but hey, you can’t quarrel with the laws of physics.
When do we take over the National Grid in Scotland? Would we have to try to buy it back off the Chinese and the Qataris? Where did the money they paid for it actually go, and can we get any of it back?
Not that we gave Them permission to flog off our bit of the Grid to anyone in the first place, of course.
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We own nothing. Not a thing.
This was madness.
Thatcherite madness.
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My finger is itching to mark a little X on a referendum ballot paper. Anyone else?
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There’s a terrible temptation to somehow get hold of extra copies of the ballot papers and stuff wads of them marked Yes into the ballot boxes along with our own… but we shall resist, we shall resist. Or mark every other one No just to be fair.
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Same. Bring it on… as someone once said.
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