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I thought I would make a thread on what caught you eye in the news good or bad. This follows on from last week when I posted about the MP Lee Anderson who suggested we could cook a meal from scratch for 30p and foodbanks weren’t needed if we could cook.
So today another Tory MP Racheal Maclean the safeguarding minister has said “That people struggling with the cost of living should take on more hours or move to a better-paid job”
How does a comment like this help the most vulnerable in society. Those that can’t work, the disabled pensioners or even those that can only take up low paid work for what ever reason. I find Mp’s and ministers are so out of touch with with the public, the comments they come out with are beyond nonsense.
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NG has known for a long time it needs a substantial upgrade to meet today’s demands, but chose to do nothing about it when it first came to light. NG were recently also to interested in selling off a large chunk of of our gas pipe line infrastructure to foreign investors.
That’s really not surprising, It’s almost like these situations are being created on purpose and with us all being told to go green and the push towards ev’s. It really is a pipe dream they selling?
I wonder how long till they start telling people you cannot use your car at a certain time, just like they plan to restrict when you can charge it up and want to control when your freezer is on etc?
It’s not just here in the uk it’s globally, except for those that ain’t signed up and a poor we must fund them also.
I think alot of people are gonna die this winter or suffer extreme hardship, In germany, hanover I think. they are gonna turn off all heat and hot water in public buildings till march. Problem we have also is gas is used alot to create electric and they don’t imo want us using it for heating, you’d be crazy to install a heat pump especially in our house, but if they create the right situation, it would be a good idea as it’s better than no heat at all?
Rox, Hanover is not going to heat public buildings from April to the end of September. This is often the case in offices anyway.
Rox, Hanover is not going to heat public buildings from April to the end of September. This is often the case in offices anyway.
Indeed my bad
German city bans hot water in public buildings and swimming pools over Russian gas cuts
Residents have started taking cold showers as gas flow trickles to a halt.Gazprom has cut gas supplies altogether to Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Poland over their refusal to go along with a Kremlin order to pay their bills in roubles and not dollars or euros.
NHS to cut increased cancer testing so it can fund pay rises
The NHS is to scale back plans for increased cancer testing in order to fund staff pay rises, with Britain’s leading expert warning that more cases could be missed.
Prof Sir Mike Richards said the plans – which will see money earmarked for cancer diagnostics diverted to cover pay increases – could damage services that were already “woefully” under-funded.
Writing for The Telegraph, the head of the UK national screening committee said it was right that NHS staff should be properly rewarded but funding for diagnostic capacity “must not be compromised” as a result.
Last week’s pay award of up to nine per cent comes as the health service battles record backlogs.
The Telegraph can reveal that the number of patients waiting at least two months for cancer treatment, despite being given an urgent referral, has doubled since the start of the pandemic.
Almost 27,000 patients with suspected cancer faced such waits by the end of May – up from around 13,000 in February 2020.
Amanda Pritchard, the head of the NHS, wrote to hospital bosses this week warning that almost nine in 10 of those enduring such delays were waiting for diagnostic tests.
Official figures show a record 157,317 people facing waits of at least 13 weeks for tests – up from 6,371 before the pandemic and a 25-fold rise.
The NHS has drawn up plans for an expansion in testing as part of efforts to tackle Britain’s poor survival outcomes and catch up with Covid backlogs.
But NHS England has said last week’s pay rise means it will have to scale back the plans, “regrettably impacting on the planned rollout of tech and diagnostic capacity across the health service”.
The action is being taken after the Treasury refused to fund NHS pay rises higher than three per cent, saying the money would have to come out of existing health budgets.
Health leaders say cuts of £1.8 billion may have to be found, just months after the Government raised National Insurance by 1.25 percentage points in order to fund health and social care.
It follows warnings from health officials that every extra one per cent on staff pay means half a million fewer operations.
It’s typical of the public sector and when we pay more in the form of taxes, many via stealth, all we get is worse service, for those who really need it it’s very costly.
How much of a rise did or will those upstairs get.
Same with most big charities very little actually goes to the frontline to help people it’s all running costs and wages like the wage the ceo of mb or oxfam etc, they on huge wages and seem they have enough to advertise on tv alot like the rspca with some sob story to pull at your heart strings.
Even the mp’s get huge % rises but when the people do it’s madeout like it’s their fault for demanding a fair wage inline with the economic costs of living. Which have been going up and up for years and what rises have people got very little.
Thats where the crisis has been created not russia invading Ukraine, but a long term well orchestrated plan to bring down the standard of living and socially engineer us to the plan of restricting us and rationing us via the controlled distribution of scarce resources, goods, services, or an artificial restriction of demand.
Yesterday I found out my best m8 for many many year’s, contacted the mental health team twice on the day he commited suicide and they deemed he was not a risk to himself and did nothing?
How many more people gonna get no help when they really need it and end up paying the ulitmate price. Just like during covid, imo the cure and solutions put in place was more damaging than the virus, especially to the most vulnerable.
It’s not just the nhs it’s the goto excuse over and over, Some crisis then onto the next crisis.
Even doctors are told not to refer people for treatments and my latest treatment needed, has been out sourced directly to some private company, That I won’t name, clearly the nhs is paying for it and at what cost also to them. Plus as i mentioned in another post the pfi schemes running some till 2050 taking up a huge chunk of the nhs budget’s and lets not talk about a fun day at the local park paid for by Serco a fast paced and diverse business operating 180 contracts across Health, Defence, Citizen Services, Justice, Immigration, Transport in the UK and in many countries in Europe.
The huge contracts they have and especially the one to deal with illegal immigrats crossing the channel via boat of which there are currently as of tuesday 31 May 2022 Up to 30,000 hotel rooms across the UK are being requisitioned by the Home Office every day to house asylum seekers, as they wait for their claims to be processed, GB News can reveal. A total of 37,000 asylum seekers are currently in hotel accommodation, at a cost to the UK taxpayer of almost £5 million a day. That’s £1,825,000,000 a year and growing and £135 per head per day just to house them, never mind the other stuff they given.
On 13 April, all local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales became an asylum dispersal area by default. This will require all local authorities to make more council housing stock and private rented accommodation available in their areas for the asylum seeker dispersal programme.
But the issue of integrating large groups of mainly young men in communities across the country remains controversial after several concerning incidents in recent months.
I don’t blame those on the frontline, as mostly their hands are tied or they just don’t see what is really going on or beleive what they are told as the gospel by what i see as cult leaders push the orders from above from their ulitmate masters the few the 1% who are conducted by only a few, The ultimate most powerful people who most many have never heard of and live in the shadows and the msm never mention or call you names for mentioning it or say it’s conspiracy but no it’s the workers fault and those who must pay for it all, us the citizens who all slaves to the debt in our names and as we seen with the covid crisis or the banking crisis, it all needs to be paid back.
Bread and Circuses… was the only thing to catch my eye today. Indeed, the Circuses bit is the sole content of news this morning. The soccer dominates and has done for many days now. The Commonwealth Games comes a close second. The winners of everything displaying the “must-do” for every sport these days – clenched fist, unrestrained aggression and screaming into camera.
Very sad, particularly so with the recent death of Professor James Lovelock, arguably the greatest and most important 20th century scientist after Einstein. His passing barely gets a mention,
Our leaders must be very happy that the Circuses keep people’s minds off of the chronic state of the nation. That said, they have forgotten to address the “Bread” bit of the phenomenon – with more and more citizens having to use food banks because of soaring prices.
Bread and Circuses… was the only thing to catch my eye today. Indeed, the Circuses bit is the sole content of news this morning. The soccer dominates and has done for many days now. The Commonwealth Games comes a close second. The winners of everything displaying the “must-do” for every sport these days – clenched fist, unrestrained aggression and screaming into camera. Very sad, particularly so with the recent death of Professor James Lovelock, arguably the greatest and most important 20th century scientist after Einstein. His passing barely gets a mention, Our leaders must be very happy that the Circuses keep people’s minds off of the chronic state of the nation. That said, they have forgotten to address the “Bread” bit of the phenomenon – with more and more citizens having to use food banks because of soaring prices.
Indeed the smokescreens and illusions they use to pull the wool over our eyes.
Sorry to hear about your best mate @rox
Thx appreciate it.
Leading on from; No new homes in West London as electricity grid runs out of capacity
The energy vampires sucking Britain’s grid dry
A shortage of houses in London and the south east has long been one of the most prolific problems facing the Government.
Yet desperately needed fresh supply is unlikely to materialise soon in west London, after developers were last week told they may be prevented from starting new projects in the area until 2035, because the electricity grid has run out of capacity.
But it isn’t just tightening energy supplies amid the war in Ukraine that is behind the de facto ban – surging demand for data centres is sucking Britain’s power grid dry.
These warehouse-sized buildings full of computer servers absorb so much electricity that the Greater London Authority (GLA) told housebuilders it may be more than a decade until new developments in Hillingdon, Ealing and Hounslow can be sustained by the grid.
Much of the problem boils down to the economic success of the M4’s “Silicon Corridor”. As technology and finance companies compete for office space near the data centres that power their businesses, demand inevitably begets greater supply.
Roughly half of Britain’s estimated 200 data centres are in the south east of England, with a large proportion concentrated in the area between Reading and Ealing.
SSE, the electricity distribution network operator covering west London and Slough, estimates a typical data centre campus needs 50 mega volt ampere (MvA), which is the electrical demand required by developments of 5,000 to 10,000 homes.
With around a dozen planning applications for new data centres outstanding across the area, the huge power demands of these data centres bear closer scrutiny.
In Ealing, for instance, there are currently seven applications to build new data centres sitting in front of planning inspectors.
A memo sent to housebuilders by the GLA this month, seen by The Telegraph, said data centre planning applications were blocking new housing developments until 2035.
It said: “Over the last two years the Distribution Network Operator, SSEN, has experienced the same volume of new data centre connection requests in west London as the total electricity demand of the area.”
Jump in remote working
According to sources, authorities have broadly been operating a first come, first served system for allocating electrical demand. But a jump in remote working since the pandemic has helped to push up demand for data processing and connectivity – and the electricity to serve it – meaning the current system is no longer fit for purpose.
A spokesman for the Energy Networks Association described west London’s problems as an “isolated circumstance caused by a quick and concentrated expansion of demand from a localised growth in data centres, far higher than forecast.”
Yet the power supply problems are not confined to the three boroughs highlighted by the GLA. They extend further west into the Thames Valley, stretching as far as Reading.
Tech companies such as Oracle, Microsoft, Dell and Huawei all have bases here, due in part to nearby transatlantic data cables feeding London. These broadly follow the M4, and businesses along their route are keen to tap into these conduits of commerce – soaking up the grid’s power.
Estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA) say data centres account for around 1pc of global electricity consumption, at between 200-250 terawatt-hours, with demand rising “exponentially”.
Inextricably linked to data centre power usage is power consumed by data transmission networks, the fibre-optic nerves and arteries of today’s digital economy. While the IEA says energy intensity from these networks has halved every two years since the millennium, they still account for up to 1.4pc of global electricity demand.
It means that in areas such as west London, data centres drink electricity – and their insatiable thirst is creating a drought in the surrounding area.
One six-foot high rack in a data centre holds up to 42 servers, and consumes about six to eight kilowatts (kW) of electricity. A typical data centre might hold a few thousand racks, meaning an industrial estate-sized building can contain between 500,000 and 1 million servers depending on internal layout.
Powering down energy needs
Powering the servers is only part of the data centre electrical equation. Intensive calculations required for artificial intelligence (AI) or enterprise IT work generate heat.
Cooling fans need to be installed to take that heat away, and with such large numbers of servers in such a small space, data centres need large and powerful industrial air conditioning systems to prevent a literal meltdown from occurring. About 40pc of a typical data centre’s power consumption is used on running the air conditioning.
With those figures in mind, it is easy to appreciate how data centres such as data centre operator Virtus’ London-2 facility in Hayes, Hillingdon, needs to draw up to 12.2 megawatts (MW) from the National Grid.
Slough, on the border of Hounslow and Hillingdon, is home to half a dozen such public data centres, as well as a number of single-user sites operated by big tech companies. Nearby Heathrow Airport has at least two public data centres and a significant number of private ones nearby, serving airlines and the travel industry. British Airways has two data centres near Heathrow, powering the airline’s operations and providing backups in case of failures.
Moves are afoot to reduce the power requirements of data centres.
Craig Melson, industry body TechUK’s associate director for sustainability, said industry was working on initiatives such as the Open Compute Project, a Facebook-led scheme to redesign servers so they use less energy.
Meanwhile, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has promised a partial solution by next year, saying energy regulator Ofgem “has decided to change the connection charging framework, from April 2023, which would see connection costs fall for housing developers requiring [electricity] network reinforcement to accommodate their connections.”
Ultimately, the answer lies with electricity generation and distribution capacity, combined with political pragmatism that lets smaller new housing developments leapfrog data centre build and fit-out cycles.
While data centres may be vital to modern business and technology-reliant lifestyles, their vast electrical demands add yet another hurdle to solving Britain’s housing crisis.
south of england gets plenty sun and wind.. they need to start harvesting it instead of saying it looks ugly and effects property prices… trust me having no supply is much worse as a selling point.
same goes for water collection etc.
Current Car: Hyundai Kona Premium EV...2 way 40kg hoist
Last Car: Toyota C-HR Excel Hybrid...4 way 80kg hoistSpectacular wind turbine fire sends clouds of black smoke across city (Hull)
Part of the video reminded me of a catherine wheel lol
Saw this…
slight change of who’s going to be PM, all the popular flamboyance will soon subside, I mean look at Borris..
Russia-Ukraine war: Kyiv ‘endangering civilians’ by using schools and hospitals as military bases
Amnesty International has accused the Ukrainian army of endangering civilians and violating humanitarian law in their fight against Russian invaders.
The human rights NGO said Ukrainian forces in Kharkiv, Donbas and Mykolaiv had in some cases established bases and operated weapons systems in populated residential areas, including in schools and hospitals.
The group said such tactics violate international humanitarian law as they turn civilians into targets for Russian strikes.
“We have documented a pattern of Ukrainian forces putting civilians at risk and violating the laws of war when they operate in populated areas,” Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, said.
While the group said the practices “do not in any way justify indiscriminate Russian attacks”, Dr Callamard added: “Being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law.”
Amnesty claimed that it was not aware that the Ukrainian military who located themselves in civilian structures buildings had asked or assisted civilians to evacuate, which it said was a “failure to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians”.
Police ‘tasered’ 93-year-old disabled care home resident!!!
Two Sussex police officers are under criminal investigation on suspicion of manslaughter after a 93-year-old disabled man with dementia died after being Tasered in a care home.
you have to wonder how they would react to a genuine serious threat to lives. the old boy was in a wheelchair , 93 and had serious dementia. he may have had a knife but im betting i could have disarmed him without killing him.
Current Car: Hyundai Kona Premium EV...2 way 40kg hoist
Last Car: Toyota C-HR Excel Hybrid...4 way 80kg hoistshe is an evil person. Ghastly.
Current Car: Hyundai Kona Premium EV...2 way 40kg hoist
Last Car: Toyota C-HR Excel Hybrid...4 way 80kg hoist
Put your hand up if your surprised!
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