The Great Permacrises

General Chat
8681

There will always be an impact doing anything to the environment.

There’s always a balance between cost and environmental impact.

From what I can establish they have lent towards spending as little as possible but having the most impact. And basically saying to people here’s a small bit of cash sorry for wrecking it.

They could choose a more considered route, that’s the main concern people have. And burying the cables would be the least impactful but most costly.

As far as costs of one approach Vs another it appears to be buried but I’m sure someone has run the numbers and created multiple plans and costs.

The thing is once they are built then they are stuck in the landscape for decades so imo it should be done with the least impact.

Short term win, but long term impact doesn’t seem right.

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8682

The last I heard a few years ago, this was the plan. To improve the visual landscape of the countryside, reduce criminal damage, improve safety, cut costs they pay to farmers and maintenance etc.

I think that fell by the wayside too.

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8683

Anyone genuinely interested here’s the page about the project and there’s an interactive map with the route and details.

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In the proposals it does have references to the Dedham AONB and using underground cables so it can be done. Always going to be more costly digging a big hole though than plonking structures on top.

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8684

This is obviously going to cause problems for people and as always, it’s not the genuine people that should be punished, it’s the people who claim it they can’t work with a bad back but are labouring cash in hand.

There’s people in the article that can’t work and any sort of cut would have a big impact.

But.. the first person. That isn’t fair and I don’t think they deserve handouts.

“My autism has prevented me from getting jobs in the past,” she says.

"Sometimes in interviews I wasn’t able to answer any of the questions.

“I was umming and ahhing a lot, repeating myself. When you do that, people think ‘this person is strange. We don’t want this person’.”

She is now working full time as a flight attendant and has developed strategies to help with being late, including getting up much earlier to allow extra time before shifts.

Okay, but you work full time? Getting up early to help with your time management should not mean you need an extra £400 per month in handouts along with a disabled railcard.

Non-autistic flight attendant who works full time = full time wage
Person in the article = full time wage & £400+ & railcard

“It’s a big thing,” she says. “I would struggle to pay.”

NEWSFLASH! So do millions of other people!

If her autism prevented the getting of a job, then that’s a different story but I don’t think you should get extra handouts as a “well done, you’re working”. I know there are ND people on here and I’m sure you’re not all being paid extra to work.

I suppose the other side is that that someone just doesn’t work instead and gets a bigger payment, but the current system isn’t fair.

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8685

I get what you mean but PIP is not really supposed to replace income, it’s there to help with the additional costs of being disabled.

It can be hard to see what those are from a newspaper article in some cases but it doesn’t mean they aren’t real, they would have been carefully assessed.

PIP has been successful in getting people to work who might otherwise not be able to and not being tied to income is a key part of that.

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8686

Exactly, my partner receives disability benefits despite having a full time job. But this helps with extra costs incurred by her disability.

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8688

Water up by 35%

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8689

I thought our 17% was bad.

8692

Wow, amazing that given that this is key infrastructure, there’s no redundancy. Absolutely no expert here, but this doesn’t feel like something that will be fixed quickly.

Anyway, I’m going to enjoy the lack of aircraft noise outside.

Heathrow closed all day after nearby fire causes power outage - BBC News

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8693

This is going to cause absolute chaos!

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8694

They do have backup generators so there will be power for critical systems at the airport, but just not enough for 4 terminals worth.

It would be incredibly wasteful to have enough backup for running the entire airport at full capacity for an event that is probably once in a lifetime.

It’s chaotic for sure, but people just need to be patient. Flights are cancelled and rescheduled individually, not just “Press to cancel” all flights.

Then you have the flights in the air.

Seen some folk online who are complaining because their 11:55am flight is showing as “Delayed” and they don’t know whether to go for it or not. Like… no, bbz, it’s not going to happen.

Ironically enough I’m off to Paris today and we almost always fly but today we’re taking the train as it just happened to be cheaper this one time - woke up feeling a little glad about that!

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8695

Oh I don’t even mean in terms of power generation or storage, that’s all reasonable because as you say it’s hardly ever needed.

I mean how has the airport grown so huge yet still relies on a single substation. For a piece of infrastructure this critical it’s absolutely worth having multiple inbound energy routes. I’d say now that it’s known to the world how critical that single substation is, it actually becomes more of a national security risk.

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8696

And there’s the problem that it’s the kind of thing Russia et al try to do i.e. force an overload which in turn causes a fire. Not saying they did this, but the possibility will be getting investigated.

8697

Let’s just work with facts. It keeps things simpler.

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8698

That was my first thought this morning actually.

I have no doubt this is just a freak accident, but it’s now exposed a weakness.

I guess it’s inevitable that we, and everyone, will have these kind of things.

Stansted is actually the one used for national emergencies so perhaps that one is different. It’s where dignitaries land and take off and takes the emergency landings of those planes.

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8700

There was a substation fire that affected my flat in Limehouse a few years ago. Electricity was down all day, back by the evening as they put some sort of temporary reroute in, and then was on and off for about a week while things were fixed. Limehouse isn’t exactly nationally critical infrastructure though, wonder if they will sort Heathrow quicker.

I imagine they could in theory still land planes in an airport with little electricity. Commercial flights are probably a no go because they can’t process passports or visas, don’t have the staff or customer facilities etc. But the tarmac is still there, so long as they could power the control tower and some small bits of vital infrastructure things like emergency planes could take off (I guess?).

8701

Exactly. I imagine this is the case even now at Heathrow.

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8702

So is Prestwick

8704

Apparently anti-terrorism police are helping with the enquiry. This may be normal for such a large-scale issue, though.

8706

Totally normal. No way you can not at least consider it, but if it were a terrorist incident it would have been surely far more effective to do this when the airport was up and running with thousands of people in it.

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