Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[Annie]

And unfortunately there will be more of that happening here after Christmas.

[rocor]

13 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

One close to home for Annie.  

 

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300465994/popular-journalist-and-staunch-antivaxxer-dies-of-covid19

 

 

 

It is not those that refuse to have the vaccine that annoy me. If they would only stay quiet about it. 

 

It is the proselytizers, those with the fervour of religious fundamentalist or political ideologues that wish to convert everyone else to their world view.

 

 

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, rocor said:

 

It is not those that refuse to have the vaccine that annoy me. If they would only stay quiet about it. 

 

It is the proselytizers, those with the fervour of religious fundamentalist or political ideologues that wish to convert everyone else to their world view.

 

 

Agreed, and that NZ bloke, as a newspaper guy, author and Facebook enthusiast sure did do his part to get the antivax message out there..

 

https://www.sorryantivaxxer.com/post/rex-warwood-80-pukekohe-nz-journalist-author-anti-vaxxer-old-kook-dead-from-covid

[Edwardian]

Hello Peeps,

 

Sorry to have been away, but, over the last four days we have been immensely privileged to be one of the 219,000 homes and businesses in the North to lose power on Friday night due to decades of underinvestment in our infrastructure in favour of short-term profits leaving customers vulnerable to the sort of extreme weather events that we have known for some time to be increasing in both frequency and severity Storm Arwen, a curiously Tolkienesque name for something far less attractive than Liv Tyler.

 

Be that as it may, after four days of bitter cold and dark (and that's just the daytime round here) fortunately we now have power again, unlike the thousands of other poor sods who still don't. 

 

The Northern Powergrid power cut map is still quite scary to behold:

 

 

As this map is only for the Northern Powergrid area, it does not show Scotland, which, I am now learning as I have access to news, has also been severely affected.

 

In other news .....

 

Meet our next Prime Minister (and think very, very, carefully before you try to import cheese to the UK in future)

 

 

Nice to be back.  Did I miss much?

 

[Dunsignalling]

On 30/11/2021 at 16:41, rocor said:

 

It is not those that refuse to have the vaccine that annoy me. If they would only stay quiet about it. 

 

It is the proselytizers, those with the fervour of religious fundamentalist or political ideologues that wish to convert everyone else to their world view.

 

 

Empty vessels....

[Dunsignalling]

On 30/11/2021 at 18:19, monkeysarefun said:

Agreed, and that NZ bloke, as a newspaper guy, author and Facebook enthusiast sure did do his part to get the antivax message out there..

 

https://www.sorryantivaxxer.com/post/rex-warwood-80-pukekohe-nz-journalist-author-anti-vaxxer-old-kook-dead-from-covid

Wonder how many gullible people he took with him....

[Annie]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

Hello Peeps,

 

Sorry to have been away, but, over the last four days we have been immensely privileged to be one of the 219,000 homes and businesses in the North to lose power on Friday night due to decades of underinvestment in our infrastructure in favour of short-term profits leaving customers vulnerable to the sort of extreme weather events that we have known for some time to be increasing in both frequency and severity Storm Arwen, a curiously Tolkienesque name for something far less attractive than Liv Tyler.

 

Be that as it may, after four days of bitter cold and dark (and that's just the daytime round here) fortunately we now have power again, unlike the thousands of other poor sods who still don't. 

 

The Northern Powergrid power cut map is still quite scary to behold:

 

 

As this map is only for the Northern Powergrid area, it does not show Scotland, which, I am now learning as I have access to news, has also been severely affected.

 

In other news .....

 

Meet our next Prime Minister (and think very, very, carefully before you try to import cheese to the UK in future)

 

 

Nice to be back.  Did I miss much?

 

James you're back!  I was starting to get very worried and I'm sure everyone else in the parish was worried too.

That is one huge slice of the country to be without power during Winter.  Downright bl00dy shocking in fact and you have to wonder what the Northern Powergrid people have been doing all Summer.  I mean it's not as if the penny hasn't dropped that global warming means increasingly severe storms, - or are they a pack of brain dead global warming deniers or something.

Storm Arwen, - I loved that part of the movie where Arwen summons the river spirits against the Ringwraiths.  I used to have a proper replica of Arwen's sword, - an utterly beautiful thing, - but I had to sell it when I got ill and poverty stricken.  

There were no sightings of Elf maidens murmuring strange incantations sighted anywhere about your area I trust? 

 

Edited December 1, 2021 by Annie
fumble brain

[Nearholmer]

Welcome back.

 

Is The Minister for Cheesy Comestibles invading/liberating Ukraine?

 

Annie

 

I think the red pins are individual houses. Thousands of ‘em, but not an area-wide disconnection as the map makes in appear.

[monkeysarefun]

3 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

Wonder how many gullible people he took with him....

Not as many as this guy would have.

 

Co-founder of Christian TV network that railed against vaccines dies of Covid-19

 

 

Marcus Lamb, the co-founder of the leading Christian TV network Daystar who railed against Covid-19 vaccines, has died of Covid-19. He was 64 years old.

 

Lamb, who was the chief executive of the conservative network that reaches an estimated 2 billion viewers worldwide, died on Tuesday, weeks after contracting the coronavirus.

 

“It’s with a heavy heart we announce that Marcus Lamb, president and founder of Daystar Television Network, went home to be with the Lord this morning,” the network announced in a tweet on Tuesday. “The family asks that their privacy be respected as they grieve this difficult loss. Please continue to lift them up in prayer.”

 

Under his leadership, Daystar aired repeated baseless anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and claims that vaccines were being used to take freedoms away from Christians. In July 2020, the network spent an hour of air time complaining about “censorship” around the pandemic and also gave an hour’s slot to Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has spread misinformation about the Covid vaccine.

 

Covid vaccines have been repeatedly found to be safe and effective at preventing severe illness from the virus. Evangelical Christians have been getting the vaccines at lower rates than the general US population, however, and several prominent Christian broadcasters have died of the virus in recent months.

 

Last month Lamb’s son Jonathan said that his father’s illness was due to sinister outside forces.

 

“There’s no doubt in my mind that this is a spiritual attack from the enemy,” he said, adding that Lamb has pushed alternative therapies and that “there’s no doubt that the enemy is not happy about that. And he’s doing everything he can to take down my Dad.”

 

Daystar was founded in 1998 and has more than 100 TV stations around the world. Lamb’s wife Joni, appearing on the daily Ministry Show on Tuesday, said that he had “got the Covid pneumonia”.

 

“He 100% believed in everything we talk about here on Daystar, things that help so many people around the world with early protocol treatments for Covid,” she said. “We still stand by those obviously.”

 

(cut and paste from the Guardian)

 

https://www.sorryantivaxxer.com/post/marcus-lamb-64-dallas-tx-televangelist-anti-vaxxer-and-anti-vaxx-promoter-died-from-covid

 

 

 

 

 

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Welcome back.

 

Is The Minister for Cheesy Comestibles invading/liberating Ukraine?

 

To paraphrase the Duke of Wellington (allegedly), ''I don't know what she'll do to the Russians, but she scares the Hell out of me!''

 

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Annie

 

I think the red pins are individual houses. Thousands of ‘em, but not an area-wide disconnection as the map makes in appear.

 

It varies, but from what I've seen looking at the County Durham ones, some of them are a post code, or part thereof, or 2 or 3 post codes combined. So I'm afraid it's every bit as dramatic as it looks.

 

2 hours ago, Annie said:

James you're back!  I was starting to get very worried and I'm sure everyone else in the parish was worried too.

 

Merely enforced silence!

 

2 hours ago, Annie said:

That is one huge slice of the country to be without power during Winter.  Downright bl00dy shocking in fact and you have to wonder what the Northern Powergrid people have been doing all Summer.  I mean it's not as if the penny hasn't dropped that global warming means increasingly severe storms, - or are they a pack of brain dead global warming deniers or something.

 

No chance of the slightest shock, I'm afraid.

 

The weather also seemed to degrade 4G (and my 4G internet is still slower than the slow BT copper wire), plus everyone was using it. So, anything on the mobile 'phone was pretty limited too.

 

It was a glimpse of the End Times to come. It would only take another such blow, say another storm of high winds or flooding, to knock out another part of the infrastructure while they were still trying to fix the power (and they are still trying to fix the power - many still have no power five days on and I gather many of the connection, including ours, are temporary 'jury rigged' and will still need a permanent repair) to overwhelm us to the point from which it would be hard to recover.

 

Events, e.g. both here and in Germany, take such a scenario out of the realm of thriller writers and into the entirely conceivable.

 

When this sort of thing starts to happen, the national governments that already behave as rogue states with offensive policies in cyber and other areas will simply increase their activities, taking out more and more of our infrastructure. 

 

Then perhaps, another pandemic; our health system has barely avoided being overwhelmed by the current one.

 

Is that what my life has come to? To witness the world reach such a state that the loony American survivalists turn out to be the prophets?

 

Essentially we are back to something like Britannia, AD 409. Within a generation or so, we will have lost the ability to sustain our complex infrastructure and will enter the Dark Ages.

 

Recommended reading: Robert Harris The Second Sleep.

 

9 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

Co-founder of Christian TV network that railed against vaccines dies of Covid-19

 

 

 

 

 

I find this news very much supportive of the idea that there is, after all, a God. Or Karma, at least.
 

2 hours ago, Annie said:

Storm Arwen, - I loved that part of the movie where Arwen summons the river spirits against the Ringwraiths.  I used to have a proper replica of Arwen's sword, - an utterly beautiful thing, - but I had to sell it when I got ill and poverty stricken.  

 

That is a shame. Our imaginations, however, they cannot take them!

 

2 hours ago, Annie said:

There were no sightings of Elf maidens murmuring strange incantations sighted anywhere about your area I trust? 

 

 

If there were, they'd have had goose pimples!

[Annie]

18 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Recommended reading: Robert Harris The Second Sleep.

Just now purchased on Audible .

 

20 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

It was a glimpse of the End Times to come. It would only take another such blow, say another storm of high winds or flooding, to knock out another part of the infrastructure while they were still trying to fix the power (and they are still trying to fix the power - many still have no power five days on and I gather many of the connection, including ours, are temporary 'jury rigged' and will still need a permanent repair) to overwhelm us to the point from which it would be hard to recover.

 

I don't think the average person realises just how fragile a thing western civilisation is and how easily it could be taken out by a series of natural disasters.  You only have to look to the disasters recorded in ancient times to see just how fragile the works of man can be; - the Crete earthquake in AD365, - the Minoan eruption and following volcanic Winter circa 1600 BCE.

As for the plague a significant percentage of the population still think that things are going to return to 'normal'.  Just as most people here in NZ were loosing sighs of relief that Delta seemed to be contained in time for Christmas when in rolls Omicron to show us what the new reality is going to be from now on.

 

47 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

That is a shame. Our imaginations, however, they cannot take them!

Indeed they can't James and I find a lot of strength in that.

[Andy Hayter]

As James says a number of those pins are collections of postcodes - aka small villages and hamlets.  Some will be individual farms however.  When I last checked Nenthead was still without electricity (est population 400).  It is probably not on James's map since being in Cumbria it is likely to be served by NW England grid.   It's population age  profile is significantly older than the average for Cumbria which in turn is older than the average for England.  I suspect that will be typical for many of the villages impacted.

[Compound2632]

I have to confess that I did watch The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in honour of Storm Arwen. 

[drmditch]

9 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

I have to confess that I did watch The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in honour of Storm Arwen. 

I would certainly not watch anything, but it might be time to read LTOR again.

(It's on a three/four year cycle.)

[Edwardian]

9 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

As James says a number of those pins are collections of postcodes - aka small villages and hamlets.  Some will be individual farms however.  When I last checked Nenthead was still without electricity (est population 400).  It is probably not on James's map since being in Cumbria it is likely to be served by NW England grid.   It's population age  profile is significantly older than the average for Cumbria which in turn is older than the average for England.  I suspect that will be typical for many of the villages impacted.

 

Reflecting on what I've learnt, I think each pin may be an incident reported. Updates for specific incidents can show one or more postcode area(s) (by which I mean just the first part of a postcode), and have said things like '300' odd or '400' odd properties affected.

 

Thus, one incident might be, say, 'DL6, DL10, DL11', while others were just one of these repeated as a single postcode area incident. Clearly different parts of a postcode constitute part or all of different incidents. 

 

According to the Post Office, the final two letters in a UK postcode could represent up to 80 properties. I assume this would be in an urban setting and it must vary enormously.  Our last two letters seem to denote about 6 properties (in two loose  clusters of 3 over an area that would accommodate far more than 80 properties in an urban setting), but the incident affecting us was one that affected 300-400 homes over the whole postcode area and, yet, our postcode area cropped up in at least one other incident, combined with others, suggesting more than 400 odd properties are in my postcode area.

 

As my property is on Northern Powergrid's network, the map I see only covers that area.  I have been 'blind' to the disruption in the North West of England and Scotland, so, look again at the map and imagine everything to the left and everything above the red rash of puns is potentially equally as bad.  Thanks to Andy for pointing out what has happened just 'over the tops' from me.

  

[Compound2632]

59 minutes ago, drmditch said:

I would certainly not watch anything, but it might be time to read LTOR again.

(It's on a three/four year cycle.)

 

I find that with LOTR, as with the other Ring cycle, my youthful annual cycle has long since needed to be necessary. It's all sufficiently internalised that once a decade is enough - and just a fragment of a motif is enough to conjure up the entire emotional experience of the latter.

 

10 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

I have to confess that I did watch The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in honour of Storm Arwen. 

 

I have to apologise. I have behaved like a smug southerner ignorant of the suffering of the north by making it subtly clear that we had power throughout. Shame on me. I will go away and read The Fellowship of the Ring by candle-light.

Edited December 2, 2021 by Compound2632

[Nearholmer]

BBC were reporting last night that the number of homes still without electricity by yesterday evening was c30 000.

 

Most of the very long re-connection times will be in areas served by "pole routes", as opposed to underground cables, so mostly rural areas, because pole routes are far more susceptible to weather damage. My guess would be that the big questions that the distribution companies will have to answer after this will be about whether or not they have been caring for pole routes adequately, things like replacing poles themselves before they become too rotten, cutting back trees to prevent branches flailing the lines, making sure that the fairly technical business of "protection discrimination and auto-reclose" is optimised, etc. etc. The regulatory regime they operate under is supposed to make sure that they do, rather than creaming too much profit, but one has to wonder.

[Northroader]

It strikes me, James, that you were just in the wrong place on Friday night.

https://www.cravenherald.co.uk/news/19748152.watch-video-snow-tan-hill-englands-highest-pub/

[Caley Jim]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Most of the very long re-connection times will be in areas served by "pole routes", as opposed to underground cables, so mostly rural areas, because pole routes are far more susceptible to weather damage. My guess would be that the big questions that the distribution companies will have to answer after this will be about whether or not they have been caring for pole routes adequately, things like replacing poles themselves before they become too rotten, cutting back trees to prevent branches flailing the lines,......

Back on boxing day 1998 we had a severe storm which resulted in us being without power for several days (5 IRC) due to one wire on the pole line to our (previous) house in a rural area being down, purely as a result of the wind - no trees involved.  As it only served the one house we were a low priority for reconnection.  Following that, Scottish Power Networks did a huge amount of work clearing trees from around power lines and replacing pole lines, work which has continued up to now.  We were fortunate in not being affected this time here in the town.

 

Jim

[alastairq]

18 hours ago, Annie said:

what the Northern Powergrid people have been doing all Summer

 I suspect, trying to put all my village's power cables underground...with barely 50% success.  My village is largely built of very old farm cottages, buildings, tec with the odd few more modern types [mine included..or, at least, the one I rent!].

My own street [yup, its a street, not a road, lane, avenue, crescent, or any other such trivia]...has the top end [my end, higher up than the bottom end]....all now underground, except for one house.....and most [not all!] the bottom end still on overhead cables....Seems no-one back in the Northern Powergrid offices looked properly at the surveys....most of the lower end homes are blt on pretty solid chalk bedrock....with about 3 inches of topsoil on top to fool the contractors. So consequently, without blasting or similar, they cannot easily get cables underground. I'm located on the south- eastern portion of Edward's map..the bit with very few red blobs on. Whilst there was a bit of wind damage, etc...personally I thought Arwen was not a lot more than a stiff breeze!  Next door to me, their house being built slightly higher up in the sky, everything was pretty much horizontal for much of the time..they noted that fact..with but a ten-foot in between, how calm my garden was compared to theirs.....there's a weather-belt of  trees behind my plot....absent behind theirs!

 

The biggest problem I heard about from the Northern Powergrid people on site this summer  was, the complete absence of proper communication from their managing offices.

Workers were being sent hither & thither across many jobs across Yorkshire...before they were able to complete their existing work!  The right hand did not know what  the left hand was doing...not at a coal face level, but in the administration.

I suspect this situation still prevails?  Which will explain why it has taken so long to reinstate power to consumers?  

The management are [doubtless] governed by performance markers. This is incapable of taking into account problems suddenly discovered  out in the field.

 

Plus, there is inadequate plant available to cope with the ground conditions off the beaten track.

 

The biggest complaint amongst the field workers [many actually ex-military] was that the 'management ' was also sourced from ex-military personnel....who actually thought they were right? [Turned out I'd trained one of the workers pulling the pole from outside my house, many years ago...!!]

 

A case of, workers arrive on site, then inform the office they really need this that or tuther here...and the office basically saying, you can't have it, you'll have to 'make do', which doesn't often work well.

 

What does surprise me is that, up north, we really are prone to power cuts [well, we are, hereabouts!]...yet we as a population have become less & less resilient to this sort of event.

What on earth did our predecessors do, 50 or so years ago, when we suffered really foul weather?

 

Storm Arwen isn't unusual, when considering weather events since WW2.  But it must be the worst we've had in the past 10 years...which is about as far back or forward most planning seems to be conducted these days?

 

 

[alastairq]

19 hours ago, Annie said:

Elf maidens murmuring

 Elf maidens?

In Newcastle area????

[alastairq]

One question I have for Edward to consider.....and I belive it may constitute an 'upside'....is....what railway modelling goodies are you going to spend the hundreds in compensation for being power-outed for so long, from Northern Powergrid?? 

I had but a couple days off earlier this summer [the ongoing re-routing of power cables saga].....and got a very nice 'cheque' for £100, for something I honestly had barely noticed...but resulted in me reading rather a lot more!

[Nearholmer]

Just now on BBC

 

”Around 19,500 homes do not have electricity, Downing Street said, but it added the majority were expected to have supply restored by the end of the week.”

 

 So, roundly 10 000 homes reconnected over the past 24hrs, which having some inkling of the sort of work involved in fixing downed lines in freezing cold weather, means a lot of people have been working rather hard.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of how it happened in the first place, spare a thought for the bod up a ladder in a knifing-cold wind, doing fiddly work with numb fingers, by the light of a head-torch.

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Just now on BBC

 

”Around 19,500 homes do not have electricity, Downing Street said, but it added the majority were expected to have supply restored by the end of the week.”

 

 So, roundly 10 000 homes reconnected over the past 24hrs, which having some inkling of the sort of work involved in fixing downed lines in freezing cold weather, means a lot of people have been working rather hard.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of how it happened in the first place, spare a thought for the bod up a ladder in a knifing-cold wind, doing fiddly work with numb fingers, by the light of a head-torch.

 

Heard on the news 13,000 premises in County Durham are still out. Places north of Barnard Castle up Hamsterley way, I know are still out, but they were told at the beginning of the week that their estimated re-connection would be Friday. I was not surprised, therefore, to hear a report from the village of Woodland (about 10 miles north of me as the crow flies into a power cable) on R4 just now.

 

Trust me, the heroics of the bods struggling to re-connect premises in biting wind and cold has not been far from my mind since the outage on Friday night. 

 

As I hear more now I have access to the news, I realise how lucky we are to have been re-connected after 'only' 4 days!

 

Had this continued, I might have had to put on my 'big coat'

 

It's grim up North!

 

 

[monkeysarefun]

3 hours ago, Edwardian said:

It's grim up North!

 

I had a 4 day powercut, with the added bonus that being on tank water the electric pump didn't work so I had no water either... Not being able to flush stuff adds yet  another dimension.

 

But today ...

 

28 and not a cloud in the sky,  day off so  I'm off to the  beaches of Wollongong  to make the most of it before we let the backpackers back onto the island.... yay summer!

 

Edited December 2, 2021 by monkeysarefun