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Surviving Powercuts&/or conspiracies to end Gordon Brown - a "Q&A"

.:. | 28.05.2008 21:43 | Culture | Ecology | World

The UK national grid has taken the blame for power cuts which left hundreds of thousands of Britons (& Scottish people) without electricity yesterday for more substantial reasons than being scared of violating their probation status by leaving their hovels with an electronic tag device around their ankle to stick their charge key in the meter.

The tone thus set, a simple "Q&A" for people who'd like to know how to make their own electricity so that dark hidden conspiracies to make Gordon Brown as unpopular as Harold Wilson affect not their households.

Q : is electricity a natural phenomona?
A : Benjamin Franklin quite famously is credited with proving electricty to be a natural phenomona by flying a kite with a key attached during a storm. Of course as few people who understand the physics of that little "blue peter" episode appreciate how many other utterly silly tossers tried to repeat it. Prof. Georg Wilhelm Richmann of Saint Petersburg, Russia was one. He was electrocuted in 1750.

Q : is electricity only available prometheus frankenstein like from the clouds above?
A : Not at all. as this educational video shows you can make enough electricity to power a flash light with only a pear and a toilet. If you're short on pears any moderately acidic fruit or vegetables will do; apple, avocadoes, carrots or courgettes. If you're really desperate you don't even need a toilet. You just need half a lemon (consult your local smack head) and a turd.  http://www.5min.com/Video/how-to-create-electricity-using-a-pear-and-toilet-4098

Q : the news that half a million Britons were left without lecky (slang for electricity) is blamed on "the near-simultaneous failure of the Sizewell B nuclear power station and the Longannet 1 coal-powered fire station in Fife, both of which "tripped" within a couple of minutes of each other at around 11.30am." Can the experts behind these "Q&A" series provide any useful information on how to make your own nuclear power station?
A: piece of piss. First off you need to find uranium, that is unless you have already cornered the market on uranium during your heyday as the heart of a global imperial system. Then you need heavy water unless of course you have cornered the market on production of heavy water since your heyday as the heart of a global imperial system. Then you need to chop your uranium into very small bits with a sharp knife (make sure a grown-up is around to help you) and when nuclear fusion is observed put the material in the heat exchange chamber of a basic steam driven electrical generator.

Q : is this safe?
A : of course it is. all you need to do is look at how neatly the lawns are cut around Britains nuclear power stations and how many cows nobody would ever dream of eating graze merrily on the meadows in front of Thorp. People who care so about their environment are a paradigm of safety.

Q : So we should leave nuclear power plant construction to the program of the UK government as appended below. What about coal?
A : piece of piss. Coal grows underground and can easily be extracted by sending your children down holes in the ground for ten hours a day to get it out.

Q : Didn't Thatcher illegalise that?
A : oh yeah. forgot. well that does it. Nuclear power it is. After all the UK as the most windy geographical area in Europe can't dream on quixotic wind turbines.

Q : considering that this was a dastardly plot to bring down the popular Gordon Brown in a fashion much akin to that used against Harold Wilson - are there any precedents for switching off grids?
A : such examples are plentiful. But only the paranoid would read a discrediting of the popular Gordon Brown into this. As we well know nuclear energy is the option of the future and to this end Mr Brown's government has chosen to favour such energy sources over coal, wind or lemon & poo generation by the mid 21st century. An extra bargain being of course that the sector leaders (the French) have already agreed to build the plants. over here. yes. in your back yard. next to your cows.
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/climate/adaptation/nuclear_power.shtml

Q : can I have examples of power cuts for devious ends please?
A : You can enjoy Mr Latuff's long and admired cartoonist history on this NYC indymedia reaction to the NYC and east North American "power outage" of Aug 2003.  http://nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=69310&group=webcast This really was quite a wonderful powercut or "power outage" in that it tripped both the NE USA and SE Canada. 3 states of the USA and one province of Canada were left without useable electricity supply for a period ranging from six hours to 32 hours. 30 million people were effected in the longest and most serious power cut in modern history since Benjamin flew his kite. It was also (as I noted at the time) the first time those of NYC had seen their skyline in the dark without the twin towers which allowed them enjoy the annual "leonid" meteorite shower to much "ooing and Ahing". Whilst "we in the know" simply knew ·*they*· had turned the lights off because Montoak needed extra power to make weather systems and the hubbard Xenu battle cruiser was overhead - "they" (the punters and journalists" at the time thought it might have been "solar rays"
 http://nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=69327&group=webcast
Greg Palast blamed the Bush dynasty:
 http://nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=69375&group=webcast
Ottawa on the Canadian side didn't wait for a reason and just went looting instead.
 http://nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=69398&group=webcast

NYC had blacked out in the 1970's (back in Harold Wilson's time) but then had had loads of babies instead. The 2003 black-out led to "share your stories on the web"  http://nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=69371&group=webcast

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In January 2008 the UK decided to choose Nuclear power :

Despite the cost of building them, the delay in bringing them online, the cost of cleaning up the old ones, the cost of disposing of all the waste so far, the need to invest in carbon capture or at least print up colourful brochures for the next generation on climate change, the general un-Scottishness of a post-nuclear "chernobyl style" disaster UK (most of Scottish people & many Welsh ones too would peel & die) the government of the UK has decided to approve new nuclear power plants. Because of the Scottish thing, their PM AlexSalmond went radge & insisted not a single nuke will be build the Caledonian side of the border.

2023 is the set date for the closure of most of the UK's existing nuclear power stations, but as can be seen from the chart below there is already a backlog of stations which are now past their operational safety date.

name_________megawatts___due to Close
Calder Hall_________ 194___2003
Chapelcross________196___2005
Dungeness A_______450__2006
Dungeness B______1110___2018
Hartlepool________1210___2014
Heysham 1_______1150___2014
Heysham 2_______1250___2023
Hinkley Point B____1220____2016
Hunterston B_____1190___ 2016
Oldbury _________434___2008
Sizewell A ______420 ___2006
Sizewell B ______1188 ___2035
Torness______1250___2023
Wylfa_________980___2010

Here is a good refutal of the 5 key points the UK government is using to justify the decision by Tom Burke of the Sustainable Energy Awareness & Campaign group / site E3G  http://www.e3g.org/index.php/programmes/climate-articles/decoding-nuclear-nonsense-ii-the-real-evidence/

Here is a hearwarming interactive map from the UK "no2nuclear power" group which helps you to understand how very very unScottish simulated melt-downs would be. You'll note as well that northern Ulster get's fried too. That might be a good thing - you'd have to ask them. Alas they don't have their own "indymedia" and they can't get past the guidelines on the other one.
 http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/Chernobyl-UK.php

Here's something from SKY news which speaks of "Green fury" counterpointed the thoughts of a happy builder.
 http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30400-1300003,00.html?f=rss

here's something else from the Yorkshire evening post which talks of a "Green light" to build Nukes & without mentioning local builders does mention the investment opportunities which would be afforded electricty operators who wanted to get on the fry Ulster gravy train. Which is what it's all about at the end of the day. Today's decision will not mean one joule or to be precise one watt of new electricity this side of 2020 & will sooner or later mean doing some deal with Sarkozy to guarantee French contractors works. Meanwhile he'll have covered his country in windmills & closed down most of France's reactors on time & within budget. I don't know what he thinks about Scottish people - you'd have to ask him.
 http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/latest-national-news/Row-likely-over-Nplants-move.3657070.jp

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sorry this "Q&A" isn't up to the usual standard of the series which in a light-hearted way seeks to remind people of the ephemera of their cultural or historical past or future.

the last one -
"Burying Lenin, Putin, Yeltsin, Stalin etc. - a Q&A" on the 2012 Moscow cemetary for Russian leaders and why the Scientologists don't have a grave marker.
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/05/399321.html

the one before -
"Italy's Romani Purge & Shengen 2's biometric database : a Q&A " on the xenophobic policies of Berlusconi which have this week been condemned by Amnesty and thus far laid an unpopular geopolitical base for Shengen Info Systems and may yet if used properly bring down Mr B.
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/05/399063.html

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