In the news

I noticed that street lights were switched off in various tracts of Northern France when we drove through a few weeks ago. On private land too, like industrial estates.

Yeah, I'd be interested in who she blames for that.

Failure of “budgeting” I imagine

have jobs that make no economic sense.

This is an interesting point.

What would the work landscape look like if all business had to make up the short fall. Which would survive? What would the increase in cost of goods/services be?

Just look at the countries in Europe that have a decent minimum wage I reckon.

Luxembourg
Ireland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium

I guess next is looking at which ones have in-work benefit receiptients.

Then again, where do you draw the line? Is a German-style NI system a benefit for the unemployed, or is it an insurance system?

Sunak has been on the BBC and elsewhere saying that his calculations show that an extra £400 is needed to mitigate against the upcoming rise in energy prices. Targeting that on the most vulnerable will cost "a few billion"

I had a stab with my calculator and using pretty ropey figures came up with 44 billion to cover all the increase for lower income households.

Maybe the French have done it better but still a whole lot of billions!

Crazy isn't it. Am I right in saying that energy rates for businesses aren't affected by an energy cap? Combine that with no disposable spending and this really could be the end of the high street.

France (in theory) switches off loads of public lighting overnight. Over here, a lot of the street lights are on sensors that pedestrians trigger rather than cars.

Minimum wage here is quite high which also props up a quite high cost of living unfortunately. It's a vicious cycle in some respects.

Luxembourg has lots of means based benefits which helps but I have to be honest that I don't know how the system supports you if you have a family and one (or both) wage earner on minimum wage.

Streetlights go off in England at night too. Just not in the big smoke

@dubtap @dammit that explains it then cheers.

last round of local elections in Basildon were all hinged on "we will turn the lights back on so granny can walk home in safety, unlike the LAbour party who want everyone to be murderkilled in the dark every night!"

I did ask a candidate who I should vote for if I want ht lights left off but they just ranted about crime and safety.

They only went out between 1am and 5am.
Alas, they are on all the darkened hours now, much to my dismay.

Ok, I think we may be in the end-times.

https://twitter.com/KTLA/status/1557529838776250368

Annoyed by how much the commentator was enjoying the growing spiral of firey death.

It doesn’t help that California has a permanent water shortage, basically being a desert.

Sections of the Loire have dried up. Hopefully the French have a backup plan for the 2? 3? Nuclear plants that depend on the Loire for cooling…

https://www.thelocal.fr/20220811/in-pictures-french-drought-intensifies-loire-dries-up/

don't worry, mega-brain "Lord" Frost says there is no climate emergency. Good enough for me, especially coming from a man with his impeccable track record.

Interesting considering EDF don't really know where they are going to get the freshwater for Sizewell C...in one of the most water stressed parts of the country.

They did have a plan for a pipeline from a river but that river is running low at the moment.

Wind power it is then

Fracking srly 😉

Oh yeah let’s drill holes in the earth!!!

Humans are so good at finding things to burn

Paluel must be in high demand right now…

Ironically, the tech from oil drilling could be used to go down into glaciers to remove the water flows that accelerate their breakup, helping to keep glaciers together for at least a bit longer. No money in that though, yet.

Meanwhile, in Argentina