In the news

Oh, the sting of accountability...

She really should be giving evidence from protective custody.

A friend of mine was cabin crew for Virgin Atlantic. They had a flight that also dropped suddenly and one of the crew was running round screaming "we're all gonna die, we're all gonna die". That one made the headlines too, but I don't think anyone was seriously hurt.

🤣

She really should be giving evidence from protective custody

As should everyone who OK'd prosecutions knowing the system was getting the balances wrong. I hope the inquiry lists them all.

https://news.sky.com/story/britons-should-have-three-days-worth-of-tinned-food-and-water-government-says-13141114

Every day we get closer to dystopia

It’s a good idea in any case.

Tinned water? I only read the headline.

20 people are still in intensive care because of the turbulence thing. Another 38 in hospital. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4nnqgexjp1o

Household-level resilience measures which, at scale, can make a significant impact on emergency services and public crisis response.

Just a simple first aid kit, fire safety kit, flashlight/torch, and a handful of meals and corresponding litres of drinking water. Not very expensive, not very intrusive, but proven to be enough to save lives directly and indirectly in a large-scale emergency.

In itself pretty good advice and common sense but tinfoil hat has me wondering what's prompted it.

Paula Vennells' final floundering silence, after a simple question from the Chair of the enquiry,
must surely be the one that implicates her?

Funny how that works eh? I think it’s understandable to wonder ‘oh god now what’s gone wrong’, given the times. However, I think the rationale this time is as simple as ‘this is a useful message that needs to be repeated at some point, and now is better than later’.

I wouldn’t try to read too much into it.

Isn't this one of those things that everyone else in e.g. US and Europe does, and are surprised that Brits don't do?

Like mixer taps and not putting washing machines in the kitchen.

I did learn a lesson when my taps stopped for a day in near 30C summer 2020, Thames Water didn't provide any alternative and the shops ran out of bottles.

It's also something that in the 80s was still pretty standard - you knew where the candles and matches were, had a torch and batteries, tinned food, 'cupboard staples'. But with provisions so easily available in the last few decades, few power cuts etc, who has emergency food in the cupboard when there's JustEat?

I did learn a lesson when my taps stopped for a day in near 30C summer 2020, Thames Water didn't provide any alternative and the shops ran out of bottles.

They should supply 10 liters per person per day within the first 24 hours, they normally put the bottle station locations on the website. If the interruption is shorter then they might not.

Thames Water should do a lot of things they don't.

They did have some water bottles in a van on the next street after about 12 hours, but certainly didn't tell anyone about them.

buckle in

D:Ream, the gift that keeps on giving.

Prof B Cox for PM

I had about a month's worth of food stashed as my 'What if the food supply chain goes tits up after Brexit'. After the mice ate most of the rice and pasta, I still have all of the tinned stuff. Including a tin of Full English Breakfast (Likely that'd be the last tin to be opened).

There is some real beauty in the 'tin of full English' as a post-brexit life saver.

It's the sort of thing you buy thinking it might be good but lives on a shelf scowling at you for about 14 years and 6 moves between flats/houses. I had something similar. It even moved from London to Luxembourg with me. Still here. Looking menacing.

A quantum-physicist friend freaked out at the start of covid, bought a massive chest freezer and filled it with £1.5K's worth of munch.

It's still there, running, full of the original munch, in his new house.

Without a diesel generator it's of limited use. Presumably his physics degree was mail order.