The UK government is planning for several days of organised blackouts this winter

Probably extend the Christmas holidays.

 

Irony alert... only you mention his name these days. Eeryone else has consigned him to history. Not seen any posts mentioning him for some time as a diversionary tactice to mitigate the current shower in office.

 

I don’t disagree with you btw, this stuff should have been sorted a lot of years ago!

 

I have and logs, fallen trees don't last long round here, everyone owns a chainsaw

 

Currently preoccupied saying the west shouldn’t support Ukraine against Putin!

 

And it worked out very well for old Ted as I remember. My instincts tell me that any government would do almost anything to avoid the death sentence of power cuts. So, come on you tories, fill yer boots!

 

...

 

Right, we had it tough, we lived in a shoe box in't middle o' t' road.....

 

Luxury

 

There will be riots this winter. It's sad that it's going to be necessary, but at least widespread civil unrest might spark meaningful change

 

Don't forget ...waking up with a rubber -now cold - hot water bottle in the bottom of the bed against your feet. Not to mention the ice on the inside of the window pane when you woke up in the morning. It was hard work forcing yourself to get up, get dressed and go to the bathroom. No central heating and no fireplaces in the bedrooms, where we lived. Sometimes there was ice forming in the WC when it was really cold. If the milk got left outside it froze. I remember a two inch column of ice pushed up the foil top on the bottle once.

Evenings were spent with the entire family in the living room with the only fire in the house, in front of the TV (all two channels BBC1 and ITV) in glorious B&W 405 lines on a 16 inch screen (in summer watching Wimbledon the definition was so poor you could not even see the tennis ball. That did improve slightly when BBC2 started with 625 lines!! The rental TV had a clunky switch to change between 405 and 625 lines. That said, half the time the TV broke down and you ended up with a temporary loan TV from the dark ages (for 2 or 3 weeks at time) with a 12 inch screen that took 5 minutes to warm up . Nevertheless, it was too bloody cold to go off to your bedroom, and in any case, there was no reason to (no Playstation or TV in your room).
Those were the days....NOT!

 

Aye, mam used to put our school uniform on the clothes horse in front of the fire and when she shouted upstairs you had to run down before you froze.

 

Doubt it! We are not like the French. Do you seriously condone violent protests?
Besides protests ending up with rioters brings out those who just like to cause aggro for aggro sake, looting and arson! The small shopkeepers and businesses suffer. Ordinary people's vehicles are often destroyed, people are injured and, God forbid, killed, infrastructure damaged and millions spent on resources like police, fire and ambulance and Emergency NHS both during and post rioting. The knock on effect ialso impacts the legal system clogging up the courts. The Governments of any persuasion dig in as they cannot be seen to give in to violence, so in the end, whilst civil disobedience seems an attractive proposition it is often hijacked by anarchists. All at a time when the country is financially under the cosh and can least afford it.
The Poll tax protests were effective due in part, to the fact it was , as it turned out, the final straw in the Thatcher dictatorship after a long line of contentious decisions showing her disconnect and contempt for the working classes and public opinion e.g. the miners, 'the enemy within' etc. (not to forget the Falklands War). The sheer numbers protesting across the UK over the Poll tax rather than the riots was what convinced the Conservatives to ditch her. And I believe it was Geoffrey Howe who put the final nail in her coffin. I fear in the current circumstances the Tories would rally round the leader (whoever) and take a hard line.

 

Hope there’s going to be a curfew ,it will be like the purge out there if everywhere pitch black,do they leave the street lamps on?

 

Nope. From what I remember everything was out. Total darkness. Anyone going out seemed to have a torch. Black outs were in 3 hour cycles in different areas of the city.

 

But no computers to f**k up in those days.

 

Exactly as I remember things as a kid.
But got to say it was worse in the Winter.

 

Don't worry! With global warming it'll be 25 degrees in January. (Joke).

 

“not something we expect to happen,” Is politician speak for most likely will happen!
What do the households with no gas and storage heaters do? Freeze to death?
I suppose that would help all sorts of crisis.

 

It normally is. 25f is about -4c