Re: Government should be recalled
 

Oh for f.....another bloody rant by Arthur and a post yet again mentioning the "government""...

Why should they be recalled Arthur? Is David Cameron a qualified electrician? Is Ed Balls capable of using a chainsaw to cut up fallen trees?

Come on - I'm sure the power companies are working flat out to re-connect people.

Re: Government should be recalled
 

No need at all. The emergency services and the electricity companies have everything under control.

Re: Government should be recalled
 

Arthur, can you tell me what good recalling the government will do? The major part of the problem (as I understand it) is getting the machinery and personnel in to an area through flooding, fallen trees etc. We had a 60 ft connifer fall in our garden on Monday night. Managed (luckily as while our shed was holding the tree away from our house, the shed was not going to last forever) to get a company in to fell the tree. In the hour they were there chopping the tree into little bits, the guy in charge had 17 calls. They were the one company (after a *lot* of phone calls) that I could find that was able to look at the tree before christmas.

So, for one thing, there is probably a shortage of qualified people to fell trees. For another, most utility companies aren't really equipped to handle damage to large parts of their network quickly. Even assuming the power companies had enough staff qualified to repair the network, they probably don't have enough equipment like cranes for the power cables. That's not to mention that they probably don't have enough staff with the right qualifications to do it.

Fixing any of the problems I have listed takes time, even if the government came in and gave the utility companies infinite resources to get more people and equipment in, it would still take time to find (and maybe train) those people, and the equipment needed would probably need to be built. The equipment the power companies use is not exactly off the shelf, so it would take time to build it.

Recalling the government won't actually fix the problems any quicker.

Re: Government should be recalled
 

IIRC the last time Parliament got recalled was in August when Syria had the chemical weapons situation. That's the sort of level of seriousness that a recall would warrant.

The fact that recall 'worthy' incidents only seem to occur in other countries (which I think is the crux of Arthur's gripe) should be seen as an indication that UK society is fortunately enough never to have been in that much of a messy situation.

Re: Government should be recalled
 

Yep, at least he has not blamed the Tories directly in this one.

Arthur your are so stupid. You go on and on about the amount of expenses that our MP's are getting and then you want them to be recalled so they are able to claim even more. All they will do is pocket the money and make a bull crap statement very similar to the one you have posted here. If you think they will do anything else then you are truly as delusional as we have come to expect.

Re: Government should be recalled
 

Don't worry Arthur the MPs are all dry, warm and fed... we do not want to disturb them just yet.

Re: Government should be recalled
 

Exactly. A few thousand without power for 48 / 72 hours is inconvenient.

Death by sarin poisoning is bit more inconvenient and a bit more permanent.


I see Arthur has done the usual "post it and run" exercise. Come on Arthur come back and discuss your original post.

Re: Government should be recalled
 

I struggle to understand what a recall might achieve apart from a lot of hot air waffle and hand wringing. Would it actually get any more resources onto the ground?

Various government ministers already have the ability to authorise contingency funds to be spent. It's actually local government, environment agency and the like who deal with flood issues, and for them it's a case of knowing they can recover their extra expenditure when their staff are out on overtime etc.

If you watched some of the BBC news reports yesterday afternoon you will have observed senior government ministers were on the ground and being interviewed whilst standing in a sea of floodwater in Byfleet, explaining just that.

Flooding is one problem, and the difficulties of homes and businesses who are affected by that will go on for months as it can take a long while to dry out buildings before any repairs. But as the various reports have made clear, this is also quite a small scale and flooding is this time affecting people are in known river floodplains in a winter time when a flood risk will always exist. Indeed certainly in the Byfleet / Weybridge area many of the properties affected today will have been at risk over the winters of 2000 and 2003/4, when some similar issues occurred.

The much wider problem is the continued loss of power to many properties. As the news reports are also explaining the difficulties here is primarily one of access. With sodden ground the machinery needed to access areas, such as cherry pickers, simply can't get there. It's no good saying use the army (I won't set people off about whether they even have any manpower to spare due to defence funding changes), electric infrastructure is a specialist task, even you average house electrician wouldn't be suited to this.

But one does need to, long term, look at the resilience of some of our infrastructure. As Climate change continues, more vicious weather is possible at increased frequency. Overground wires may be cheap but easily brought down, but would buried wires be at risk from damage by trees roots, etc? Flooding precautions are great, but do you simply channel and move water more quickly further downstream so they have a greater issue?

Re: Government should be recalled
 

Yes and in one of the worst effected areas, nothing was required seemingly

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25524378

Re: Government should be recalled
 

Not really much the local councils can do about the power infrastructure....

Re: Government should be recalled
 

That's the problem. Do you spend billions and cause disruption to (potentially) millions of people so you can bury all the overhead power cables in the area? Bear in mind it would take months to do, and may only really offer any benefit for a few days a year.

It's the same with the Railways in the South East. Every winter (recently), we've had problems where the entire rail network has shut down when it's been snowing or icy because ice has formed on the top of the power rail so the trains can no longer get the traction current required.

However, while it is possible to adapt the track and trains so this is not a problem, it would apparently cost a lot of money to do so.. So, should the train companies spend the money, bearing in mind they will get little back (bit of a hard sell to get customers to pay for increased fares so the train companies can offer a service customers think they should be offering *anyway*)?

Having said that, personally, I think the government in that case should fund any changes as a part of routine maintenance because I don't think it's a good idea to essentially have large chunks of the economy stopping for a few days..

Re: Government should be recalled
 

So they do need help then, gulp perhaps Arthur was right then

Re: Government should be recalled
 

A lot of people are not happy (quite rightly so).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/we...ood-visit.html

Re: Government should be recalled
 

And who, besides the power network companies who are already doing all they can, would supply this help with the power infrastructure?

Re: Government should be recalled
 

That was one residents gripe, other residents complained that they didn't have any food or sandbags and who other than the council is responsible for that.