vivweb01blog

Last year  I took a look at various options that we in the UK might use for energy conservation as part of a wider review of our energy crisis and its consequences.  Since then, political parties of all hues have weighed in on the ‘greening’ debate and there appears to be a general consensus that we need to replace fossil fuels with renewables and nuclear for our energy generation and supply. The only dispute is over how quickly we should do it, and in the UK at least, this is currently tied up with the post-election policy tussle between the two (erstwhile) major parties and Reform. Starmer's recent 'go slower' initiative was designed primarily to wrong-foot the Tories and Reform on their criticism of Miliband's over-hasty introduction of Cameron's so eloquently described 'green crap'. Miliband is, needless to say not happy with the wind being taken out of his sails in this way, and I foresee trouble ahead for Starmer from his 400-strong 'rump' of...

Editor's note: I can now confirm from personal experience that the situation with respect to availability of 'routine' appointments is truly dire.  I attempted to book one at our local GP practice over the counter yesterday and was told '...sorry, there are no available appointments on my system'. An attempt today to book an appointment online via the SystmOnline software our practice uses for bookings showed no appointments available in the period where booking was available, ending mid-September (i.e. at least an 8-week wait, with no guarantee of anything would be forthcoming after that.) This is clearly unacceptable and confirms that a policy of 'Rationing by Availability' by the NHS is firmly in force. On the basis of recent media reports, I suspect this is country-wide and not just an isolated case. The government has emphasised the need to keep the population healthy to help the NHS, and we are regularly encouraged not to delay if we detect anything ...

  On present evidence, we just might….. Those of us old enough to remember the excesses of the 1970s will recall one of the most notable of its meteorological ones - the ‘great drought’ of ’76. Contrary to popular belief, this was more extensive and prolonged than the current one, with both a dry autumn and winter in 1975 and a dry spring in 1976 contributing.   In June 1976 there was actually a period of two weeks where maximum temperatures in southern England never fell below 32oC, and we haven't seen anything that prolonged this year - yet. The prolonged nature of the 1976 heatwave, and the following dry, hot period which continued until early August, resulted in severe consequences for crops and domestic  water supplies, with taps in some areas actually running dry. This culminated in the Drought Act being rushed through parliament on 5 th August. This legislation   included more draconian water restrictions, installation of standpipes, water bowsers, etc. ...

Please excuse the rather hard-hitting question in the title of this blog, but needs must - this is potentially pretty serious, partcularly if you're one of our many hard-up pensioners….. The Labour leadership is getting desperate now, and as we all know, desperation often leads to serious mistakes…this certainly would be a monumental one. OK, what's all the fuss about ? There are a number of evil rumours abound in the media (and not just the socials) that Reeves is now actively considering means-testing the State Pension in October as part of her 'Black Hole filling' project.  The Inter-generational Foundation think tank is reported to have gone as far as recommending it to government as a way of  "..distributing resources more fairly between the generations..". Starmer has already been challenged on why he has allowed the tax threshold freezes to bring some pensioners, who have the state pension as their sole income, into the basic rate tax net at al...