Preparedness for when

GreyQueen

Evening all.

Gorblimey, if my bod was a car, I'd take it in to the body shop and have the dents beaten out of it, but as I'm organic I shall just have to soldier on. Gardening is an interesting form of exercise, in that it makes muscles and tendons you didn't know you had ache abominably.

So it must be doing me good, hey?

:think: I've been watching the meeja closely over the past week, and SuperGran has been keeping a close eye on telly inc ceefax and monitoring both the local and the regional rags. And thus far - zilch.

We've been waiting for reports on the major incident close to the Towers last week. Several armed response units, a premises being trashed, several people left badly frightened, a person arrested very publically and several hundred persons put to inconvenience for several days.....and absolutely nothing.

I was talking to one of the unwilling participants this afternoon, remarking that it's really strange there's been nothing in the press, and she'd noticed and found it strange, too.

It made me wonder, if all hell breaks loose in a city centre, and it doesn't get the teeniest report in the media in any format whatsover, are we kidding ourselves about how connected and transparent our news reporting is?

Reminds me of stuff happening in the 1980s, when there were bad riots in several cities and there were bad riots in other places, smallish towns, and somehow that never made the news, not even that region's news. As if TPTB were trying to keep a lid on it.

Funny old place, Provincial City; an innocent middle-aged woman (sorry, scrap the innocent, that was a touch too far ) gets spotted by a journo carrying a cased longbow across the city centre and a major incident with lots of guns in the middle of town is the cause for mass amnesia.

I'd think I'd gone quite batty, but for the several hundred witnesses, the damage, and the first person accounts from those involved.

To borrow from that old saying about a tree falling unheard in the forest, doesn't it count as real if the media don't report it?

[Deleted User]

Frugalsod wrote: »

I will supplement them with candles and a candle heater if things get bad.

A Hurricane Lantern will chuck out quite a bit of heat (one would often be used to prevent an outside loo from freezing in the middle of winter) and economical (about 40 hours per litre) too.

Not forgetting, they also put out quite a bit of light.

nuatha

GreyQueen wrote: »

We've been waiting for reports on the major incident close to the Towers last week. Several armed response units, a premises being trashed, several people left badly frightened, a person arrested very publically and several hundred persons put to inconvenience for several days.....and absolutely nothing.

I was talking to one of the unwilling participants this afternoon, remarking that it's really strange there's been nothing in the press, and she'd noticed and found it strange, too.

It made me wonder, if all hell breaks loose in a city centre, and it doesn't get the teeniest report in the media in any format whatsover, are we kidding ourselves about how connected and transparent our news reporting is?

Over the years I've been a bystander to several events that you'd assume had to make the media. From a motorway closed and troops swarming a convoy of vehicles, to police hostage situations where firearms were discharged. My brother has several scars from bullets acquired as a passerby in a British city - from incidents that never made even the local papers. Though these days I'd be checking for footage on Youtube and write-ups on local blogs - these are harder to keep silent than the regular media are.

GreyQueen

It's left us rather taken aback, nuatha. We're no stranger to making the local news, here at the Towers. There's a few times SuperGran has had to tip me the nod that something's on the regional telly news in daytime, so I can phone my folks who watch the local news in the early evening and tell them Not To Worry About The Stabbing As It Wasn't Me. My folks regard daytime telly watching as anathema.

SG is somewhat of a media junkie. As well as dipping in and out of the TV and radio and ceefax during the day, she reads the local rag and its regional big sister paper daily including the little announcement in the back, and has her finger firmly on the pulse. CID occasionally wander by to see what she knows, because she knows a fair amount - church m a f i a ladies are frankly scary in their interconnectedness.

We may get to the bottom of this hushedness eventually although a week's worth of silence is a bit unusual. I mean, armed response vehicles and all sorts, sheesh. The premises has had to hire in a security firm, the staff were so terrorised.

Sorry to hear about your brother's injuries.

Frugalsod

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

A Hurricane Lantern will chuck out quite a bit of heat (one would often be used to prevent an outside loo from freezing in the middle of winter) and economical (about 40 hours per litre) too.

Not forgetting, they also put out quite a bit of light.

My use of an LED Lantern is because you can always get batteries or recharge them somewhere like work if there are rolling blackouts. Plus LED are remarkably efficient in their use of energy. A fuel based lantern could also be a fire hazard depending on the circumstances.

jk0

I received that little RAC keyring solar/wind up torch today recommended by Bedsit Bob. It's even smaller than it looked on screen.

I think those might make nice stocking fillers for family for Christmas.

nuatha

GreyQueen wrote: »

CID occasionally wander by to see what she knows, because she knows a fair amount - church m a f i a ladies are frankly scary in their interconnectedness.

I've come across a couple and know what you mean.

We may get to the bottom of this hushedness eventually although a week's worth of silence is a bit unusual. I mean, armed response vehicles and all sorts, sheesh. The premises has had to hire in a security firm, the staff were so terrorised.

Sorry to hear about your brother's injuries.

After a week I presume its not going to surface.
Worrying thing about bro's injuries was he just regarded it as par for where he was working - I only know about them cos I saw him changing, thankfully as flesh wounds there was no ongoing functional impact and he no longer works in that part of the world.

A few weeks back we were talking about data security, this has just come to my attention. Though I will add that so far I haven't lost a CD to any of the causes they describe.

sorryImoved

Thank you for all the replies. Glass containers it is for storage.

greenbee

nuatha wrote: »

A few weeks back we were talking about data security, this has just come to my attention. Though I will add that so far I haven't lost a CD to any of the causes they describe.

I've lost CDs to spindle cracks. About 10 years ago I moved data held on several thousand CDs to NAS and discovered CDs degrading - any over 5 years old we made sure we put in the lowest speed CD drive after opening one new high-speed drive to discover the 'unreadable' CD had turned into a shower of glitter that took weeks to clean up!

thriftwizard

Glad I'm not the only one who has been on the edge of clearly pretty major incidents, looked for reports later & never found them, leaving me feeling like an idiot & my family accusing me of over-reacting. It does make you wonder...