Preparedness for when

jk0

I bet Buggalugs has Bob tied to his bed by circling it with a ball of wool.

On the subject of SHTF, one of my tenants nearly had SHT garden last night:

Two of my flats are in separate blocks that are down in a dip next to a railway line. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Josephine+Court,+Southcote+Rd,+Reading,+West+Berkshire+RG30+2DQ/@51.450614,-0.993616,3a,52.5y,40.64h,88.27t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sAXBFkOkYrH2GMYXi5JU0JQ!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x48769ba08148325f:0x4f664cb825dd1b4d!6m1!1e1

There are over a hundred flats, but they are below the level of the sewer. All the 'waste' runs along to one end and is pumped up to the road.

Last night, my tenant nearest the pump rang me and said that his sink filled up when the man upstairs emptied his. Going outside, he found the water level in the manhole was 4" from the top.

This flat has a new managing agent, and I have no emergency number for them. Fortunately they also manage another flat elsewhere in Reading, and my paperwork for that gave me the number.

Today everything seems to be okay. However, I think I'm going to try to find out the weekend emergency nos of all the management companies I deal with, just in case similar arises in future.

Karmacat

This is an entry in the live Guardian feed on the Eurozone crisis:
"Over in Greece local media are making much of revelations that Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis was strong-armed into allowing inspectors representing the deeply unpopular troika to return to Athens.
Greek officials are keeping mum but EU sources in Brussels have revealed in no uncertain terms that Athens was posed with an ultimatum: either it allowed auditors to examine its books, in situ, or emergency funds would be stopped.
The ultimatum was made by no less than ECB president Mario Draghi, according to officials cited in a Bloomberg report. Greece is fast approaching the day of reckoning with room for manoeuvre becoming ever narrower as it races against the clock - and a mountain of maturing debt repayments - to avoid a credit crunch. Athens must repay €300 million to the IMF by the end of the week.
Economists are saying the situation is becoming desperate. Liquidity fears are such that the leftist-led government has reportedly beseeched the Greek subsidiaries of multinational firms for short-term loans.
The General Accounting office, it was revealed today, has also stopped payments on any state expenditure not related to pensions or salaries - and fears are growing of an “internal default” which could see the government making reduced payments to pensioners and public employees."

Its sounding really, really bad over there.

Frugalsod

Ireland is also looking shaky. The mainstream ruling parties have been haemorrhaging support since the crisis began and the deputy prime minister was trapped in a car fearing a water bomb!

http://www.irishpost.co.uk/news/imposition-water-charges-matter-taxation-nothing-else

Another Minister states that it is ‘very worrying’ that a water balloon was thrown at the T!naiste.

Unemployment is still very high for a country of only a few million and that does not count the hundreds of thousands that have emigrated since the crisis.

GreyQueen

I remember travelling across Eire in 1993 and that was the height of the 'celtic tiger' economic boom. To me, a lot of the activity had a temporary feel to it, unit factories with an international name bolted onto the outside, easy come and easy go.

My small hometown lost a firm to Eire, when it's management were offered enticements by the Irish government to reclocate. It wasn't a huge company but they were highly-skilled and well-paid jobs, the kind not easily found in the hometown. Employees were offered the choice of emirgration or unemployment. Some left, some didn't. It left a sour taste in the mouth.

The trouble with governments offering enticements to business to relocate into their country is that it's not sustainable in the long term. Businesses flit about the world, seeking the best tax breaks and the cheapest, least-unionised labour to exploit. Quality goes down the toilet.

Some of us older ones can remember when marks and sparks was noticably of better quality than other high street clothing brands. As in when they made the stuff in the UK and to a high specification. A marks and sparks quality inspection was something to be feared by a manufacturer, as only the best was good enough; I used to work for a company which produced edibles for m & s and no other company was as demanding of its suppliers.

Now, the quality is indifferent on many clothing items, and you feel you can't trust them, so why pay a bit more to shop there? I can still recall the first loss of quality when women I knew would say, horrified, that they'd seen clothes in that store with threads hanging off them, the stitching was so poorly finished. People were genuinely disgusted, you'd never have seen that in times past.

Now, a generation has grown up thinking p-poor quality of material and finish is just how it is, and doesn't understand how to select good quality items and expect many years' use out of them. Sadly, these days you're more likely to get a good quality bedsheet in a vintage store than the high street.

Frugalsod

Yes when Marks and Spencer decided to drop the Made in Britain they lost me as a customer. I have not been in since. The quality was much lower and they have become irrelevant for many of us now. In the past they were the bell weather for the clothing and retail sector, not any longer.

CRANKY40

Ireland are having problems with water charges. Tap water charges were already included in general taxation bit from 2014 a separate tax was introduced. The problem is that in some areas it isn't safe to drink the tap water (I kid you not). People who are on the breadline are being charged for water that they can't use. This is just one of many articles on the subject.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29426733

moneyistooshorttomention

Oh dear Cranky re that water issue there:(.

My very first thought was "...and they don't stand a very good chance of getting that reversed, judging by how bad the opposition is...look at those posters!!!!" (ie two of them are unintelligible...cant understand one for one reason and another for another reason). Basic lesson of protesting effectively being "Keep your communications to The Other Side clear and intelligible...so that everyone can understand them...and remember you are speaking to a worldwide audience...not just one little community". Who on earth are D8 and D12? What does that middle poster actually say?

ivyleaf

I suppose they were more concerned about a local audience rather than a worldwide one. And if we lived there we'd probably know what D8 and D12 are.

Frugalsod

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Oh dear Cranky re that water issue there:(.

My very first thought was "...and they don't stand a very good chance of getting that reversed, judging by how bad the opposition is...look at those posters!!!!" (ie two of them are unintelligible...cant understand one for one reason and another for another reason). Basic lesson of protesting effectively being "Keep your communications to The Other Side clear and intelligible...so that everyone can understand them...and remember you are speaking to a worldwide audience...not just one little community". Who on earth are D8 and D12? What does that middle poster actually say?

Well D8 and D12 are postal codes for the Dublin area. Then the sign is in Gaelic which is second language to many in Ireland, and first language to a small minority as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_language

They are probably appealing to the local government politicians. The fact that the BBC might have had a photographer there or more likely bought shots from a photo agency does not make it more or less relevant to the world as a whole.

Using Google Translate "baghcat!il an ch!in" translates to "boycotting the tax"

Also factor in that nearly half of all Irish mortgages are still in negative equity 7 years after the crash should show how squeezed the average Irish citizen still is.

Frugalsod

How to sell firewood to certain people.