Eight years on.
Grenfell Tower to be demolished

Shocking

Please continue here. Thanks.

EIGHT YEARS on... And:

Seven organisations to be investigated over Grenfell fire
wrote:

Seven organisations criticised in wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster could be banned from bidding for public contracts, the government has said...

... The fire in the west London tower block killed 72 people in 2017. The inquiry found all their deaths were avoidable...

Have we moved onwards?

Or does passing a hot potato between seven scammers mean that none of the scammers gets 'caught out'?...


Still to be chased up?

Only in the UK??
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Watch: Chaos as MPs throw smoke grenades in Serbian Parliament

At least three Serbian MPs have been injured after opposition members threw smoke grenades during a chaotic session inside the country's parliament on Tuesday.

Politicians were seen on live television clashing with security and launching tear gas in an apparent show of support for student protestors.

Demonstrations sparked by a railway station roof collapse [EDIT: reasons still unknown: Chinese renovation; non-transparency,...] that killed 15 people four months ago have morphed into a wider movement that poses the biggest threat yet to the Serbian government.

One of the injured MPs suffered a stroke and is in a critical condition, according to the speaker. "Serbia is rising up for the regime to fall," read a banner unfurled on the chamber floor.

Trump Turnberry vandalised by pro-Palestinian group

A pro-Palestinian group has vandalised parts of Donald Trump's Turnberry golf resort in Scotland.

Palestine Action posted photographs on social media showing red paint daubed across one of the buildings at the Ayrshire course.

The words "Gaza is not for sale" are sprayed across one green and another green appears to have been dug up.

The UK building trades have a funny way of showing their competence.
While removing cladding, identical to that used on Grenfell Tower, they fitted the windows inside-out.

Apology over inside-out windows on tower blocks

It's the "Fog in Channel, Continent Cut Off" school of design. :^)

(Yes, that story is apocryphal.)

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Yesterday at 12:30 local time (METDST: UTC+0200) a blackout occured throughout Spain and Portugal; for a short time in some Basque villages in Southern France as well as in Andorra (micronation in the Pyrenees mountains at the border between ES and FR).

The blackout lasted almost 12 hours until most parts of Spain and Portugal could be reconnected to the transmission grid. Train services, subway, metro, airports, escalators, traffic lights, gaz stations, e-cash payments...; everything went out of order for hours throughout the Iberian Peninsula.

Reasons are still unknown; detailed investigation by ENTSO-E (Assoc. of Europ. transmission grid operators) is pending. At the moment the blackout started, Spains power generation exceeded domestic demand by ~30% (32 GW vs. 25 GW) which is not unusual (daytime solar peak, exports). Vast energy was exported to Portugal and France (2.7 GW to PT; 1.7 GW to FR), the remaining excess generation was stored in pumped hydros:

diagrams of generation & demand in Spain (Source: Fraunhofer ISE, Freiburg, Germany; data: ENTSO-E; in English)

Cross border physical flows for Spain (Source: Fraunhofer ISE; ENTSO-E):

There were reports about a wildfire in Southern France that affected a high-capacity 400kV AC interconnector to Spain... eventually tripping this link. The N+1 redundancy required by ENTSO-E grid rules should have prevented a chain reaction that supposedly led to grid separation and subsequent blackout. Due to supposedly oscillating grid frequency in the disconnected Spanish grid, all four active Spanish Nuclear PPs (3.3 GW) disconnected immediately from the grid. They are still disconnected almost a day later; expensive gas turbine PPs replaced them for the moment.

Apparently, something went terribly wrong with grid control or redundancy. Imagine the economic costs...

BBC: 'Everything went off': How Spain and Portugal's massive power cut unfolded

just to add...

demand & generation diagrams (in English) of the Spanish TSO Red Eléctrica de España

Shocking news... puuuh no longer shocking:

Las centrales nucleares Ascó, Vandellós, Almaraz y Cofrentes recuperan el suministro eléctrico exterior

The Spanish nuclear fleet restored grid connection for own consumption an hour (already 11hrs) ago...

It's never comfortable to know there are a couple of nukes running on Diesels if you live on the same continent and the wind often blows in your direction (see Fukushima/Japan).

Forgot if this is the main thread... This shocking killer debacle is lingering on for far too long...

See this for a very good summary and the present state of play:


The Grenfell Tower Fire: London’s High-Rise Scandal


Incredibly callous and greedy deadly.

Our building industry are all rogues and thieves, the lot of 'em??...

Sure seems that way...


Stay safe folks?
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Will it turn into a case of...
Out of sight, out of mind?

Reading some reports over the last decade, I often wished we had similar Malpractice regulations/laws like America.
Malpractice?

Probably could of walked the whole stretch of construction many times over in 30 years.
New stretch of California Highway 101 took 30 years to build. It's finally open

Conceived to eliminate bottlenecks, accommodate a development boom in Wine Country and modernize stretches of freeway that lacked grade separations, the project had its genesis in the 1990s but had to be completed in phases, as funding became available. It cost more than $1 billion to fix 101 from Windsor to the Marin County border, and $762 million alone for the 16-mile "Narrows" portion.

"This is the biggest public works project we've ever had up this way, and it's been a promise for a long time," said Petaluma Mayor Kevin McDonnell. His small Wine Country town, known for its grain silos and backyard chicken coops, could see an influx of day-trippers as a result of the highway expansion.

After far too long, a few deaths, and far too many lives ruined, and still ongoing, we have this small step:


All Post Office Horizon victims entitled to free legal advice for first time
wrote:

All victims of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal seeking compensation will now be entitled to free legal advice, the government has announced.

The change could potentially have a major effect on the size of the payouts some victims are able to achieve.

It is one of a number of improvements to the compensation schemes available to victims, made in response to the first report from the public inquiry into the scandal, widely described as one of the UK's worst ever miscarriages of justice...

... More than 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted after the faulty Horizon computer system made it look like money was missing from their branch accounts...

... [compensation schemes] have been criticised for being too slow and complicated and for only paying out fractions of the claims made...

... Many victims have previously complained about being forced to accept low offers of compensation, without the benefit of legal advice...

... So far, more than £1.2bn has been paid out to more than 9,000 claimants...

That is a lot of people falsely accused, over a very very long time...


Whatever next?

All in our very greedy corporate world...
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

1 in 5 Students Now Calls AI a Romantic Partner

A growing number of teens are finding connections in code. One in five high school students said they or someone they know has had a romantic relationship with a chatbot, according to new data from the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT). Nearly half also call AI a friend or an escape, and some noted that the bots are easier to talk to than thekir parents.

The CDT report found that the heavy classroom use of AI is deepening the disconnection between students and teachers, with many students saying that AI makes them feel less connected in class.

TWENTY YEARS LATER...


Alan Bates reaches settlement over Post Office scandal
wrote:

Post Office campaigner Sir Alan Bates has reached a settlement with the government, more than 20 years after he started campaigning for justice for victims of the Horizon scandal.

Sir Alan led a group of 555 subpostmasters who took part in a landmark legal action against the Post Office.

The sum paid to Sir Alan has not been made public.

Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 subpostmasters were wrongly prosecuted...

... Marriages broke down, and some families believe the stress led to serious health conditions, addiction and even premature death [(and suicides)]...

... Sir Alan first received an offer of redress in January 2024, which he rejected, describing it as "cruel and derisory"...

... And ya can bet that the Post Office payout is still substantially derisory...

All in our greedy corporate world...
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

That's one, what about the other 554?

At least this is another one:


Oldest victim of Post Office scandal, 92, receives final payout
wrote:

The oldest surviving victim of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal has said she can now "look to the future" after receiving her long-awaited settlement from one of the government's compensation schemes.

"I can settle up my affairs. I can turn the heating up full blast, and that will be wonderful," 92-year-old Betty Brown told the BBC...

... her late husband spent more than £50,000 of their savings to cover shortfalls that did not exist...

... "At last, after 26 years..."

... it "absolutely destroyed my whole life"...

... Across all the government compensation schemes, £1.2bn has now been paid out to more than 9,100 victims...

... And what of the happily richly retired perpetrators?...

Very corruptly in the UK...
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)