Power Off

I walked into the power station where I work today and was greeted with the news that we are closing down for good, the National grid decided we were not needed to supply electricity over this winter, and didn't need to be available for emergencies, which means no cash coming in while still having to pay over £500,000 a month in business rates plus staffing costs.
Most of the workers will be gone within weeks, (as I work through a contract company I might survive until the end of the year?).
The demolition crews are already being briefed, and our disconnection from the gas supplies are being arranged as I write
So a 20 year old clean modern gas fired power station which can produce 1000 MW of power is deemed to be surplus to requirements?

Imagine my surprise that the first news story I heard today was that there was a risk of blackouts this winter due to a lack of available generating capacity (see picture).

Seems almost comical if it wasn't such bad news for me and my workmates.
So I'm going to have listen to all manner of "experts" on the news tonight, telling us that we would all have to start turning off our lights to save energy.
Others will be saying we need to start building new power stations to cope with demand, or we should all have windmills and solar panels in our back gardens.
No doubt it will be an excuse for the energy companies to put up the prices again.

Meanwhile there are many power stations all over the country just sitting there doing nothing hoping for the occasional call to generate in the hope of making enough money to at least pay part of their huge business rates.
In reality there is already more than enough capacity available in this country, many stations are sitting moth-balled due to lack of demand but could be back online in a few weeks, a lot of the available wind power is not being used at the moment for financial reasons, also we have the back up of importing through the continental inter-connectors.

The energy companies would like us all to believe we just don't have the resources.
The reasons for this I'm sure you can hazard a guess?

Blogging

Do you ever click that link at the top called "Next Blog"?

Makes you realise just how many thousands or possibly millions of blogs there are out there, and the majority haven't been updated in years (much like 90% of the ones I have started).

I started this one about 2007 when I had time on my hands, a ton of ideas and not too many other distractions.

Nowadays Social media like Facebook, Twitter etc, plus catch up TV fills a large chunk of that valuable free time meaning blogging time is limited, which is a shame.

I went through about 10 "next blogs"and most haven't been posted on in the last few years, but I guess all these bloggers had the same idea as me of posting daily and building up a following of loyal readers who were interested in everything you wrote, but then coming to the conclusion that you were only likely to get the occasional visitor, and even less occasional comment which would usually be some troll type giving you abuse, causing the initial excitement to wane.

Also making you realise that your writings were on the whole only interesting to yourself :)

But here it is, so if anyone ever stumbles on this blog just say hello :)