241–250 of 260 posts
This is way worse due to London airports' lack of spare capacity. They should have built Thames Estuary Airport a long time ago.
I feel like if you build that extra capacity it will immediately get used and you will still have no extra capacity in these situations. An airport holding extra capacity feels like it's just burning money given the demand.
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Having thought about it you're correct. Even if you over inflate your tyres it won't provide enough buoyancy even for the smallest Euro-car. An alternative reading to it 'being idiotic' is that it was clearly an exaggeration to prompt some critical thinking about the original claim.
There's a train between the UK and France. It carries cars.
And I can tell you, it might be theoretically in Google Maps land to do the journey in 6 hours, but IRL in this scenario it won't happen. Actual empirical evidence.
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What I don't get is that the government now says it wants a 3rd runway (this has been debated for 30 years). Why add a 3rd runway, costing billions and taking decades, to an airport that can't use it 24-7 due to noise restrictions, and doesn't even have resilient power from the grid. Heathrow should have been bulldozed years ago and replaced with housing, and the estuary airport built. Or the Maplin Sands project 50…
Adding a runway to an existing airport is relatively low risk and comparatively cheaper than building a new major airport altogether. Anyone considering the latter will surely look at the Berlin Brandenburg Airport [0], which ran roughly €4 billion over budget and opened nine years behind schedule. Given the dire financial situation of the United Kingdom right now, I would wager this is an incredibly hard sell. [0] h…
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> The fact taking it out takes out the entire airport: not so much! These kind of things usually aren’t dependent on a single substation. Let me re-phrase that for you: It only took down the airport because the airport clearly did insufficient capacity planning in terms of backup mechanisms. How can I be so confident ? Because that exact same substation serves a number of large datacentres in the vicinity. Due to the…
Sure, no argument there, but the fact is there was a weakness there and a weakness that would be considered a threat to national security if it were to get out - before today
If it was considered a "threat to national security", that substation site would have been much better secured.
In addition, if it was a "threat to national security", the site location would not be on open public databases, it would be on List X.
As it stands, the substation site "security" consists of two low, easily scalable, fences. And probably some CCTV. That's about it.
Security by obscurity is not security. We are in 2025, you have streetview and satellite photos.
Anybody who knows anything about electricity distribution could look at that substation and tell you it was pretty important given the large size of transformers located there.
It also doesn't take a rocket scientist to see Heathrow is minutes away and put two and two together.
And if you think the bad guys don't have the ability to give some poorly paid maintenance guy at the electricity company some cash in relation for extra detail, I've got an igloo to sell you.
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Why don't you tell us too? For anyone reading: it means "of course"
Technically it means "naturally" which (to me, natural UK English) reads to me as slightly less sarcastic than "of course", especially if you get the "of COURSE" intonation (implies "the little shits" at the end of the sentence to me, if you see what I mean. "Naturally, the BBC has the news" - good job, fellas! "Of COURSE, the BBC has the news" - the little shits, running around wasting our money on this, probably st…
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> not just Heathrow but also 16,000 homes You are off by a large number. More like 62,000 customers affected (although "only" 4,800 are actually without power right now)[1]. Also that area is more than just "homes". There is a lot of heavy elecrical load commercial stuff going on in that area too. [1] https://powertrack.ssen.co.uk/powertrack#QQ0573
16,000 homes * 4 people per home = 64,000 customers Could that explain it?
If you haven't already, consider quitting air travel altogether. This and quitting meat consumption (or significantly reducing either or both luxuries- I quit flying years ago, and I eat meat once a month or so as a delicous luxury) seem to be the two main ways we can reduce our individual carbon footprint, focus on which is a bit scammy by the industry heads who want to keep converting resources into money to swim i…
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Then your comment about rowing across the sea is idiotic. The airlines that redirected flights to Paris arranged buses to London.
Having thought about it you're correct. Even if you over inflate your tyres it won't provide enough buoyancy even for the smallest Euro-car. An alternative reading to it 'being idiotic' is that it was clearly an exaggeration to prompt some critical thinking about the original claim.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having thought about it you're correct. Even if you over inflate your tyres it won't provide enough buoyancy even for the smallest Euro-car. An alternative reading to it 'being idiotic' is that it was clearly an exaggeration to prompt some critical thinking about the original claim.
What critical thinking? The train from London to Paris is barely above 2 hours. Why on earth would you drive if you’re in hurry?