They deserve it. I hope they get it. The profligate waste of funds when they don't have their debt payments to make will be great for dramacoin

The BBC has prepared secret scripts that could be read on air if energy shortages cause blackouts or the loss of gas supplies this winter.

The scripts, seen by the Guardian, set out how the corporation would reassure the public in the event that a "major loss of power" causes mobile phone networks, internet access, banking systems or traffic lights to fail across England, Wales and Scotland. Northern Ireland would be unaffected because its electricity grid is shared with the Republic of Ireland.

The public would be advised to use car radios or battery-powered receivers to listen to emergency broadcasts on FM and long-wave frequencies usually reserved for Radio 2 and Radio 4.

One draft BBC script warns that a blackout could last for up to two days, with hospitals and police placed under "extreme pressure".

Another says: "The government has said it's hoped power will be restored in the next 36 to 48 hours. Different parts of Britain will start to receive intermittent supplies before then."

It is understood they were written by BBC journ*lists as part of routine emergency planning to deal with hypothetical scenarios. They include local details for the different regions and nations of Britain.

In a national emergency, the BBC has a formal role in helping to spread information across the country, as part of the government's civil contingencies planning. The broadcaster's governance framework states: "If it appears to any UK government minister that an emergency has arisen, that minister may request that the BBC broadcast or otherwise distribute any announcement or other programme."

The government works with the BBC as part of its emergency planning process, although it is unclear whether it had any input on these scripts. A spokesperson said: "The government is confident that this is not a scenario we will face this winter."

The BBC said it did not comment on its emergency broadcasting plans.

Ministers have been at pains to reassure businesses and householders that blackouts are unlikely. However, National Grid, which oversees electricity supplies in Great Britain, has issued a rare warning that power supplies could be at risk. The organisation said that in a worst-case scenario it could order planned blackouts for up to three hours a day if Russia cuts off all gas supplies to Europe.

On Monday, National Grid's chief executive, John Pettigrew, went further and said that if everything that could possibly go wrong did go wrong, there could be rolling blackouts between 4pm and 7pm on "really, really cold" days in January and February, when wind speeds are too low to power turbines.

The BBC's draft scenario suggests that in a national blackout it would run a greatly reduced temporary radio service from the UK's emergency broadcasting centre, called the EBC, based in a rural location not acknowledged by the BBC.

This would provide half-hourly news bulletins on Radio 4's FM and long-wave frequencies and a "music service", with news updates on the FM spectrum used by Radio 2.

One scenario used in some of the scripts assumes that mains electricity is available in only a few lightly populated parts of Scotland -- the Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland, and some parts of the Highlands.

The draft scripts for on-air news bulletins include space for a quote from a Cabinet Office minister, given the fictitious name Jose Riera.

The scripts report that these blackouts would affect gas supply systems, and knock out mobile phone networks, cashpoints and internet access. Traffic lights would stop working, causing disruption on the roads.

One script, written for a hypothetical news bulletin, warns: "The emergency services are under extreme pressure. People are being advised not to contact them unless absolutely necessary."

It states that in Wales an emergency coordination centre has been set up, while in Scotland the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, is chairing the devolved government's emergency planning meeting. It adds: "Officials are saying there is no current risk to food supply and distribution. But they're asking people to look out for vulnerable neighbours and relatives."

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/oct/18/bbc-prepares-secret-scripts-for-possible-use-in-winter-blackouts

It's the most infectious, by far.

The old antibody treatments are ineffective.

It's causing literally tens of people to feel sniffles and aches.

It is . . . OMICRON VARIANT XBB .B1.BBQ!

The good news is, if you got Omicron a few months ago, you can still get your booooooost and top off that lame ol' acquired immunity with fancy patented and liability-free (for the manufacturer only LOL) vacccines! Take the jab, boys and girls, it's Safe and Effective!

Russian soldiers have shot dead a Ukrainian musician in his home after he refused to take part in a concert in occupied Kherson, according to the culture ministry in Kyiv.

Conductor Yuriy Kerpatenko declined to take part in a concert “intended by the occupiers to demonstrate the so-called ‘improvement of peaceful life’ in Kherson”, the ministry said in a statement on its Facebook page.

The concert on 1 October was intended to feature the Gileya chamber orchestra, of which Kerpatenko was the principal conductor, but he “categorically refused to cooperate with the occupants”, the statement said.

Kerpatenko, who was also the principal conductor of Kherson’s Mykola Kulish Music and Drama Theatre, had been posting defiant messages on his Facebook page until May.

The Kherson regional prosecutor’s office in Ukraine has launched a formal investigation “on the basis of violations of the laws and customs of war, combined with intentional murder”. Family members outside Kherson lost contact with the conductor in September, it said.

Condemnation by Ukrainian and international artists was swift. “The history of Russia imposing a ‘comply or die’ policy against artists is nothing new. It has a history which spans for hundred of years,” said the Finnish-Ukrainian conductor Dalia Stasevska, who was scheduled to conduct the Last Night of the Proms at London’s Albert Hall last month before it was cancelled because of the Queen’s death.

“I have seen too much silence from Russian colleagues,” she said. “Would this be the time for Russian musicians, especially those living and working abroad, to finally step up and take a stand against the Russian regime’s actions in Ukraine?”

A fortnight ago Stasevska drove a truck of humanitarian supplies into Lviv from her home in Finland, before conducting the INSO-Lviv orchestra in a concert of Ukrainian contemporary music.

“We know the Russian regime is hunting activists, journ*lists, artists, community leaders, and anyone ready to resist the occupation,” said the prizewinning Ukrainian novelist turned war crimes investigator Victoria Amelina.

“Yet, even knowing the current pattern and history, we cannot and, more importantly, shouldn’t get used to hearing about more brutal murders of a bright, talented, brave people whose only fault was being Ukrainian.”

She drew a parallel between Kerpatenko and Mykola Kulish, the Ukrainian playwright after whom the theatre where the conductor worked is named.

“Kulish was shot on 3 November 1937, near Sandarmokh, with 289 other Ukrainian writers, artists and intellectuals. Yuriy Kerpatenko was shot in his home in Kherson in October 2022,” she said.

The Russians’ actions were “pure genocide”, said the conductor Semyon Bychkov from Paris, where he was performing as music director of the Czech Philharmonic. The St Petersburg-born conductor left Russia as a young man in the 1970s.

“The tragic irony of this is that talk about the superiority of Russian culture, its humanism,” he said. “And here they murdered someone who is actually bringing beauty to people’s lives. It is sickening.

“The bullets don’t distinguish between people. It didn’t make me feel worse that this man was a conductor, it just confirmed the pure evil that’s been going on even before the first bombs fell on Ukraine.”

The novelist Andrey Kurkov, author of Death and the Penguin, said: “Now the name of Yuriy Kerpatenko will be added to the list of murdered artists of Ukraine. I increasingly think that Russia is not only seeking to occupy Ukrainian territories, but also diligently destroying Ukrainian identity, an important part of which is Ukrainian culture.”

Ukrainian author Oleksandr Mykhed, who joined the military at the outbreak of the war, and whose home was destroyed by Russian shelling, said: “Russia is trying to reconstruct the Soviet Union in the occupied territories. To reconstruct something improbable.

“One of the key components of Soviet policy was the destruction of culture of the enslaved countries. Murder of cultural figures, purging of libraries, banning of national languages.

“The modern occupiers are fully following this strategy. Destroying culture, sports, education.

“And when our territories are deoccupied, we will learn about dozens and hundreds of such terrible stories. Stories of destruction and heroic resistance.”

“It is absolutely terrifying,” said chief stage director of Kyiv’s National Opera of Ukraine, Anatoliy Solovianenko. “Whether he was a doctor, or a worker, or an artist, it makes no difference. He was a human, and he refused to comply.”

Should the US respond by removing H1B visas for all Indians currently working US jobs that lower the overall salary for everyone because they are willing to work for lower wages than Americans?