National Risk Register/National Resilience Update - Nothing new to us.

[walker]

I'm confused? It's now OK to buy Russian gas? What about the massive supply of UK owned gas in the North Sea Oil Field north of Scotland?

You mean the north sea gas owed by gazprom

 

[Woody girl]

I think they should teach basic 'life skills' as a specific subject at school. Nothing complicated just a few simple things like being able to sew on a button or how to repair a rip in clothes. Other useful things which could be included are basic odd jobs like how to change a light bulb, rewire a plug, descale a kettle, replace the washer on a dripping tap and of course, how to tie a few basic knots. You know the type of things I mean. That would certainly be far more useful than some of the nonsense they seem to teach kids at school these days.

Definatly! Kids, and some adults need to learn how to do more than type words into a screen, wave a phone over a machine in a shop and press a microwave button.
These are the ones who will struggle massively.
Also, there is an entitled section of society, who have everything provided for free, who will not hesitate to just take what they want, and many natives will follow the example if they are so inclined, ie no skills, self entitlement etc.
Unfortunately these people will be a majority, especially in certain areas like large towns.
The recent experience of the Spanish enclave in Morocco shows what we could be up against. Growing a garden and sewing your own clothes will not be enough to keep on a relatively even keel.
To be honest, we should all be worried at how fragile our infrastructure is after years of neglect and money making by privatised companies, a rising non native population with veiws on life that differ massively from the norm, and a government that is basically just flailing around with no idea (or ignoring) how we as the people of this land want to live.
Frankly, im feeling , (despite it's problems,) nostalgic for the 1960 and 70's
even with the threat of atomic war that was very real then.
Maybe im just old, tired and jaded, but they do say, with age, comes wisdom..not sure if it's completely true. I know many people my age andolder who just refuse to see any further than the fact that they have always had someone else come to the rescue and still expect it.
Present company of us old codgers excepted.

 

[Pattree]

Maybe im just old, tired and jaded, but they do say, with age, comes wisdom..not sure if it's completely true.

It may be true but it’s true of a world that no longer exists. This world belongs to a new generation.

As we ancients shuffle along towards the end of the twig we tend to hold onto a wisdom that served us well when the world was ours. Now we have opinions - should we be asked - but the world of our prime (physical and mental) no longer exists.

My opinion
There should be an age at which politicians can no longer hold office other than in an advisory capacity. They do not live in their constituents world.
I’m not sure what that age should be.

If anyone is going to see us through a crisis that we cannot yet imagine or predict, they will be very much younger than me and armed with a set of tools that again, I probably cannot imagine

In the meantime I shall remember slide rules, fountain pens and scout hats with brims and be grateful for all the things created by younger brains that are keeping me alive.

 

[TLM]

It may be true but it’s true of a world that no longer exists. This world belongs to a new generation.

True but not always for the better.

I am an aerospace structural and materials engineer by education and a lot of other things by experience. Some years ago I participated in a project with lots of computer FEM simulations. The young guys who did the models - certainly better than I could - where always wondering how I could foretell results qualitatively and some even quantitatively. No magic there, just an awful lot of designs done during the years. For some reason computer modeling does not give one quite the experience "hand" calculations do and especially experiments, maybe in the end but not very fast.

 

[GeraldTheBonsai]

As we ancients shuffle along towards the end of the twig we tend to hold onto a wisdom that served us well when the world was ours. Now we have opinions - should we be asked - but the world of our prime (physical and mental) no longer exists.

Under normal circumstances, I would agree with you - things move on and the baton of knowledge is passed on to the next generation. Its why we train people - to pass on skills and knowledge, on the understanding that they will improve it.

However, thats not really the scenario here. In the event of some major catastrophe, the challenge is not progress - its recovery. As such, you are either looking to keep existing systems going, or actually reverting to an earlier solution. That will require reusing older knowledge, not new. A generation that is totally fluent on modern tech, and dependant on it, may well be smarter that someone older. But those smarts have no utility, if that tech is no longer available.

 

[Falstaff]

Picked this out of an email from a friend who’s running NEB showings in her area. There’s serious opposition to companies and the government making people aware.

“There is a serious question… about why the public hasn’t been made aware of this assessment,”he said.

A very bleak report released in 2024, projecting a risk of catastrophic failure by 2030. So serious in fact, that they shut down the Futures team entirely asap in early 2025, and buried it.

House of Lords written reply:
"Since then, horizon scanning and futures analysis have been undertaken by evidence and analytical teams across the Department, supported by work within Defra’s arm’s length bodies.
Accountability for climate related risk assessment sits with Defra’s climate adaptation teams, which lead the Climate Change Risk Assessment and the National Adaptation Programme."

i.e nobody is accountable for the risks highlighted by the report, besides climate related ones. So if Labour goes to full term, the next general election will be in 2029, and the potential crash in 2030 will be blamed on the next Govt. not this current one.!

 

[Pattree]

However, thats not really the scenario here. In the event of some major catastrophe, the challenge is not progress - its recovery.

I disagree.
We (all of us of all generations) can’t go back to some self determining idyl.

Whatever form this putative catastrophe takes, the solution will lie with modern minds working with modern materials to create modern solutions no matter how simple those solutions turn out to be.

(For example - There simply isn’t enough wood growing on this island to develop a Bushcraft solution for us all.)

True but not always for the better.

Not worse, just different from ours.
Generation after generation has despaired of the next one, right back to Socrates and beyond.