[Yug]

It's rather frightening that there are people in this country who need to be told that playing with fire in a tinder-dry country is not the best of ideas.

[Oboogie]

Did anyone get the severe alert on their phones?

Yes, we got it here in Somerset, I don't know what percentage of the local population speak Welsh, but my guess is it's a minority.
Nevermind, having looked up the English version, it doesn't say anything new anyway.

[kreuzberger]

Apparently, it went off at The Oval. Scenes...

[Boiler]

...and I'm sure it'll be derided as "woke" by GBeebies and the Heil - "BUT IT'S SUMMER!!!1!11!"

[Samanfur]

We had a bunch of morons letting off fireworks the other week.

In remembrance of one of the teenagers who drowned because they tried wild swimming in a heatwave.

Yes, people are that stupid.

[Abernathy]

As ever, you’d think that avoiding setting light to anything, whether firework or single use barbecue, in the currently prevalent bone-dry , highly combustible conditions everywhere, just didn’t need to be said. Nobody with even half a brain cell would ever consider doing so.

And yet, and yet. We’ve had deeply alarming mobile phone text warnings sent out tonight accompanied by an apocalyptic klaxon sound that made me think of the six minute warning before we get atomised telling us just that. Nearly gave me a fucking heart attack.

I can’t help but conclude that this is a key indicator of the sort of fuckwit, know nothing society that humanity today has become.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Well it's here in France as well - now 2 fires in Normandy started by people who burn their rubbish rather than take it to the tip or get it collected.

[Boiler]

It'll come as no surprise that this "needless" alert has come in for criticism from the Mail and its BTL commentariat: the highest-rated one is something sarcastic by someone who no doubt thought naming a research vessel "Boaty McBoatface" was really funny hur hur..

[Samanfur]

We had somebody setting off fireworks an hour or so ago, to finish off any wildlife the people setting them off didn't catch with their earlier balloon release.

According to local social media, it's the 21st birthday of someone who recently died.

Bereavement or no bereavement, as I said earlier, talking about a different firework incident and a different heatwave: some people are just that stupid.

[Andy McDandy]

Such a thin line between "I don't need to be told" and "Well, nobody told me".

[Samanfur]

Indeed. Comments on local social media include a fair few "Wake up, sheeple!" types, bragging about how it'll be fine if you light a fire in your own garden because They can't stop you.

[Boiler]

I note that Tory Alex Birdbrain has said it was an inappropriate use of the system... fucking wanker.

[Spoonman]

It'll come as no surprise that this "needless" alert has come in for criticism from the Mail and its BTL commentariat: the highest-rated one is something sarcastic by someone who no doubt thought naming a research vessel "Boaty McBoatface" was really funny hur hur..

No alert in my part of the country yesterday evening (if you've been following the weather thread, you'll know why) but I remember getting an alert in January last year prior to Storm Eowyn - completely justified IMO but no doubt most of the same people complaining about this heatwave alert would have been whinging about the Eowyn alert too. The only question to be asked is wherever the alert should have been given a lower priority than "severe" for the EAS system - but the problem here is that hasn't really been tested in the UK yet AFAIK.

Otherwise, as pointed out by Andy, there's a juxtaposition in a typical British/English attitude of wanting to live in ignorance as to apparent dangers ("leave me alone/Don't tell me what to do!") but at the same time blame the same people when things literally go up in smoke, usually by the same people that espouse "individual responsibility".

[Youngian]

I was startled by the Orwellian sounding government warning last night which reminded plonkers not to have barbecues and similar flame baked flame activities this weekend.
What sort of fucking dickwads would be lighting fire pits in this weather?

[The Weeping Angel]

Andy's been to Ukraine

[Tubby Isaacs]

I see it's already open season on the new PM at The Guardian. This is, the lead story, is the most obvious nonsense I've ever seen. There are environmental arguments against fossil fuel extraction, most people accept that, and economic arguments at global level. But we're supposed to accept that Rosebank and Jackdaw are massively negative for the British economy.

The climate damage caused by developing the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields under consideration by the UK government would destroy their economic benefits many times over, according to an analysis.

It estimates the economic damage caused by the carbon pollution from the oil and gas produced would be between £119bn and £336bn in the coming decades, compared with the £28.7bn in value to the UK estimated by Adura, the fossil fuel company promoting the new fields.

You might think that an analysis that has that range is pretty worthless and send the analyst back to do better. It's done by one bloke at Imperial, no peer review, despite a cunning attempt to say it's "based on peer reviewed methods". But no, straight on the front page it goes. The bloke is a mechanical engineer, not a climate economist. His thing is surely technical solutions, not the substance of this report.

Has anyone told Norway, they're actually losing money by extracting oil and gas (while funding transition from it)? Perhaps the fossil fuel market should be left entirely to countries that don't give a fuck.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This though is fairly and squarely on Andy.

The prime minister has pledged to carry out the biggest council housebuilding programme since the postwar period, with more than 70,000 homes, 60% allocated for social rent, to be delivered across England.

However, Burnham has faced accusation of watering down his ambitions after he previously called for the entire £39bn social and affordable homes programme to be spent on council housing.

He very much implied the whole lot would be council housing in his Makerfield campaign. There was no need to do that.

[Oboogie]

As it stands there's no point building council houses as the Tories will flog 'em off cheap as soon as they get back into power.

[Tubby Isaacs]

That's why the debate in Scotland and Wales is different. There's not an alternative waiting to do that. But I think the main barrier is cost. Something the PM might reasonably have understood as a metro mayor before he got high on his own supply in Makerfield.