Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 21:58:40 +0100 From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se> Subject: M-TH: Re: More strangeness in the land of sheep. Bill writes: >For the followers of strange happenings >A while back our state own power supply companies were privatized. One of >the progeny of this is a company called mercury energy that supplies >electricity to the central part of our largest city Auckland. Now this >company achieved sizable profits by firing about half its workers and >cutting back on maintenence while becomming very active in commercial >activities. Unfortunately due to the seeming disinterest of mercury in >maintaining its supply infrastructure the power supply to central >Auckland has failed leaving the centre of our largest city with out power >for not 1 hour or a day or even a week, but up to three weeks. The >wonders of free enterprise. Now if this had happened in the middle of winter and threatened the rugby floodlighting -- would the state have been at risk?? I'll have to sneak a look at nz.general to see if the event has shot a few thousand volts through 'em, so to speak. Can't they construct giant grass-clad ovine treadmills on the Canterbury plains to provide Auckland with a never-ending power source, or harness the immense amount of work done by all those grass-trimming jaws to supply Bill's computer with juice? A power shortage in NZ is really *bizarre*. They've got more wind than most (and less people to complain about the eye-sores), more fast-running river water than most, more waves than most (a huge Pacific coastline), more geophysical steam than most (bung a turbine or two on top of a geyser and you can keep the lights & the fridge and the freezer & the telly and all the rest on all day and all night if you want to) and more biomass potential than most. It's like Iceland with knobs on and a temperate climate to boot -- so they don't have to use this extravagance of power to heat greenhouses for the domestic production of bananas! This snafu in Auckland must be in the international all-time big league of ruling class fuck-ups, not quite Chernobyl or Harrisburg or Bhopal, but chugging along comfortably in the middle of the table. Perhaps all that rugby when young doesn't just disjoint the limbs but also the brain? Kia ora, Hugh --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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