According to a report in the Mail on Sunday, Whitehall disaster planners have contingency plans codenamed ‘Operation Yellowhammer’ to deal with the risk of Britain running out of clean drinking water within days of a no-deal Brexit. Britons would supposedly become dehydrated zombies because crucial chemicals used in water purification are imported to the UK from Europe. Apparently in order to make water safe to drink, suppliers add chemicals; including fluorosilicic acid, aluminium sulphate, calcium hydroxide and sodium silicofluoride. These we are warned can’t be stockpiled because they are too volatile. This we are told is one of the reasons why Gove has converted to May’s deal.
Is it really beyond the wit of the scientific powerhouse that is one of the world’s five leading industrial nations to produce the necessary chemicals to clean water? This is yet another example of the civil service making the worst possible extrapolations, which are fantastically improbable and assume no corrective action in the unlikely event it were required, like finding another source. Guido is amazed that an intelligent cabinet minister, particularly a minister like Gove who has been famously sceptical of the “no can do” attitude of civil servants, would give this nonsense any credence…
Don’t worry, Elon Musk has just tweeted a plan to save our island nation:
For those worried about running out of fresh water, it may help to know that desalination only costs 0.1 cents per liter or half a cent per gallon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 26, 2018
If it were needed…
When approached for comment on his marijuana smoking by The Guardian, Musk replied:
“Guardian is the most insufferable newspaper on planet Earth”
Elon Musk may be the world’s most eco-loving, planet-hugging billionaire, but that isn’t enough for some of his shareholders – they are demanding he makes his Tesla cars “cruelty free“.
The unusual request was made at Tesla’s AGM this week by two shareholders who demanded that they phase out the use of leather in their cars by 2019:
“Tesla has two choices. Tesla can continue to fill cars with the skins of sentient beings that suffer unspeakable horror while adding massive amounts of greenhouse gas into the air. According to the UN and other sources, this is the fundamental truth of using animal skins or Tesla can adopt one of the many faux leather materials used by Mercedes Benz, Lexus, BMW, Infiniti and others that are cruelty free, have wonderful reviews, last the long time, come in multiple colors and have — and involve far less greenhouse gases.”
Musk said he’d “look into it”…
Elon Musk may have a reputation for being a Randian entrepreneur, trailblazing a future for electric cars, cheap rockets and solar energy, but new research shows that he has snaffled $4.9 billion in government support. While the figure uncovered by the LA Times does include tax-breaks, it also shows that Musk has raked in vast amounts in government incentives, grants and discounted loans – not to mention the discounts enjoyed by his electric car and solar panel customers who have also been bathing in the US government’s taxpayer funded largesse. Musk has also been raking it in by selling off government-awarded environmental credits to less planet-hugging car manufacturers..
It’s hard to blame Musk – who wouldn’t take the free money? But it does somewhat dull the shine of his self-made billionaire status…
Leaked footage has surfaced of the SpaceX Falcon 9 booster rocket stuffing its landing earlier this week. SpaceX had already released ambiguous aerial footage of the attempted landing on a barge in the Atlantic, but the new footage comes from the boat itself. There’s some cool explosions at the end…
Dastardly billionaire Elon Musk, the mastermind behind Tesla Motors and SpaceX, has announced he will be build a test track for his fabled Hyperloop transport system. Described by Musk as a “cross between a Concorde and a railgun and an air hockey table”, the Hyperloop will propel capsules through a partial vacuum inside a continuous steel tube at 700 mph. It was proposed by Elon as a cheaper and faster alternative to California’s hugely over-budget high speed railway. Theoretically it would cut the 354 mile journey from LA to San Francisco down to 35 minutes. Musk’s initial estimate for the Hyperloop’s building costs were $6 billion – some $60 billion cheaper than the proposed railway.
It makes you wonder about our very own unloved and over-budget high speed rail project. Maybe if HS2 Chief Executive Simon Kirby, the anonymous corporate drone earning £750,000 of taxpayers’ money a year, had a bit more entrepreneurial spirit, we wouldn’t be about to face a £50 billion bill for a slightly faster train to Birmingham. Phase one of of HS2 is due to be completed by 2026, which coincidentally is the year Elon Musk has promised to land humans on Mars.
TechnoGuido has the feeling Mr Musk might beat Mr Kirby to it…
