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That's about the same value as a can of coke has been spent on pre-brexit facebook ads. Either, the spend was much better hidden (see how the vote leave campaign channelled GBP625,000 through a 23yr old student) or brexit was not endorsed or funded by the Russians and simply fuelled by the stupid.

Interesting that Scottish electricity producers have to pay to connect to the grid because there is so much electricity being produced and not enough population density to use it; whereas electricity producers in England (much more densely populated) are subsidised to connect to the national grid.

It seems new production records are announced every few months

In the 1970's the lochs (reservoirs) in Argyllshire were converted to hydro electric (with many switched off because the electricity is not required) and the amazing Cruachan hydro scheme can start generating in 25 seconds for burst load on the national grid.

All the social provided housing in my area is being fitted with PV Solar panels and there is huge wind generation offshore with quite a bit onshore as well. Scotland is one of the windiest places in Europe.

see the daily wind generation stats here.

**trade shows** (i.e. for the trade) are there to do deals and speak to your suppliers/distrubutors. I don't really like how they allow retail customers into them - kind of get in the way.

IFA Berlin was pretty busy in my opinion. I was there for the trade day friday and also went on Saturday (where public can come in). For those that went, there were some big takeaways from IFA - it wasn't all just a small iteration of previous years electronics (ok except for drones, phones and audio/visual).

Trade shows are not really for consumers to make their minds up on what to buy - it's also for distributors to do deals, for trade partnerships and so on ahead of the delivery schedules. I was there to research tech we'll be doing deals for into next year.

* I have "show blisters"

That's not exactly true. Scottish GDP per capita is higher than England and, as an average only beaten by the London area. As part of the union politics; Scottish finances are supressed because Scotland has to pay 10% of all capex expenditure on London projects that are labelled as "UK Infrastructure" (HS2 railway, London tube, london sewer system) whereas English tax payers pay £0 for Scottish capex projects. This is because large scale infrastructure is seen as beneficial to Scots (but not the other way round) - note that the UK parliament has 533 English Members of Parliament and Scotland only has 59. Most acts of parliament seen as beneficial to Scotland are voted down by an English majority (even though it has no bearing on their own constituencies, e.g. The Scotland Bill)

If you look at the National infrastructure plan you'll see that there are no capex projects in Scotland at all, even though each of these projects is subsidised by Scottish taxpayers. The Scottish equivalent is fully funded by Scots taxpayers.

The main reason Longannet coal fired power station shut down was because of energy distribution politics where Scottish energy producers are charged £millions to attach to the National Grid whereas suppliers in neighbouring (but much less green energy producing per capita) England are subsidized to attach to the grid. Newspaper articles here and here.

Some are saying it's part of a general fight back by the United Kingdom for having the audacity to have a referendum to leave the UK. We're seeing it across all sectors where Scottish businesses who were not in favour of the union are being discriminated against.

this could well be the case. However, something inside me thinks that a 9 grand holiday to Disneyland with the kids wouldn't be the first choice vacation for a radical preacher.

In fact, a 9 grand holiday to Disneyland wouldn't be my cup of tea either. I went to Disneyland Paris and it cost a similar amount and was interesting, but a bit shit although watching French students trying to adopt American disney culture (and doing a piss poor job of it) was mildly humorous.

maybe - but the question is *why* are they doing this. I would be tempted to open a port and see if they attempt to access - then depending on the OP's locality there could be a computer misuse claim.

From another news article, one of the extended family trip to Disney is an Imam (aka "a priest") and is likely to be a pillar of his community. Just replace the words Islam with Christian to see how bonkers that statement is.

yeah - here in Scotland it is all kicking off about the BBC - but you would never know that because it is not reported... on the BBC ... !! Scotland has had a strange move towards online away from BBC and newspaper media.

I do agree with what Anon says below about most things. Not so sure about the oil price because it was never part of the annual spend calculations for an independent Scotland. They were going to create an oil wealth fund with any revenue so the effects would not have been seen for a decade or more (ref: Scotlands Future). Scotland's GDP per capita is higher than anywhere in the UK & NI except London - but the overall wealth figures are lower largely due to Scotland subsidising other parts of the UK (which is OK by the way).

indeed, this is the feeling in parts of Scotland (which is a separate country within the governance of the United Kingdom) where the BBC played a huge part in last years independence campaign. Unsurprisingly, the state broadcaster, funded by the tax payer, took the side of the "no" campaign instead of being unbiased in their reporting and this is causing huge ruptures in Scotland right now and calls are being made to revolutionise the BBC in Scotland. There has been a lot of reporting on this situation here and even before the referendum here and here.

Many in Scotland think that the BBC was a major force in swinging the vote in the final days before the referendum vote when both sides were close to 50/50 of the vote. This caused quite a few protests at BBC Scotland (although, these were played down by the state media).

Whilst it is obvious what the role being played by the BBC in NK and Eritrea is; bear in mind that it is a state broadcaster and will even attempt to exert power over residents within the UK.

That's quite a difference to where I live (Scotland). Here, car dealerships often have no, or very few petrol (gas) engined versions of the new family sized cars for sale and pretty much all are diesel.

Price per litre of petrol (95RON) is within 3% of a gallon of diesel. Most diesel for sale here includes 5-10% biodiesel.

My own Subaru XV with a 2.0l turbo boxer diesel engine averages 42mpg and can get towards 60mpg on a motorway (highway) drive. It has the same torque as the famous STi 2.0ltr boxer petrol engine but about half the power. There is a slight downside in that Diesel freezes at only -15'C, although some gas stations include addtive to stop that happening.

These clowns did a DDoS on the financial co where I work. They managed to get to about 400Mbs (although they claimed 15Gbps) and never came back. The good thing that came out of it was that we realised our Arbor DDoS wasn't configured right on one of the nodes so that's fixed up now. Our sensors picked it up straight away, the Security Operations Centre reacted in the first few minutes and so most staff/customers/partners didn't even realise.

Their MOO was to try and find email addresses in linkedin/online for various random members of staff at the company and sent out the demand letters a few hours in advance - except we're worldwide and so by the time the letters were centrally understood, it was already pretty much too late.