General community for news/discussion in the UK.
Less serious posts should go in !casualuk@feddit.uk or !andfinally@feddit.uk
More serious politics should go in !uk_politics@feddit.uk.
Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.
Nearly jumped out my skin a few minutes ago when sirens started blaring. The emergency alert system just triggered, with this generic message about wildfires.
Not any actual impending ones about to burn my house down. Just the general possibility. Because of a heatwave nobody has apparently noticed.
Thought the bomb was about to drop for a second. Has nobody in our government heard the story about the boy who cried wolf?
Sorry if this is venting but this rather caught me by surprise.
The guidance has been around for a while now to disable alerts on secret phones. We can't just not send out alert messages because of this.
I agree but I also don't think this was anywhere close to an appropriate use of the alert system. The minimum level of danger that this should be used for is "police car chase in area". The only exception should be a test of the system, and they should announce that at least 48 hours before they do the test, preferably weeks before they do the test.
I think some people are right in maybe implementing a lower level system. I have heard someone say it's possible to send an alert without a interrupting siren, and as just a notification. An SMS is a possibility, but is quite expensive.
I remember back in the days before the alert system was well known knowledge, a few years ago. I and my family just received random messages saying "Operator test #1" and "Operator Test #2" without any form of warning, people likely weren't even aware that their phone could even do that (I was because I am a bit of a nerd, lol)
Yeah but this alert was just a request to not start forest fires.