I bet the politicians are annoyed. We had the country's first-ever televised debate last night between the leaders of the three main parties. However, the news on TV and in the papers is dominated this morning by the plume of volcanic ash from Iceland that is drifting across Europe, causing the cancellation of virtually all plane flights in the UK, and widespread disruption across Europe.
Yesterday evening, at about 6.20pm, much of London was plunged into chaos by power cuts. We had a little taster of the problems experienced a couple of weeks ago by people in eastern America and Canada. The blackout only lasted about fifteen minutes in my case, and power was restored within half an hour to all areas.
It came during the evening rush, and hundreds of thousands were trapped on trains, 250,000 underground. Some passengers spent more than an hour stuck on their trains. Although power was restored to the tube system within 30 minutes, it was not possible to switch the electricity back on because people were still in the tunnels after being evacuated from their stalled trains.
It is too early to say what went wrong, but it appears that transformers failed at three south London substations. The mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has called the blackout 'a disgrace' and has called for a public enquiry.
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