Hello all 8D

Thank you very warm welcome, it courage me to make my second writing.
I live on very last edge of Europe and last winter was my first black one.

Black winter means that there is no snow, which is very unusually because on here there is usually lot of it (ultima Thule -> final Northland).

There has been year like this before on last century, last one was 1972. I was not born then so cannot tell lot about it.
I hear that horse was eating grass on Christmas eve on neighbor, but I guess that horse has been eaten, so to my time 8)

Well this years was so warm, that ground never get frozen enough that it could hold raining snow for good. So there was some snowfall but it just vanish like daylight.
When there was some snow fall, children start to run with their play shovel and collect as much as possible snow from road to their own yards, so it was luxury item this year.

Change in environment was quite unpleasant to me, because winter wonderland turn to very dark place to live.

Length of day is not much more than four fours, and when there was gray sky all the time and black ground suck even that tiny amount of light, it makes me feel quite claustrophobic...
I'm not very sure how many more this kind of winter I can simply take. I'm not person who can live in environment where only light is gray several months, without it hitting my happiness.

In another hand, last two weekend has been very hot it here.
Temperature in shadow has easily clime over 20'C ( 68'F) and on first hot weekend there was thunder storm that I have never seen before....

I used to live on high are as child, so there was thunder every now and then, but it was more like annoying phenomena, it carve some bark out of woods, brake few television and phones.
But this storm was very different kind from it's anatomy. It was distant storm, lighting strike few kilometers away (one US mile, makes 1,6 kilometers) but pressure wave was so strong that it star car alarm and flowers inside house tremble their leaves, even if windows was closed.
I have never meet that kind of storm before....

So I quest there is something on the air.....


China Phenomena.

I do not have any economic degree, so there might be some basic errors on my writing.
Economy is most loved hobby, so I spend some time with graphs 8)

Here is ultima Thule, we have a lots of tiny cities.
Suburbs of them, has been mostly constructed on 60's, when there was mass movement from landside to cities.
In that time this was not open economy, here was purely closed inner market where banks were the market.

So mostly concept still is that there is power plant, which is been owned by city.
That power plant sell hot water (and electricity as by-product) for those mass populated suburbs.
These power plant create natural monopoly, simply because local jurisdiction, which can deters that during zoning, that central heating (from city power plant) is mandatory.
So there is literally cities which are covered by 90% of population by one single power plant.

These power plants has been very good money resources to cities,
In my born town, municipal tax is less than 20%, but if all those compensation that city collect with it power plant would be collected as form of direct municipal tax, then number would be bigger than 30%

Last year there was very cold winter in China, it raise price of coal very much. On those sources that I was watching, price did went up more than 25%.
This Chinese coal is most important fuel on those city owned power plant, so these kind of winters on China, will strike very hard on here.

Situation was not very different from last years (from citizen point of view) because winter here was ultra warm, so it means less consumption of hot water.
Another reason was very strong value of €uro. One €uro was around 1,5 US$. When coal deals are make in US$, coal was still very cheap because currency to buy it was very cheap.

But I think that there has been quite heavy impact from city point of view.
There has been several announcement that city need to reduce it's budget, even when they have manage to collect more municipal taxes, and I know that a least one city has been announced as state of crise-economy.

If there would be very cold winter here, very cold winter on China and strong US$ course, it would be possible that it would turn migration from those suburbs back to sparsely populated area, simply because it is not possible to change heating systems of those big stone buildings, so it would inevitably lead to high raise of living costs, and those can raise only to sudden amount, before people start to vote with their feet.


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