Of course these days quantities of printed versions of newspapers are a mere shadow of what they were before the internet, but I can't recall a power outage causing a failure to print an edition:

QUOTE: “Due to a complete power outage at our production facility last night, today’s metro edition of the Sunday Telegraph will not be delivered or sold at retail outlets in Sydney.

“You can read a full copy of the newspaper online, as it was put together for print.”

Ah yes GTC. In the old days they had backup generators to run things during blackouts. These day of course the economies of scale (and in the age of 'cheap', reliable commercial power supply that 'never fails') preclude the need for such 'wasteful' extravagances.

That's fine in the city but I can assure that the small portable inverter here on the farm, used to power a variety of things that batteries can't. Is highly useful when a variety of things take out the power, sometimes for hours. It then powers the refrigerators.

My Lord, what would Harry and Ralph say if they were still around?

Electricity unavailability - the new 21st century problem.

It is one of the realities of being on long reticulation lines in rural areas, that invariably and with out any notice, and with neither storm, or tempest: Something will find a way of taking out the reticulated power.

Any clock that is depended on, is usually battery. The bed side clocks with battery back up use the battery power to keep the memory & time base going and that is normally done badly. As soon as the source power is lost, the time base goes haywire and has no longer any semblance of accuracy.

These totally lack the quality of watches and the battery only time base of the Yaesu 7700. Of course with the overpopulation, stresses on everything is only going to get worse.

People still buy actual paper news?

People still buy actual paper news?

Yes, but not very many. I see small piles of the dailies at Woolworths and they do get bought.

I'd much rather read (and do crossword in) a paper version on a train ... as long as someone has left it on the seat

"Electricity unavailability - the new 21st century problem"

No ever since we privatised the supply of electricity there have been no failures! There may have been the odd, minor, petty, inconvenience, etc, etc outage but no real failures because such problems disappeared with the likes of the SEC and other big, wasteful government departments that attempted to supply power at such a minor cost. Now that we have all the foreign owned companies providing such 'cheap', unlimited and 'failure free' electricity things are 'so much better'. Just ask them and they will tell you!

There may be no failures in Canberra, but in the real world, a failure, is anything that kills supply. In the real world outages from storm, tempest birds, furry animals and wayward vehicles cannot be prevented.

The Houses of Parliament went out this arvo during Question Time. Don't worry - they cop it there too.

There may be no failures in Canberra, but in the real world, a failure, is anything that kills supply.

I think you missed Relayautomatic's sarcasm.

...such problems disappeared with the likes of the SEC and other big, wasteful government departments that attempted to supply power at such a minor cost.

Yep, those that invested retained capital back into "poles and wires" as the dopes in parliament called it.

QUOTE: SMH: May 11, 2017

The NSW government will net nearly $3 billion after finalising the sale of the final piece of the state's "poles and wires" electricity assets.

The sale of Endeavour Energy to a consortium led by Macquarie Group's infrastructure arm is the last chapter in a controversial three-stage privatisation process the state government took to the last election.

The poles and wires deals generated an additional more than $10 billion in gross power sale proceeds, which cleared debts on assets, the state government said.

Selling off the assets to fund major infrastructure projects was the state government's centrepiece policy at the 2015 state election. Former Premier Mike Baird had forecast a total windfall of $20 billion.

The government successfully prosecuted the policy despite initial community angst about private ownership.

But the state's opposition said the benefits to NSW had been cancelled out by recent cost blowouts to projects such as the Parramatta light rail and Sydney Metro.

"It's billions in and billions squandered," said Labor leader Luke Foley.

Mr Foley said the state government had also told voters that electricity prices would fall under privatisation but bills were now headed north: "They said that privatisation would guarantee lower prices; they put their hands on their heart," he said.