The Environment Agency warned of severe storms yesterday but, this being Britain, severe means a few missing fence panels and dustbins, the odd tree over and a bit of minor flooding – flooding we wouldn’t have had if the Environment Agency’s funding hadn’t been hugely cut by a government who would rather blow money on its armies of useless bureaucrats, on killing Muslims far away from here or by throwing a few hundreds of millions at Africa.
This morning we got the usual media storm of our on-the-spot reporter hyping up the disaster: we see said intrepid reporter standing in a windy street with a wheely bin over on its side behind him (hints of the reporter Damian from ‘Drop the Dead Donkey here – doubtless the camera crew had to heave it over on its side before they started filming), the odd tree over, a ship in trouble and a few inches of flooding in Loo. But it’s dangerous out there folks, your umbrella might get turned inside out.
Apparently government ministers had a meeting about this yesterday. Gosh I feel all safe now that I know teams of diversity managers will be heading out to insure that the correct proportion of black lesbian firewomen will be filling sandbags. I wonder what else was on the agenda: how can we spin this as global warming and introduce some more taxes? Can we really hype this up in the news to distract people from how we betrayed them over the vote on the European Constitution?
In another less hysterical age Winnie the Pooh would be noting that this is a Blustery Day.
9 comments:
I think people are getting used to the overhype on weather.
Everytime there is a dusting of snow things go mental.
I remember growing up in the early 80s we used to get several feet of snow every year. The snow would stay on the ground for weeks not days.
I don't remember the country coming to a grinding halt.
This worked well in WW2. And is just about the only message we need http://www.keepcalmandcarryon.com
I can just see the government reaction to the news from the environment agency, "Great, if we really hype this one we can keep the constitution vote out of the news for another day!"
The whole point of hyping up the Global Warming issue is so that there are new reasons for increasing 'stealth' taxation.
So called "Combating Climate Change" is the over vaunted reason for the increases in duty on things like fuel, travel, "Chip & Bin" etc.
These taxes have nothing to do with lowering carbon emissions or global temperatures, but have everything to do with simply increasing revenues to the treasury.
Just had a report from a friend in Canada. She's never seen as much snow for 35 years.
Damn global warming.
On my drive to work this morning I saw nothing scarier than a few unsecured bin liners blowing about. This was nothing like the storm of 1987. Or 1703 (a bit before my time.)
While this goes un-reported.
here
We get the media overkill because they know how poorly our infrastructure copes with...well, any weather, really. A strong wind, quarter of an inch of snow, a couple of degrees of frost, everything just goes tits-up. It makes for a good story - dramatic and a bit scary.
On this subject, I note that the BBC are now reporting that the 2007 floods had nothing to do with climate change and were more to do with changes in land use. Also they are now saying that wet summers appear to be nothing new in Britain, as there were a lot of them in the 19th century too. The growth of urban centres is a major factor (ditto with hurricane damage in the States, I've heard.)
Alex, it is changes in land use: new towns built on flood plains resulting in the loss of soak-aways. The water is then expedited down drains into the nearest river resulting in burst banks and floods often in places that didn't have them before. Sea water floods are often the result of under investment in defences. Obviously, employing a few more diversity managers is more important than repairing sea walls.
Interesting watching the news. One report made me laugh. Our intrepid reporter approached a sea shore pub in Wales surrounded by flood water. Yet the people in the pub weren't going with the disaster script: "Yeah, not a problem, it floods like this about twice a year." Oddly we never saw that report again.
Heavy rain, umbrellas turned inside out and crashing seas do not a disaster make. However they did manage to get on camera a falling tree, another tree already fallen, a couple of damaged roofs and a flooded caravan site. Parochial and hardly worth the extensive air-time given. Let's be frank here: trees die, their roots rot and when a bit of wind comes along they fall over. It happens all the time. Roofs get damaged in the wind, they get struck by lightning. So? Lowland places by the sea also get flooded when it cuts up rough. So?
With the airtime given and the hysterical reporting one would think tornadoes and hurricanes were tearing Britain apart and that the seas would be carrying away most of the West coast. Ridiculously hyped.
While I was in Crete we had ten hours of rain like a vertical sea, and car-killer boulders down on the roads. Next day the mess was cleared up and forgotten about.
Post a Comment