Monday Moan 29

 

Rain or Shine?  Make up your minds please

It doesn’t seem so long ago that we were all being told that the southern parts of Britain, if not the rest, were likely to develop Mediterranean-style climates soon.  Only a few months ago, all we heard about was the impending doom of the inevitable drought, as it didn’t seem to have rained in living memory.

Now we hear that rainfall in 2012 was the second highest in any year since records began.  We also hear that the future now seems likely to be more of the same as we saw in 2012 – lots of rain in heavy bursts.  I think we are still promised higher temperatures and, possibly, dry summers (droughts?) – but who knows.

Isn’t that the key question here?  Who actually knows what the future holds?  Certainly not the Government’s own experts if this wonderful summary from the Government’s response in January2012 to the UK Climate Change Evidence Risk Assessment Report  is anything to go by:-
 

“In the UK, we currently expect a shift towards generally wetter winters, and a greater proportion of precipitation to fall as heavy events. The UK Climate Projections published in 2009 (UKCP09) suggest that there is a greater likelihood that summers will be drier, but these projections cover a range of outcomes (including wetter summers).”

Everyone got that?
 

No Reality Allowed in the NRA

Gun crime in the USA is commonplace.  Massacres of innocent victims occur with depressing frequency.  Yet apparently, the main voice of the gun-loving people’s nobbying, the NRA, believes the issue is not the guns and their availability, but the lack of such guns being carried by the ‘good guys’.  So their recipe for avoiding future massacres in schools is to have every school in the country protected by a gun-carrying policeman.

 

An interesting view, I suppose, but I’m not entirely convinced.  Let’s see, how many schools are there in the USA?  And wouldn’t the first target of any future gunman be the policeman with a gun?  What about those massacres that don’t happen in schools or universities – are they proposing that every shopping mall, fast-food restaurant, place of work, etc also have their own policeman?

Isn’t the problem that the good guys have watched too many John Wayne movies, where good always triumphs over evil and the shooting is always blood and pain-free?  And that the bad guys have watched too many Quentin Tarrantino movies where the reaction to any problem seems to be to shoot someone?

 

Of course, holding guns is not of itself necessarily a problem (they do it in Switzerland, although even there they have the occasional multiple shooting in remote mountain  villages), but it is surely unarguable that if you take the guns away then nobody can shoot anybody else.

 

 

The Post Office – are we being served?

I wasn’t that well organised this year and admit that some of my present buying was a little last minute.  But at least I had remembered to order some gifts online and could wait for the Post Office to deliver them, after which I would wrap and re-post them to family around the UK.
 

Not as easy or as foolproof as it sounded. 
 

First, I had not reckoned with the postman deciding to eliminate that time-wasting ringing of the doorbell to alert the customer to his arrival.  No, in the interests of efficiency, I assume, the parcel was simply left on my doorstep.  Not a great problem, except that I had decided to stay in all day for the promised delivery, and did not venure out to the doorstep until the next day, frustrated that I had wasted the previous one waiting for the parcel that I thought had never come. 
 

Not quite a disater, as I was still in time to wrap and address them and take them to my local post office to catch the last posting.  Arriving just in time, I asked for first class stamps for them all, so that they would arrive the next day.    Unfortunately, I had not anticipated the response of “Sorry mate, we have run out of stamps.”
 

Run out of stamps?  The Post Office?  Well that’s them off my Christmas card list next year.

 

 

Christmas Turkey – or TV as some like to call it

I didn’t watch much televison at Christmas, mainly because I had excellent company and it was much better to talk to people instead of watch the box in the corner of the room.  But it has to be said that when a spot of television was called for the fare on offer was depressing.

 

I’m still not allowed to criticise Downton  Abbey, so I won’t.  But amidst the usual superficial plots and behavioural changes from many of the principal characters, we also had a major plot change with the demise of one of the main characters.  There was little subtlety about it, as everyone else was suddenly being very nice to and about the character concerned.  But I do wonder about the billing of this as a ‘Christmas Special’.  In the old days this meant a light-hearted episode where everyone was very jolly and nothing much happened beyond a few Christmas presents being opened.  So is it right to have a major plot and character change in a one-off episode that, presumably, many regular viewers of the programme will have missed because they were doing something more worthwhile at Christmas? 

I assume the episode will be shown again as a trailer for the inevitable new series.  But that just means those who cleared their Christmas schedules to watch it could have saved themselves the effort and done something better with their time.

While I’m on the subject of Christmas television, what was with the endless episodes of Miranda and of Mrs Brown’s Boys - two of the least funny programmes ever shown on British television?  Either that, or I have mislaid my sense of humour.

 

 

 

A New Year Message

When did it become OK for everyone to issue New Year Messages?  They are all at it these days – leaders of all the political parties, CEOs of companies to their workers, every clergyman under the sun (including yet another farewell from the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury – who seems to have had more farewells than Frank Sinatra), MPs to their constituents, Council leaders throughout the UK, etc.

Do we care what these people have to say?  Does it gladden our hearts to know that they are thinking about the next year and what they plan to do on our behalf (presumably)?

I doubt it. So, my New Year message to every one of them is to save their energy, enjoy their break and leave the rest of us in peace. Come back to your jobs refreshed and get on with them.  Thank you.

 

Finally, not a moan but a thank you

Someone suggested to me that I should throw in the occasional word of cheer rather than moaning all the time.  Seems to miss the point of this column, but ever eager to please my readers I offer here a word of praise and thanks for the NHS. 

 

Not always my favourite organisation, but over the Christmas break the representatives of the NHS in Buckinghamshire provided an excellent response to the worrying collapse of a family member during lunch in a restaurant.  The three medics involved were fantastic - very professional, reassuring and calm in all they did.  The patient was then whisked away to a specialist hospital where over the next five hours they were subjected to various tests and all the medical people involved were, again, excellent.

 

So, a big thank you to them.  Perhaps they could pass on a few tips to the NHS people where the patient lives, whose follow-up action has been less than impressive?