Crikey – snow in December? What happened to ‘globull warming’?
It is a cold morning again, with snow and ice. Thus we experience the usual, annual misery: British infrastructure can’t cope. Winter, after all, just doesn’t happen here, not even in December and never mind it’s happening in other countries in the Northern hemisphere. Thus the shock-horror headlines about flights suspended because of ‘snow and ice’ amidst temperatures of -10º C.
Motorists abandoned their vehicles.The airports are Stanstead, Gatwick and Heathrow. The M25 was also brought ‘to a grinding halt’. However, the DM has lovely photos (link) which make me wonder why, every winter, the inch or two of snow affects motorists and airports.
Are there no gritters to keep motorways clear? Are airport managers not aware that there are ways and means to keep the flights going which are used elsewhere and which have been used elsewhere, in countries from Canada and the USA to Norway, Germany, Switzerland? Civil serpents in Whitehall and in local authorities do go on their Christmas skiing holidays, no? So they ought to know …
Have local authorities all been ‘saving money’ again, abandoning their snow-clearing machinery, their gritters and grit depots because ‘we have climate emergency’, the planet is boiling and so we need no preparations for winter because this doesn’t happen any longer and the money is need fo house our illegal migrants?
There’s one story which the MSM chief news editors grabbed with both hands: “Lake Horror”. It’s about four kids who had plunged into a frozen lake near Solihull yesterday. You can find the print page compilation, all using the same photo, in the usual place (link).
Yes, it is very sad, especially since two kids are still missing, but let me ask: were these kids never told by parents or teachers not to go onto the ice after such a brief cold spell because it’s dangerous as the ice is not firm? I find that extraordinary, given that there is so much ‘guidance’ to keep kids safe, e.g. forbidding them to play conkers! And can someone please explain to me how it is possible to write reams about looking for a ‘White Christmas’ without mentioning that it must be cold for snow to fall and stay on the ground?
But enough of this. There’s one piece of news which has now made it into the MSM. Not onto the front pages though because it is a bit squirm-worthy for our brigade of Remainers and Rejoiners: one of the vice-president of the EU Parliament and three other MEPs have been charged and arrested with corruption. That happened on Friday, but only the FT (link, paywalled) and the BBC (link) found it necessary to mention it yesterday evening, hidden away. The DM copied these news and published their report later yesterday evening, their headlines are a sufficient summary:
“EU vice-president and Greek socialist MEP Eva Kaili is charged with corruption after Belgian police found ‘bags of cash’ in her home in ‘Qatar lobbying scandal’ – Eva Kaili, 44, was arrested on Friday and has now been charged with corruption – The Greek socialist spoke publicly in support of the World Cup host’s labour laws – Three others also charged while at least one more MEP’s house been searched – The arrests followed raids in Brussels which turned up 600,000 euros in cash” (link)
Obviously, our extremely professional ‘journalists’ were unable to pick up those news when they happened. Also, “we” did have that footie match to fixate on and didn’t want to upset the Qataris, the ones ‘corrupting’ that lady and other MEPs. The really astonishing point is that Ms K and the other MEPs, one of whom was a top trade unionist, were members of lefty parties.
That’s what happens if money is handed around in cash rather than being channelled through NGOs! Meanwhile, there are some interesting reports relating to the nurses’ strike and the poor Sacred Cow. Taken together, they paint an image of an organisation in utter chaos, an organisation where the professed ‘care for patients’ has become of secondary importance.
In a nice attempt at fear porn the Times reports that “Drafting in troops ‘won’t prevent NHS strike chaos – ’Ministers warned doctors could walk out too” (link, paywalled). At the same time though there’s this report in the DM:
“Agency doctors can cost NHS up to £5,200 for just ONE shift, figures reveal – NHS trusts have shelled out as much as £5,200 for a single agency doctor shift – This year, the NHS paid £3billion to agencies who provide doctors and nurses – The financial sum represents a 20 per cent increase compared with last year” (link)
Why is nobody addressing the patent scandal of agency nurses and doctors being employed? Why have NHS ‘trusts’, formerly known as hospitals, been allowed to get away with this accounting machination where personnel is kept off the books, not being permanently employed, while huge sums are spent on ‘agency medical staff’ instead?
It’s not as if there’s no money sloshing around NHS funds. The Times has another report which I found upsetting. Under the headline “Body cameras may protect nurses from angry patients” we read:
“Nurses may be given body cameras to protect them from aggressive patients as ministers try to repair relations with striking NHS staff. Steve Barclay, the health secretary, has raised the possibility with union leaders as he looks for ways to improve nurses’ working conditions without increasing the government’s pay offer. A trial in Oxford has found that nurses feel safer as a result of cameras that become “part of the uniform”. But privacy campaigners have confidentiality concerns about sensitive medical information being captured and handed to police.” (link, paywalled)
Words simply fail me! Is the whole of Whitehalll now hell-bent on implementing “1984” wherever they can? Have we not learned that cameras, be they the public CCTV installations, be they the private ones ‘securing’ one’s property, simply do not prevent crimes from being perpetrated?
Here’s another instance, this time in regard to antibiotics and the shortage thereof, something rather important in the wake of the Strep A infections. While NHS ‘Bosses’ are making reassuring noises to pacify us plebs, we read:
“Drug companies have been accused of “cartel behaviour” for increasing the cost of antibiotics during the strep A outbreak in England. Pharmacies say they are losing thousands of pounds a week on the cost of the drugs as they can recoup only a fraction from the NHS. Many are unable even to purchase stocks, leaving parents to travel across cities in search of medicine for sick children.” (link, paywalled)
Allegedly, manufacturers are blaming “bottlenecks with raw materials due to coronavirus lockdowns in east Asia for the shortages”, but nice Big Pharma is after profits and cannot be expected to make a loss:
“Quoted prices shared by pharmacists from across the country show costs increasing sharply in recent days. Both antibiotics are usually available to chemists for a few pounds for capsules and between £3 and £4 for oral mixtures for children. They are then reimbursed for most of this by the NHS. Prices being quoted by wholesalers last week were up to £15.37 for capsules and £10.67 for a penicillin oral solution.” (link, paywalled)
So the NHS hasn’t carried a stock of antibiotics? Was the money spent on huge stocks of covid vaccines instead because nobody is expected to catch any other infections, and because antibiotics have been deemed to be bad for many years now?
I leave you with an extraordinary wail in The Times, according to which the ‘number of working class people in the arts has plummeted’ (link, paywalled). I cannot make head nor tail of this sentence from yon report:
“The slump mirrors a wider decline in the number of people defined as working class in Office for National Statistics (ONS) data, meaning the industry has failed to improve class diversity.” (link, paywalled)
Please help me out: doesn’t it stand to reason that there will be fewer ‘wcp’ (working class people’ in ‘Teh Arts’ when their number has declined? Shouldn’t we be glad instead that ‘class’ is being eradicated? What is ‘wcp culture’ anyway?
That’s all for today. I don’t need to tell you to keep safe and warm, given the looming NHS strikes. I recommend using woollen blankets and hottie-botties. Have a good day.
So the ‘number of working class people in the arts has plummeted.’ To channel Jabbit: So what? Who cares? Is that a problem and why? The country won’t stop if fewer working class people write books, paint pictures, hold exhibitions of pretentious rubbish.
“the [arts] industry has failed to improve class diversity.”
Why can I not think of the arts as an industry? Come on, put your back into it. You have only written one play this year. How can we put in for a productivity pay rise on that record?
“Nurses may be given body cameras to protect them from aggressive patients.” Surely the answer should be to ask why the aggression and remove the cause; to ask why ‘our angels’, for whom we (not me) clapped like performing seals, have suddenly become the target of aggression. We all know, but it cannot be said; issuing body cams is treating the symptom not the cause.
“The really astonishing point is that Ms K and the other MEPs, one of whom was a top trade unionist, were members of lefty parties.”
I am guessing the astonishment was that the authorities went after and actually apprehended lefties, surely not that lefties could be corrupt.
Those who virtue signal the most often use it as a cover, and have the most to hide; think Saville and all his charity work.
Why would I declare my intentions Jake?
“2022 had been the hottest year on record” Does that mean the records don’t go back to 1976 when, in my experience it was far hotter for far longer?
Re above photo Glo(BULL) warming, you’re certainly right there. It is a total load of old bull. I looked in at the BBC online Weather Forecast yesterday and there was a video by one of their forecasters about Climate Change and the Weather when it is very cold and bucketing down with snow. The long and short of it was that Climate Change and the Weather were two separate entities and that our mean temperature would increase by 4.5 c during winters by 2070, and that Climate Change would see excesses both in terms of heat and cold between now and then. He stated that 2022 had been the hottest year on record in this country which would only diminish if we had a protracted period of very cold weather between now and the end of the year, but one got the sense that he hoped that this would not be the case as he and his colleagues would want to bombard us with more weather related bad news in the future. Keeps them in a job I suppose, but the BBC forecasters were slow to report this heavy snowfall in the South-East until the very last minute, whereas independent forecasters were warning of this a week ago. I am no scientist or meteorologist, but like everything the BBC produces these days, the video headline should have been headed with the word ‘Bullshit’.
I witnessed the aftermath of a road accident in rural India. A car was in a ditch and a small crowd of people was dragging the car’s occupants out of the car and up the slope. The injured were screaming. There was no ambulance service in this part of India and so no paramedics trained in moving the seriously injured.
A short while later a faith healer came to the town I was staying in. I was shocked at the number of deformed and crippled people that came to see the healer. Hundreds of them that had not been visible during the day.
I recount this as a warning about where we appear to be heading as Unison has warned that even life saving cover may not be provided as ambulance drivers become “frustrated” with the government. Of course, it may not be as bad as in India where there was no hospital for an ambulance to take the injured anyway, and I suspect that visible life and limb emergencies, such as car crashes and children falling through ice, will be the last services to go, but already heart attack and stroke victims are left waiting for hours as are some pensioners who fall and break a hip.
Still, every crisis is an opportunity. I shall search YouTube for guidance on passing myself off as a faith healer. Could be a nice little earner one day right here in the UK.
” Is the whole of Whitehalll now hell-bent on implementing “1984” wherever they can?
Of course they are; “Brave New World” is another of their sources.
More intrusion on our privacy planned:
https://savebritain.org/uk-to-launch-government-backed-digital-pound-for-central-bank-digital-currency/
I fear only a revolution will save us from a totalitarian government now. No wonder we have no effective right to bear arms (except for criminals and the invader).
How do you intend to get involved Jack?