Pay-out’s a balmy idea

I’ve got a few questions to ask the Met Office after they paid out more than £1m in bonuses for staff who got their weather predictions right last year. You’ve got people still guessing if it will rain rather than computers calculating scientifically? Wasn’t there a public sector pay freeze going on (or did you upgrade your own pay from frozen to mild with scattered sunshine)? Isn’t getting money for guessing right called winning a bet? So wouldn’t we be better off shutting you down, asking bookies to give us odds for the weather, spreading our bets and only paying when they guess right?