HOT AIR
IT’S been damned hot, hasn’t it? I suppose we have had July and it is now August, so we can all claim to be used to it if we live out here. The media headlines say it all. The heatwave has reportedly shut doctors’ surgeries, thrown hospitals into chaos, made the unions demand flexible hours and the sun cream is running out. Pardon? It’s set to get hotter say the “experts” and the south coast has even been “invaded” by poisonous jellyfish. What next? A plague of frogs? (No, I don’t think so. As far as I know there has been no mass influx of men in berets, riding bicycles and selling onions.)
Yes, it is all true, except we are not talking about Cyprus; this is the UK — 31°C (88°F) and doomsday around the corner. The hysterical reaction of UK officialdom and Britain’s media to what we in Cyprus cope with on an annual basis has been a sight to behold. The British “nanny state” is in full swing. Hordes of faceless UK bureaucrats are busily justifying their doubtful existence by frightening the living daylights out of Joe Public.
Daily health warnings to avoid going out in the sun, warnings to dog owners not to walk their dogs, “in case their paws get burned”, farmers told their crops will be “burned to the bone”, resultant “food shortages” predicted, and fears that rail lines “will buckle” and roads “melt” if UK temperatures reach 35°C (95°F). Thirty-five degrees Centigrade? “What’s the panic?” I hear you ask. Quite.
UK “council chiefs” have put their staff on “high alert”. What have they detected? A Martian space fleet hiding behind the “blood moon”? Thankfully not. No, it might just be that the council bosses simply want their people in place to add to the sense of doom (just one little problem, how will the hordes of “officials” get to work if it’s too dangerous to go out in the sun?). Common sense dictates that dealing with heat involves covering up, avoiding direct sunlight as much as possible, using sun cream and drinking lots of water. It shouldn’t mean bringing a nation to its knees by reams of over-the-top “warnings”. Common sense in UK currently appears to be sadly lacking, especially in the fevered inner sanctums of officialdom. It’s as rare as a weekly dustbin collection (especially vital in a heatwave, I would have thought).
No wonder outdoor events are being cancelled across the UK. In one case, an equestrian event was called off because “the ground was too hard” and riders and horses “risked being injured”. Surely they risk that every time they jump a fence, don’t they, “hard ground” or not? Summer fêtes have gone too, to avoid people “fainting, feeling squeamish and being sick”. Poor darlings.
So why the over-reaction? Could it be that in “snowflake” Britain, nobody is responsible for their own stupidity and will sue event organisers for any mishap they suffer, at the drop of a sun hat? You bet it is. “Risk” is part of life; it is inevitable. You cannot completely avoid it, except by not living, or cancelling normal life. Whatever happened to British tenacity and a determination to carry on, whatever the odds?
Mind you, no-one can doubt hot weather makes folk do daft things. It appears even governments are not immune from it. They can’t be, because the UK has just appointed a new Director of Public Prosecutions. Included in his responsibilities are prosecuting acts of terror. He believes jihadis should “be spared jail” and “rehabilitated”. If anybody needs “rehabilitating”, it’s him. It must be the heat.
The police are definitely not immune from mid-summer madness. One shopkeeper caught shoplifters on his CCTV. He took the evidence to his local police. They did nothing. In despair, he put pictures of the shoplifters in his window and was rewarded with a warning he was “breaking the law” by breaching the Data Protection Act. If that’s not madness, I don’t know what is.
Were police elsewhere out dealing with Britain’s violent crime wave? One would hope so. At one carnival in north Wales (where organisers were brave enough to let it go ahead) five of them weren’t. They thought it more important to be seen dancing the zumba! The mind boggles. As one onlooker commented: “Fantastic, they won’t come round if your house is burgled, but can behave like prats.” Quite. And all this in a region that has more killings per head of population than London. The mind boggles.
Britain is not in the deadly grip of a catastrophic heatwave. It’s in the grip of OTT reaction. God help the UK if it ever faces a real threat to its survival. On present evidence it wouldn’t last five minutes.