Stop nannying us and stick to the forecasts, Bill Giles tells weathermen
BBC veteran says there is no need to warn viewers to take care on icy pavements during cold weather
NO BBC weather forecast is complete, it seems, without words of advice. Hot? Don’t forget the sun cream. Icy? Be careful on those pavements. Stormy? Stay inside. It is all too much for Bill Giles, who led the BBC weather team for 17 years until he retired in 2000.
He has accused today’s forecasters of “behaving like nannies” and treating viewers as if they have no common sense. The never-ending stream of advice could also have more serious consequences, Giles said, by making people immune to the severe weather warnings that are worth heeding.
The current BBC line-up includes regular weather presenters Carol Kirkwood and Tomasz Schafernaker. Their reports are very different to those delivered by Giles, who began his television career in 1975, when changing conditions were explained by sticking magnetic clouds on a map.
“It was forbidden to mention flooding. The Met Office view at that time was, ‘ We forecast the rain coming out of the clouds but when it hits the ground, it’s a local authority problem, not ours’,” Giles wrote in Radio Times.
“We got around it by talking about ‘excess surface water’ on roads and pavements but that was a coded warning.”
Now we are “inundated” with advice, he said, asking: “On frosty and snowy nights, does the forecaster really need to tell people to watch out on untreated roads and pavements? I think they could safely just mention the ice and expect viewers to use their common sense.”
He advocates a system where “only sensible warnings of the effects of bad weather” would be given out.
The practice of naming storms – most recently Storm Doris – is “designed to add to the drama and credibility of the warning”, Giles said. But to do this with a dozen winter storms “risks making people immune to the warnings” a situation likely to be repeated with summer thunderstorms and heatwaves. In his most recent reports for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Schafernaker spent almost as much time doling out advice as he did detailing the weather.
Drivers should “take it steady on some of those country roads” due to ice, he said, and “the best advice I can give you for the week is: brolly to hand.”
He also informed the audience that a combination of heavy showers, sunny spells, thunderstorms, gusty winds and hailstorms would be “happening here and there”, prompting one listener to complain that Today’s bulletins tell people next to nothing about the weather in their area.