I forgot my book (actually I am reading short SF stories in Interzone) so took the unusual step of reading the Metro. I’m glad I don’t read it every day.
The front page says that Britain is braced for a state of emergency because of the heat. The Met Office has “issued its first ever heatwave warning” – although the Met Office themselves say they issued a heat warning in 2006. By Thursday we could be at def con 4: “so severe or prolonged that its effects extend outside health and social care, such as power or water shortages”. We’ll see. Old people and the very young should stay inside between 11am and 3pm.
I can sort of see the point of such warnings so that those affected can deal with the marginal effects of hot weather, but good grief, it makes for dramatic reading. And there’s the feeling that it’s nothing new and we’ve seen it all before.
Will we beat August 2003 when the hottest ever day was 38.1C and 20 people were struck by lightning? Or July 2006 when the hottest ever July day was 36.5C, beating the previous record from 1911 when it was 36C and, presumably, there was a lot less concrete around storing up heat? Or June 2005’s 33C? Or May Day 1953’s 31C? Or the 15 consecutive days in 1976 above 32C?
Elsewhere in the Metro, Gordon Brown wants local housing for local people in a multi-million pound plan that involves shuffling things around to make them more “fair”. Oh, and he’ll treble housing investment to £2.1 billion of other people’s money, too.
MPs are next to be attacked for moonlighting. Unlike the expenses row, though, they’re at least earning their own money. Not sure I can see anything wrong with that.
MPs are telling police that protestors are people too; a radical cleric converted an 11-year-old boy; and fat celebrities are making obesity seem okay. The war on fat people continues. Presumably one day in the future only government approved perfect people will be allowed on the telly – or will that just make people who aren’t perfect feel bad about themselves? It’s a minefield!
On a lighter note, there are some valuable 20p pieces about that the mint forgot to stamp a date on. The mint want them back, will give you £50 for one, and even have a web site about it.
Meanwhile, there’s no news at all on BBC1 because the tennis is still going on.