Britons, definitely under the weather!

Because someone talks incessantly about something doesn't necessarily mean they have a clue how to deal effectively with it.

By Stanley Collymore

 

Winds gusting, though noticeably without any sustained

intensity, upwards to ninety miles per hour; coastal

waters with obligatory but far from wholehearted

cohesion doing their bit to portray an image

of terror whose fearful perception swiftly

grabs the undivided attention of the

credulous, those who’re easily or

quite prone to be manipulated by a

sensationalist media and transport executives of

the Jobsworth School of act first and think:

a commodity that’s invariably in very

short supply where such people

are concerned, afterwards.

 

People who unwarrantedly but conveniently hide

behind Health and Safety regulations, because

they’ve definitely nothing positive to offer

themselves, to cover up their systemic

inefficiencies in relation to the jobs

that clearly they should never

have been trusted with

in the first place.

 

The weather, whether it’s good or bad, is a seasonal but

nevertheless an integral part of the natural cycle

of our known universe evidently and

dispassionately designed as

well as significantly contolled by Nature performing a

delicate and seemingly at times impossible balancing

act between the diverse and not uncommonly so

diametrically opposed interests of both living

and inanimate things that generally compete

with but often and not unusually out of a

common necessity complement each

other as well; a state of affairs

however which mankind, even

with the best of intentions

in mind, will perpetually

remain an interested

but all the same

a bit player.

 

Which doesn’t mean that human beings should throw

their hands up in despair, lazily sit back and do nothing,

retreat from the predicament they’re faced with, or

even worse still add to the worst elements of

what’s a constantly evolving situation

they already know they’ll be faced

with by asininely adopting and

applying measures that are bound to

exacerbate what is predictably a

problematic development in

the offing for everyone

of us who’s around.

and involved.

 

Other countries with serial worse weather conditions

than Britain routinely experiences or is ever likely

to confront in the foreseeable future manage to

cope exceedingly well in either forestalling

or successfully combating the very worst

climatic outrages that a volatile and

tempestuous Nature throws at or

recurrently subjects them to.

 

So why not Britain? Where train schedules are universally

disrupted or completely scrapped as a consequence of

infinitesimal things like leaves falling on the tracks;

bus services similarly halted because of rainwater,

designated as flooding, falling and collecting on

badly constructed roads with no effective or

efficient run-off facilities and water logging them in

the process; with nonsensical risk averse advice

unwisely tendered by the authorities, absurdly

suggesting that people should stay indoors

and work from home. How does that

actually help, I wonder, if your

profession happens to be

a nurse or a doctor?

 

The weather is quite an obsession in Britain

but that seems to be all where it’s concerned;

because no one in authority here, sure as

hell, seems to have any sensible ideas

how to efficiently deal with it; a

self-inflicted problem that our

Continental neighbours

and others globally

don’t appear

to have.

 

© Stanley V. Collymore

29 October 2013.

 

Commentary:

 

St Jude is the official saint of lost causes; fitting therefore, I suppose, that the storm, which haphazardly struck some parts of Southern England on Monday 28 October 2013 and bearing in mind the ineptitude with which the authorities in Britain consistently deal with natural emergencies here, should be named after him.

 

The tragedies in terms of the unfortunate loss of life and the destruction of property, though minimal in actuality, are none the less to be deeply regretted. But overall the rather chaotic and invariably incompetent manner in which the British authorities, particularly in a country where the general populace literally obsesses on the weather, deal with impending and even actual natural disasters leads a lot to be desired.