Thunder and Lightning, Very Very Frightening.

06/21/2005

We still suffer very mixed weather from prolonged thunder and lightning, torrential rain, heat waves, hill fog, patches of blue sky, and thankfully southerly breezes to allow us some spells of outside work. Yorkshire has taken a battering from flash floods, but most of the rest of the UK from Banff to Bournemouth is having settled summer weather. A phone call even informs me of drinking water shortages on Shropshire. When I have been kept indoors I have been listening to the wireless, as a result, my blood pressure has been rising on news of ridiculous domestic political incompetence and the complete failure of politicians and their civil servants to state an opinion and make decisions. They have fudged everything from banning smoking in public places to charging for the use of plastic bags, “officials” issue bizarre health or climate scares, “experts” challenge each other on air over the most boring and trite nonsense. Roseanna Cunningham a low profile Nat with a high opinion of herself has even proposed the erection of notices to warn recreational land users where floods might occur, beside rivers perhaps. Scottish Water, those stealth tax gatherers have informed me that following an EU directive, not to be enforced in any other EU country, they will be forced against their will to charge me £600 each year to test the drinking water in the Tower of Glen Trollaigh. Yet another executive agency quango, the Care Commission (has anyone heard of them?) have forced the closure of the only rural Children’s Nursery in Argyll, the Care Commission issued a pompous statement hinting that they may have smothered the nursery under regulation and paperwork, but that rural kids needed the same care as urban ones. I do so hope the faceless PhD prats on the commission take note of the services denied to those same kids by other Quangos. The closure of our primary school, loss of out of hours medical cover, loss of a local GP, loss of our Post Bus, lack of safe speed limits or street lighting and also take account of the services soon to be denied the rural kids, local police and postal services. At least some of those kids may grow up to enjoy employment as drinking water testers! Thank goodness, Wimbledon will now fill our screens, to be followed by lots of Golf, self-opinionated commentators try to ruin it all, but at least I can turn the sound down. Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.