You Couldn’t Make It Up

There is nothing like inclement weather to bring the best out of the nanny state. We are having some stormy weather here in the UK and you could, honestly, be forgiven for thinking that wind is a completely new phenomenon. 

We are experiencing Storm Isha, soon to be followed by Storm Jocelyn and we must not let these innocuous and pleasant sounding names fool us into thinking that these will be mild puffs of wind. No sirree! These are so bad that the Met Office has advised us for the duration of these storms not to sleep near windows. I am not sure if the folk who issue this type of guidance ever leave the Met Office bunker. Perhaps they have never seen or been in a house, but a major feature of most houses is windows. Most rooms have them, and they are remarkably close to anyone who is in them. Unless you live in a house with rooms like a tennis court. 

Then Scotrail, the company responsible for running trains in Scotland, has decided to slow all trains down to 50 mph during winds over 70 mph. Fair enough but they have also suspended all trains after 7pm and they will not resume until after rush hour while these storms prevail. Yes, that said ‘after rush hour.’ Why it should be safe to travel after rush hour when it is not safe during it is unclear. Surely, whatever time you start up the trains again if they have been off all night will then, in turn, be the rush hour. Maybe I have just not thought this through. 

Sticking with Scotland, the nadir of good sense but the zenith of nanny states, NHS Scotland has issued advice on how to walk when it is icy, as if ice…in Scotland…in winter were a new phenomenon. Believe me, any Scot who has left his house on a wintry day and stepped on an icy pavement soon learns how to walk on it. Thus NHS Scotland issued advice to ‘walk like a penguin.’ And, for anyone who missed David Attenborough’s Frozen Planet (some of it made up apparently), and has no idea how to walk like a penguin, they even issued a demonstration video. Hard as it is to believe, this was not made up. The video has had most people hooting with laughter and how anyone at NHS Scotland could not have predicted the inevitable response is beyond comprehension. In fact, many people saw it and fell about laughing, which rather defeated the point of the video. 

I have no idea to what depths temperatures fall in winter in Waltham Forest, a Labour controlled borough of London, but they have taken precautions. Again, to the accompaniment of much hilarity, the council have installed Japanese style toilets in its offices at a cost of over £7000. These toilets include heated seats and back and front oscillating washing jets. At least they have recognised a fundamental anatomical difference between men and women. Residents of Waltham Forest, whose council tax recently soared, know now that their money is not being wasted. There is no explanation for or apparent logic in the installation of heated seats, but it may be an incentive for people to turn up at the office instead of working from home. However, it may ultimately prove to be counterproductive, especially among female staff who might spend a little more time than usual in there with the oscillating front washer turned up to the max. Rumours that they are installing sound insulation in the toilets are, as yet, unconfirmed. 

Finally, nothing is sacred. My five-year-old granddaughter recently joined Rainbows, the precursor to Brownies which, in turn, precedes Girl Guides. She returned from her first meeting along with other enthusiastic Rainbow starters to tell her mum and dad what she had been up to. Humour escapes me over this, so I’ll just go for it: they were all given a sheet of paper and some coloured pencils and asked to draw a picture on it. Knowing my granddaughter, this will have been done with great care and artistic ability. At the end when, I expect, they were expecting to take it home to show their parents they were asked to crumple up the picture, throw it on the ground and stamp on it. After that they had to pick up the picture and say ‘sorry’ to it for crumpling it and standing on it and then take a look at the picture, imagining that they had just done that one of their Rainbow friends and…sorry, I can’t go on. If you think I am making this one up, I assure you I am not. It is a real thing. The game is called Uncrumpled Friends; I call it child abuse. 

Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.

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