The Great British Drizzle of 2013.

Over the past 24-36 hours the UK has been experiencing a weather system that has brought heavy rain and winds that have momentarily gusted all the way up to 99mph. This is slightly more extreme weather then the UK is used to so it has been something that the emergency services, those who maintain the national power grid and people living in particularly vulnerable areas have needed to be aware of.

Unfortunately though the UK's big international diplomatic plan for 2013 failed to materialise. So with the COP19/CMP9 Summit on global warming and climate change fast approaching the UK government saw an opportunity to make itself the centre of attention. As a result this storm dramatically closed down all public transport and has created a lot of interesting talking points;

This began on Sunday evening with the news that the authorities were searching for a 14 year old boy who had gone missing in the sea off Newhaven in East Sussex. This was of course a reference to the 14 year old burglar who is connected to the local criminal entity that were supposed to have been making my life really stressful yesterday.

Overnight a 17 year old girl died after a tree fell onto the static caravan in which she was sleeping. As only gypsies tend to live in caravans this was intended as a reference to the ongoing European Union (EU) discussions about Roma gypsies including the recent "Maria" case in Greece with all its connotations to the Madeline McCann case. It was also a reference to the UK's eviction of Irish Traveller gypsies from Dale Farm which some have classed as ethnic cleansing and the two year anniversary of which came up last weekend.

At around 06:50 on Monday morning a crane close to the government's Cabinet Office in central London suddenly went all floppy. This was of course a reference to the crane that went all floppy in New York City, US in the build up to hurricane Sandy that was the US trying to convince us that Rihanna's mood swings somehow control the weather. The London crane also caused Deputy Prime Minister and Liberal Democrat Party leader Nick Clegg to cancel a press conference. The actual Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative Party are currently trying to exploit profiteering rises to home energy bills as an excuse to do away with levies intended to fund renewable energy projects. In theory Nick Clegg is trying to stop him. Therefore Clegg being forced to cancel was supposed indicate that Cameron is winning that argument although no-one ever really doubted Clegg's ability to lose any argument.

At around 07:30 on Monday morning a tree allegedly cut a natural gas line leading to an explosion that destroyed three houses. When I took the local criminal entity to Croydon Magistrates Court under the Environmental Protection Act back in 2010 the case was dismissed amid rumours of a mysterious Supreme Court ruling. Although it has never been declared what that Supreme Court ruling was the best guess is that it related to a case in which a negligent contractor had caused a natural gas explosion which destroyed a number of houses leading to the property owner being sued for damages. The Court found that because the property owner had conducted due diligence they were not liable for the negligence of the contractor. This of course had no relevance to my case because on that occasion the property owner was behaving maliciously rather then negligently and had repeatedly failed to perform due diligence.

Also as part of its flawed efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions by switching almost exclusively to natural gas fired power stations the UK has left itself extremely vulnerable to supply problems and price rises within the global natural gas market. Therefore as the storm struck the Dungeness nuclear power station successfully shut down in an effort to show us just how safe nuclear power can be.

I of course would have downplayed the effects of the storm and instead argued that the weather had conspired to give everyone in the UK a half-day off work in order to allow them to adjust to the one hour shift from British Summer Time (BST) back to Greenwich Meantime (GMT).

After all that would have helped underline the damaging effects that all that poorly planned travel had on Rihanna during the final leg of her Diamonds World Tour thus complicating the argument about whether Rihanna controls the weather and helping to build up the empathy that Obama needs to drive through his immigration reforms.

12:20 on 28/10/13.

Edited at around 16:05 on 28/10/13 to add;

I'm still a little bit hungover so I sort of forgot to mention that this storm has also seen some 220,000 UK homes cut off from the electricity supply. Apart from being a really big number that makes the whole thing sound more dramatic this was intended to make the not altogether accurate point that efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions - in particular the switch to gas fired power stations - has made the UK very dependent on nations such as Qatar in order to keep the nation supplied with electricity. Therefore if we want to stop getting involved in situations like Syria we had better stop trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The other thing is that in a effort to complicate matters further by adding a religious dimension the UK is trying to dub this the "Saint Jude's Storm" because today is the feast day of Saint Jude. The irony is that Saint Jude is the Patron Saint of lost causes.


(Originally Posted on 28/10/13)