By Paul Homewood
Also on the Telegraph:
We are heading towards a national heatwave emergency, or heat wave as we usually call it. Just as a few chilly days in the winter are now known as “snow events” and winter gala nights go with the name, so the arrival of peak summer is welcomed as a period. life threatening. The government’s Cobra Emergency Response Unit was called in to plan for what could happen someday with temperatures in the upper 90s.
Back in time, a Met Office forecaster like Michael Fish or John Kettley would put a magnetic sun symbol on a map of the UK and tell us it’s going to be hot. Now, their predictions come with color-coded warnings and tips for wearing a hat, applying sunscreen, or sleeping under the sheets.
It borders on hysteria. In London yesterday, the temperature peaked at around 31°C – hot, but not as hot. The rest of the week looks warm for July, before the moth really arrives (probably) at the weekend. According to the Met Office: “It is unclear how long the very hot weather will last, but it is likely that much of Britain will return to cooler and more common conditions during the week.”
So why panic? It’s not like we’re facing anything on a par with the long hot summer of 1976 when for 15 consecutive days from June 23 to July 7 the temperature hit 90F (32C) somewhere in the UK. If that happened today, ministers, military commanders-in-chief and health officials would meeting in a permanent crisis session.
How have people coped with air conditioning, refrigerators, and times when walking around topless (men) or wearing the most skimpy clothes (women)? I used to sit in an Edwardian theater and wonder how they got along in suits and winged collars or skirts and whalebone corsets on the hottest of days, couldn’t take off because of the rules Society requires you to dress properly, however you may feel uncomfortable.
After all, hot summer is nothing new. In 1911, the sun shined almost without interruption for two months and that year, until recently, held the record for the highest temperature recorded in this country of 36.7 degrees Celsius on the 9th of May. 8.
Of course, everyone has endured the sweltering heat and has done what they can to ease the misery, just like we usually do. What is different today is the direct intervention of state agencies, a re-enactment of what we have seen during the Covid lockdowns.
The same players are, indeed, gaining the levers of the nannying agency now coordinated by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), the agency that is behind the pandemic. Its chief executive is Dame Jenny Harries, formerly known to everyone as the director of Public Health England. Once established, an agency like this must find a reason to intervene, if not, for what?
So the hot weather gave it an excuse to do it. If the thermometer rises above 40C this will be so noticeable it is ready to declare a “Level Four emergency”. This is triggered when the weather is so hot that “healthy people can get sick and die,” as well as the most vulnerable.
In London and the south of England, we have a Level Three “health temperature warning” advising us to “enjoy the hot weather when it arrives, but keep yourself hydrated and seek shade.” where possible when UV rays are strongest, between 11am. and 3 pm. “
Also, “keep cool indoors by closing curtains facing the sun – and remember that it can be cooler outside than indoors; never leave anyone in a closed, parked vehicle, especially infants and young children or animals, check that the refrigerator, freezer and fan are working properly; and avoid exertion during the hottest parts of the day. “
Well, who knows? How did we manage millennia before UKHSA was born? A Level Four emergency will cause schools to close, just like (unnecessarily) during a pandemic. When I was young and the weather was hot, the lessons were held outside. Now, just the prospect of a day or two of extreme heat is nerve-wracking, potentially affecting food supplies, disrupting travel and shutting down nuclear power plants. . It will definitely encourage those who have worked from home for the past few years to stay.
There is, of course, a connection between this overreaction and the way we live today, with the state feeling empowered to encroach on every aspect of our lives and, let’s be honest, encouraged. encouraged by many people. It is the longing for companionship that Boris Johnson identified when he promised to lay “an arm around the nation” to support people through whatever adversity they may be going through.
This is an approach that underlies the expansion of the welfare state to include millions of people who may be working but not working and fighting against any NHS reform, then billions more are needed. pound funding to prevent its demise.
This is why we spend so much and tax so much, central issues in the Tory leadership election. A state that thinks it knows how we should live our lives best has no moral obligation to take most of our income. Politicians feel that the majority want the government or others to provide for them and their need to adjust their policies accordingly. But if people want to be cared for from birth to grave, they can’t have low taxes either.
To fund the familial state, taxes need to be kept higher than normal and other programs, like defense, receive less than they need. There is a trade-off. Above all, the precautionary principle that guides modern governance creates many rules and regulations that suffocate individual businesses.
It portrays itself as an inability to rationalize personal risk or accept any difficulty, however small or inevitable, and pits people against political arguments about re-imagining regulation. model of the state or question what it does.
Amid all the tax controversies dominating the Tory leadership contest, there is a precious little debate on this fundamental point. However, there was plenty of hot air – as if we hadn’t had enough of that.
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