RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Blow me down, they've turned the weather forecast into Project Fear


 Bob Dylan got it wrong. Who says you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows?

These days you don’t only need a weatherman, you need the Department for Transport, the rail companies, the bus companies, the police, the BBC, the NHS, your local council, Elf’n’Safety, HR, the teaching unions, Greenpeace, Extinction Rebellion…

Everybody wants to star in the movie. I half expected Boris and the Two Ronnies of Doom to hold an emergency press conference at No 10, warning that unless we stayed in our homes during Storm Eunice, we were all GOING TO DIE!

Richard Littlejohn writes: 'Before the first gusts of Storm Eunice had arrived on these shores, rail and bus services were being suspended and passengers told not to travel'

Richard Littlejohn writes: ‘Before the first gusts of Storm Eunice had arrived on these shores, rail and bus services were being suspended and passengers told not to travel’

Just as the Government finally abandons all Covid restrictions, the authorities have managed to find a new excuse to throw their weight around and scare us half to death.

Predictably, the Warden Hodges Tendency was first out of the blocks, padlocking parks and playgrounds and taping off benches.

In London, entrances to the royal parks were all sealed with crime scene tape. On Primrose Hill, a dog walker said he was approached by a copper yelling: ‘GET OUT OF HERE NOW!’ Step away from the swings, chummy, you’re nicked.

It was the same story across the country as ‘shelter in place’ alerts were issued everywhere. Presumably, only the fact that it was a bit breezy prevented Plod from sending up the drones again.

Before the first gusts of Storm Eunice had arrived on these shores, rail and bus services were being suspended and passengers told not to travel.

I’m surprised that all mainline stations weren’t plastered with those classic wartime posters featuring a soldier with a Lee Enfield rifle demanding to know: ‘Is your journey really necessary?’

A dog walker was told to leave Primrose Hill as in London, entrances to the royal parks were sealed with crime scene tape

A dog walker was told to leave Primrose Hill as in London, entrances to the royal parks were sealed with crime scene tape

Commuters arriving at London Bridge station were ordered: ‘Turn around and go home.’

Fix bayonets!

Councils closed libraries and halted dustbin collections. So no change there, then. They would have shut the schools, too, had it not been half-term in most areas.

The rolling news channels went into interstellar overdrive, alternating between Storm Vlad, the Beast from the East, and Storm Eunice, which some people insisted on calling the Beast from the West, even though it doesn’t rhyme.

Forgive me, but I found it difficult to tremble in the face of something called Storm Eunice. Not for the first time, I can’t help wondering where they get these daft names.

After Eunice comes Storm Franklin, presumably in honour of Aretha, the Queen of Soul.

Respect!

Then it’s Gladys, Herman and Imani. Coincidentally, my Great Auntie Gladys celebrates her 102nd birthday next week. Now she’s got a storm named after her.

Herman? For Herman Munster, perhaps? No doubt those who decide to hunker down at home when that one hits will be known as Herman’s Hermits.

And Imani? Wasn’t she the model who was married to David Bowie? Look, I’m not trying to diminish the impact of Eunice. People have died, including a woman crushed when a tree fell on a car in Muswell Hill Road, North London, a street I know well.

What vexes me is the hysteria that inevitably accompanies these ‘severe weather events’. We used to be stoic in the face of bad weather. It was a proud British trait.

The man thought he would be able to get his dog out for a walk out before the the predicted 100mph winds hit London with Storm Eunice but was told to leave

The man thought he would be able to get his dog out for a walk out before the the predicted 100mph winds hit London with Storm Eunice but was told to leave

We used to have snow. Now we have ‘thundersnow’. We used to have weather, now we have ‘weather bombs’. I heard some pants-wetter on the wireless yesterday describing Eunice as a ‘bomb cyclone’.

As real bombs could be landing on Kiev any day now, using the same kind of language to describe high winds is tasteless in the extreme, to say the least.

Some other alleged expert kept talking about the ‘Sting Jet’ which was set to unleash its fury on Britain. (In the event, it didn’t.)

I thought Sting Jet was one of those animated Gerry Anderson cartoons, like Thunderbirds.

Anything can happen in the next half hour!

Elsewhere, another expert was pumping up the volume by claiming that three storms in a week — Franklin coming on top of Storm Eunice and Storm Pete and Dud, or whatever it was called — was ‘unprecedented’ in the history of named storms.

True, but then again we’ve only been naming storms since 2015.

It’s a bit like all those football ‘records’ which date from the establishment of the Premier League in 1992, ignoring the previous 100-plus years’ history of the professional game.

Naming storms is another unwelcome import from America, like Black Lives Matter, Black Friday sales and Trick Or Treat.

At least in the U.S. they have proper hurricanes, like Katrina, which lay waste to entire states and sometimes claim hundreds of lives. Our storms are pretty feeble in comparison, despite the occasional isolated 100mph gust.

That’s not to underplay the effect Eunice or any other storm can have on communities. But exaggerating the potential for disaster is par for the course these days.

Named storms are part of the modern self-aggrandisement culture, along with the meaningless traffic light anti-terror alerts beloved of the Home Office and Scotland Yard, which do absolutely nothing to prevent attacks.

On the wireless yesterday, a woman from the Met Office admitted it was all part of a process of ‘raising awareness’.

Project Fear by any other name.

Plus, it allows dull meteorologists to pose as fearless frontline players in the battle to save the planet from impending immolation. Far more exciting than boring old weather forecasting.

Damage to the white roof covering at the O2 arena in London during Storm Eunice last week

Damage to the white roof covering at the O2 arena in London during Storm Eunice last week

Having to put up with irritating TV autocuties warning us nightly to wrap up warm, carry an umbrella and stay hydrated makes me yearn for the good old days of Michael Fish, even when he got it hopelessly wrong.

Neither he, nor Bill Giles, ever felt the need to deliver lifestyle lectures or offer pseudo-scientific explanations for an unexpected cold snap.

We’ve always had the odd spell of extreme weather in my lifetime, let alone since time immemorial.

My mum remembers Dad making a two-mile round trip in deep snow to bring back a bag of coal in my pram during the big freeze of 1955.

Once upon a time, we made the best of inclement weather instead of treating it as a harbinger of Armageddon.

As kids, when the mercury went below zero, we’d pour water on the pavements to create slides and take to the hills with makeshift sleds.

During the cold winters in the early 1960s, the Fens would be flooded deliberately to create an alfresco ice rink, open to all.

Compare and contrast that with the lemon-sucking jobsworths who dyed Buxton’s Blue Lagoon black during lockdown to stop people swimming.

And I don’t have to remind readers of this column about the Great Storm of 1987, which caused far more devastation than Eunice. I slept through it.

It wasn’t just extreme cold, either. Most of you will recall the water shortages caused by the long hot summers of ’76 and ’77, before global warming had been invented. There were standpipes in the street. In desperation, Labour’s drought minister Denis Howell — a former football referee — even hired a Red Indian medicine man to perform a rain dance in the hope that he might incite the heavens to open.

You couldn’t make it up. Can you imagine the deranged reaction to something like that today?

Howell would be instantly cancelled, accused of everything from racism and cultural appropriation to climate change ‘denial’.

Back then, we just laughed.

No one expected the Government to make the weather, or instruct us how to react to it.

Sadly, after two long years of totalitarian Covid restrictions, that’s exactly what some people have come to expect. They seem to have lost all ability to think for themselves and act accordingly.

Instead of calmly providing relevant information and letting us make up our own minds, during the pandemic ministers chose to micro-manage our lives — backed by hysterical scaremongering, heavy-handed enforcement and disproportionate punishments.

Depressingly, millions were more than happy to go along with it. Some still appear incapable of making their own decisions, even when it comes to choosing whether to leave the house.

On Friday, as Eunice approached, an agitated woman called Tina from Putney phoned LBC radio, complaining about the lack of a clear message from the Government.

‘There are people terrified to go out,’ she said.

‘They don’t know whether they should go to work or not. The Government should be clear as to whether they should venture out or not. People need to know what they should do.’

When the presenter asked if she thought ministers should issue ‘an immediate, blanket, mandatory, stay-at-home order’, Tina unhesitatingly replied:

‘Absolutely.’

We are all going to hell in a handcart. Project Fear has a lot to answer for. How long before we snap out of this infantile madness?

Bob, it’s over to you.

The answer my friend…

Leave a Reply