Snow in North Yorkshire is causing havoc only a few days after the thaw ... and it's feeling distinctly nippy here as well.
Meanwhile, local authorities are doing what they do best – sweet Fanny Adams. That means that hundreds of thousands of households are now suffering from rubbish mountains as refuse has not been collected. We no longer need a "winter of discontent" to have piles of rubbish in the streets. This is a normal event in 21st Century Britain.
The piece in the paper (linked above) has as one of its (three) writers, the fair Louise Gray, fresh from her recent triumph of telling us that, when the wind doesn't blow, windmills don't produce any electricity – as has been the case over most of the holiday period.
Even then the dumb broad (American English does have its uses ... "dismal tart" sounds too aggressive), can't get her the figures right, claiming that wind provides nearly half of ten percent of our electricity, when the actual output from renewables is 6.7 percent, and wind delivers 2.3 percent, with an average load factor of about 26 percent. And for this, we spend a £1 billion in subsidies, a fact which Gray conveniently fails to mention.
But it is omissions like this that mean the dots are never joined. Local government – as always – is whingeing about the "cuts" and that provides the excuse for doing even less for their money, while keeping a goodly number of over-paid, well-padded arses on comfy seats.
But, with a billion pounds in subsidies on "climate change mitigation" being just the tip of the iceberg, and global warming back in town, you would think some of these people could make the links. "Climate change" is an obsession we can no longer afford.
Perversely, the only sight of council workman we have seen over the Christmas period is a little man distributing leaflets telling us when our recycling collections are to be. How good it is to see the council get its priorities right, as the poor sod picked his way through the snow and the overflowing refuse bins.
The same, it seems, is happening in New York City, where garbage is piled high as well, although they have some little excuse there as the sanitation trucks are used for snow clearance. Here, no one has seen a garbage truck - or rubbish cart, as we used to call them - for weeks.
And now the United Nations agency UNICEF is warning that children in flood-hit areas of Pakistan, suffering from acute respiratory infections and malnutrition, are at risk because of the harsh cold weather. It wants another $82.1 million "to continue its life-saving and recovery programmes for children in the affected areas".
This, presumably, is the same United Nations which regards global warming as one of the greatest ever challenges to mankind, drinking from the same well of stupidity as the officials in this country who pour money down the drain on climate change and then cannot even organise the rubbish collections.
It is getting so that "third world" would be a compliment for these morons.
COMMENT: NEW GLOBAL WARMING THREAD
