Fair Weather Friends – An Old One

People are complaining about the weather. Nothing new there. Here is another example of things that haven’t changed much, written a couple of years ago…

FAIR WEATHER FRIENDS

People from in and around the Scottish village of Carrbridge in the Cairngorm mountains have been complaining about the BBC weather coverage.

They say that it lumps them in with nearby Aviemore and ignores the micro-climate that exists in their area.

They say the knock-on effect of this is that tourists and visitors are dissuaded from going because they are put off by the prospect of bad weather.

Ok, I will go with this for a minute.

First of all, I have been there several times and it is a lovely place – you should go there.

Secondly, this speaks of a grander problem about weather forecasting – and I don’t mean its accuracy. Personally, my favourite line about the weather people was always the Half Man Half Biscuit song with the lyric…

….opinionated weather forecasters telling me it is going to be a miserable day. Miserable to who? I quite like a bit of drizzle so stick to the facts.

Very often when you watch the BBC weather on the main 6 o’clock News [UK-wide, that is] you see the weather man explain London and surrounding areas and then vaguely wave his hand toward Manchester and say in ‘the north bla bla bla’.

Now, notice that this is for a UK weather broadcast. But that is the north of England being referred to – and not even the real north of England. It is just assumed that we all know what ‘the north’ means as it is never specifically identified that this is the north of England.

After that, Scotland gets about the same amount of time as Manchester or something, which is strange as Scotland is about 80% of the size of England geographically and therefore is quite unlikely to all be having the same weather. One weather forecaster famously did mention the Western Isles of Scotland in his forecast but went on to say something like ‘who cares’ or ‘there is nobody there anyway’ or something like that.

Some people do get fairly irritated by all of this – in Scotland and in the border areas and Newcastle and so forth. I don’t watch the weather much anyway, unless I want to go camping because it is always fairly changeable in Scotland. Other than camping I don’t really let the rain stop me doing anything.

The problem here for me is that what happens with the weather forecasting is reflective of UK planning policy.

Allow me to illustrate the thought process…

1. Take care of London and the important parts first
2. Near London and those important parts second
3. North a bit and middle England get some attention
4. Above Manchester and [southern] Scotland get a wave of the hand and a ‘one size fits all’ measure

5. Who cares about all those other parts anyway?

 

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