Met Office forecast was ‘not helpful’

The Met Office has admitted issuing advice to government that was "not helpful" during last year's remarkable switch in weather patterns.

Between March and April 2012, the UK experienced an extraordinary shift from high pressure and drought to low pressure and downpours.

But the Met Office said the forecast for average rainfall "slightly" favoured drier than average conditions.

The three-month forecast is said to be experimental.

It is sent to contingency planners but has been withheld from the public since the Met Office was pilloried for its "barbecue summer" forecast in 2009.   

Quick question when has Met Office advice ever been helpful?

Now they’re basically admitting they don’t know and just use experimental guess work to predict what’s going to happen, tell us something we don’t already know.

Being a meteorologist must be the easiest job in the world, you spend all day making predictions that turn out to be wrong, and then come in the next day and do it all over again!

If you watch any weather report all they know is high pressure, low pressure that’s it. Everything else what temperature it’ll be, what the wind will be like, whether it’s going to rain, they’ve no idea, you might as well make your own weather forecast it’ll be just as, if not more, accurate. 

New Cumnock wins dismal town award

New Cumnock in East Ayrshire has been named “Scotland's most dismal town” in the annual Carbuncle awards.

The town becomes the latest recipient of the Plook on a Plinth, awarded each year by Urban Realm magazine.

Judges highlighted the “haemorrhaging of shops” and “a general absence of maintenance on derelict properties” as reasons for choosing New Cumnock.

The Plook on a Plinth award was established in 2000 to provoke debate about the quality of development in many of Scotland's towns and cities.

How galling must that be for the residents of New Cumnock, on top of all its woes it’s now featured in the news as the most dismal town in an entire nation.

This Plook on a Plinth award was designed to provoke debate about the quality of development in Scottish towns and cities, however I don’t think labelling a place a dismal town that is full of derelict properties and is haemorrhaging shops, is the way to get that debate started. 

To me all that does is make the town in question a laughing stock, and makes it sound like a lost cause. 

This reminds me of when a book called Crap Towns the 50 Worst Places to Live in the UK was released, in the months that followed the publishers received letters nationwide from people furious, that there town hadn’t been included. So the publishers released a sequel. 

I love a bit of self-deprecating humour, but is nobody proud of where they live or where they come from anymore?    

Ministers told to prepare for cuts of up to 10%

The Treasury has written to government departments warning most ministers they will have to cut up to 10% of their budgets for the year 2015/16.

Spending on health, schools and international aid will continue to be given protection.

Ministers are preparing for the spending review to be held on 26 June.

Chancellor George Osborne announced in last week's Budget speech that he wanted to cut another £11.5bn from public spending.

Firstly it should be clarified that the 10% figure isn’t final, but the Treasury’s opening offer for the negotiations to follow.

Also why is international aid being given special protection from the cuts, protecting health and schools is obvious but can we really afford to be giving away billions in aid, I don’t think so. Shouldn’t we get our finances in order first?  

Again it could all change but asking departments to cut 10% out of their budget is placing a huge burden on them, and will most likely result in high numbers of job losses.

George Osborne has been accused by many esteemed critics for cutting to deep to fast, so it will be interesting to see how they react to the news he plans to go even deeper.

Man fakes knife attack to impress date

A man arranged for his friend to attack him and his date with a knife – in a desperate bid to impress her.

But the stunt backfired after she vowed never to speak to him again.

Police were told that the couple were set upon by a man wielding a large knife as they took a spring stroll in a forest park in the US state of Arkansas.

How big is this guys inferiority complex that he felt the only way to impress his date was to get his mate to attack them with a knife, and then stage a simulated heroic struggle to make him look tough.

Let’s, for a moment, look at what would have happened if it had worked, and a few months later he introduces her to his friends and she goes hang on a minute I recognise him from somewhere, oh yeah he was the one who attacked us with a knife.

Also if it had worked what would he have tried next, would he have set fire to her house and tried to rescue her from the blaze, or pushed her in a river and dived in after her only to forget he can’t swim?

This woman has had a lucky escape in more ways than one. 

Australian grocers’ $5 “just looking fee”

An Australian retailer has a simple message for people who just want to look around: pay up or get out.

A specialty grocery store in Brisbane, Australia, began charging a $5 “just looking” fee in February, Consumerist reports.  

The policy is intended to curb the "high volume of people who use this store as a reference point and then purchase goods elsewhere," reads the sign posted outside the store.

This policy will prove very effective as the store in question will soon no longer have anybody in it at all, and that sign on the window could well be replaced by a sign saying closing down everything must go.

I get that it must be frustrating for a store owner to have a lot of potential customers come in look around and then go elsewhere, but I fail to see how charging them $5 will help the situation. 

UK Border Agency to be scrapped

The UK Border Agency is to be abolished with its work returning to the Home Office, Theresa May has announced.

The home secretary told MPs "its performance was not good enough".

The UK Border Agency was formed in 2008 as an arms-length agency of the Home Office but Mrs May said this had led to a "secretive culture".

It will now be split into parts focusing on the visa system and on immigration law enforcement. Both parts will report directly to ministers.

Ever since it was set up the Border Agency has been a mess and while this decision makes complete sense, a much bigger question arises.

The Border Agency has failed to fulfil the role it was given, question is shouldn’t the government set up a proper body and give it the necessary powers to do the job of organising the immigration system properly? 

Heseltine: “No national will to improve economy”

Former Conservative party deputy Prime Minister Lord Heseltine has suggested that British people may be so wealthy that they lack the “national will” needed to secure an economic recovery.

He told the Independent it was “not essential” for the UK economy to improve: “It could keep drifting down”.

He said one theory was that the richer people were, the less desire they had to improve their situation.

Basically Heseltine is stating the reason the economy is the way it is, has nothing to do with the government’s policies, and is instead down to the fact that the public are simply too rich to care about it improving.

I’m sure families and businesses up and down the country are delighted at the state the economy is in, because everyone’s making an absolute fortune. Out of touch immediately springs to mind.   

Heseltine’s comment about how it isn’t essential for the economy to improve and how it can keep drifting down is puzzling.

Having been recently downgraded and threatened with further reductions, and with growth cut again, and the threat of a triple dip recession, somehow I don’t think we are in a position to say ‘oh don’t worry about the economy it can keep on sliding and it won’t matter’.  

These comments from Heseltine are hard to fathom, I don’t see what point he’s trying to make and also there’s very little to agree with.   

Sign error may mean speeders let-off

Thousands of motorway speeding convictions could be overturned because the font used to display the numbers on some variable speed limit signs may not have complied with traffic regulations.

The Crown Prosecution Service said the signs showed mph numbers taller and narrower than they should have been.

Some lawyers and traffic consultants now want any penalties which were handed out over the course of the six years the signs were in place to be quashed, arguing they are not legally enforceable.

What a load of bulls**t, if someone was caught speeding on a motorway then regardless of the size of the sign or the narrowness of the numbers, I really have never heard anything so ridiculous, then they should be punished.

Forget the stupid criteria if the number on the sign was visible then there shouldn’t be anything to complain about, and if anyone pulls an Arsene Wenger and says they didn’t see it then they should be made to have an eye test.

South Dakota to allow armed teachers

The US state of South Dakota has enacted a law allowing school districts to arm teachers and other school staff.

The law’s backers say it will prevent mass school shootings like the December massacre in Connecticut that killed 26.

The measure does not force school districts to arm teachers and will not require teachers to carry guns.

But it allows each school district to choose if staff could be armed. It takes effect in July.

This new law is crazy, there’s no other word for it.

The politicians in South Dakota have decided that the best way to prevent gun violence in schools is to legally allow guns in schools.

I’m just thinking about when I was at school and how if someone shot their way into my classroom, the percentage of trust I would have had in one of my teachers to protect us would have been a big fat zero.

This really is a dreadful idea.

Osborne plans to weaken bankers’ bonus cap

Chancellor George Osborne is in Brussels determined to water down the European Parliament’s proposals to curb bankers’ bonuses.

But EU finance ministers in the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (Ecofin) are expected to approve last week’s proposals.

They include limiting bonuses to 100% of a banker’s annual salary or to 200% if shareholders approve.

The City of London fears the rules will drive away talent and restrict growth.

Right let me get this straight having said at various points that he would get tough on bankers’ bonuses George Osborne is meeting with other EU members to stop them capping bankers’ bonuses.

I get the argument that if you squeeze bankers too much it will drive talent away etc. But it doesn’t really work here, because if these proposals are approved and are put into place across the EU where would all the bankers go, they can’t all go to China, America etc.   

And however you look at it a bonus of up to 100% of their annual salary or 200% if the shareholders approve, is still a very generous deal.  

Cardinal sorry for sexual misconduct

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the former leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, has admitted his sexual conduct has at times “fallen beneath the standards expected of me”.

He apologised and asked forgiveness from those he had “offended”.

In a statement, he also apologised to the Church and the people of Scotland.

The cardinal resigned last Monday after three priests and a former priest had made allegations of improper behaviour against him dating back to the 80s.

He is expected to face a Vatican inquiry as a result of his admission.

The inquiry into the former head of the Catholic Church in Scotland is not likely to begin until after a new Pope is chosen.

Having read this story what I want to know is why the words police and investigation were not mentioned at any point.

Why isn’t this being dealt with by the law, I can’t foresee the Vatican being overly keen to damage their reputation further on this issue, meaning he’ll probably get away with a minimal punishment.

If the Catholic Church is serious about stamping out this kind of behaviour then let the law deal with it, because it doesn’t exactly project transparency when announcing you’ll be investigating yourself.   

Obama signs $85bn budget cuts into effect

US President Barack Obama has signed into effect a wave of steep spending cuts which he has warned could damage the US economy.

The cuts - known as the sequester and drawn up two years ago - will take $85bn (£56bn) from the US federal budget this year.

Last-ditch talks at the White House to avert the reductions before Friday's deadline broke up without agreement.

This news is just baffling, these cuts were designed to be so severe that it would force the politicians in Washington to negotiate a better deal, and yet somehow they still haven’t managed to.

There problems could and should have been sorted out long before the midnight deadline and now, having shot themselves in the foot, the Republicans and Democrats could potentially have caused a setback for the recovery of global growth. 

All it would have taken was a little compromise, but what the hell. 

Lib Dems hold on to Eastleigh

The Liberal Democrats have won the Eastleigh by-election, with the UK Independence Party pushing the Conservatives into third place.

Leader Nick Clegg said the party’s candidate Mike Thornton had pulled off a “stunning victory” which had been secured “against the odds”.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage said it’s best-ever performance in a Westminster poll showed it had “connected with voters”.

David Cameron said the Tories would recover from a “disappointing” result.

I think Clegg should tone down the victory celebrations as this was a seat already under Lib Dem control, and let’s not forget that this by-election was held because Chris Huhne had to resign for lying about driving offences, so Lib Dems you don’t have that much to shout about.

While UKIP have clearly performed very well and gained 24.2% of the vote, and pushed the Tories into second, they didn’t win and even if they did it would have brought their number of seats to a grand total of 1.

So can everybody calm down about UKIP becoming this major political force because at the moment their just not.

Finally I think that candidates who run for parties like, Monster Raving Loony or Elvis Loves Pets (not making that one up) should really stop, they were a funny novelty for a while, but that novelty has worn off.

Nine of the 13 candidates who represented the non-mainstream parties between them polled a whopping 4.94% of the vote, I reiterate it’s not funny anymore and their just wasting everybody’s time, including their own.