Good Heavens Britain! Did the clouds part and the sun peek through for five minutes? Every newspaper in hysteria mode!

Mothers ‘mortified’ because they thought they could put a four week old baby out to bake on a Brighton beach with no marinade and overcooked the poor little shaver.

Gritting lorries trying to damp down the tarmac.

School’s closed because too many pupils wanted to leave class for a glass of water.

NHS England putting ‘extra capacity into unscheduled care pathways’ (must remember to store that one away for future use!).

“457,459 people” going to an A & E department last week –  though the figures don’t say how many usually attend, so we are left with a large figure and nothing to compare it to.

Wot, no hosepipe ban, not even a teeny weeny one?

All that because the temperature rose to a moderate 30°? 30° degrees is perfectly normal for us, any time between April and late October. Yesterday it was 38.5°. Remember us? We’re the ones that live in a ‘pleasantly warmer clime’ according to Ian Duncan Smith, so we are undeserving of a pension increase. We spend our time sipping Sangria’s at Malaga golf clubs.  All one million of us.

At 38.5° you have the air conditioning on all the time – if you are lucky enough to have air conditioning. If you don’t, you spend the time in the darkest corner of your home, desperately trying to stay cool. You stand under cold showers. You have to – you’re a pensioner, one of those especially vulnerable people with chronic illnesses that ‘health and social care experts’ are now bound by duty to worry about since the mercury has climbed to 30° in dear old Blighty…..

Will we see a ‘Summer cooling allowance’ for pensioners shortly, since this is such a serious situation for the elderly? 50% grants for the installation of air conditioning? Not payable for those fortunate folk sipping Sangria round the log fire in the cooler climes like France and Spain!

Yesterday, the Department of Work and Pensions issued yet another document purporting to show how France, Spain and five other countries enjoyed such balmy temperate weather year round, that pensioners living in those countries had no need of a pension increase to help with their energy bills; you can hear the hollow laughter all over the continent this morning as Britain goes into panic mode at the sight of the Sun.

Wait til you get the ‘minus fifteen’ nights in the winter that accompany your new ‘pleasantly warmer’ climate…..

760 deaths as temperatures climb to 30°? 14,000 deaths in France as the temperatures climbed to 46°. Forty-six degrees!

What next? The sun goes in, it rains, and 760 deaths from drowning as ‘rain falls over England’?

Blackpool Pensioners dreaming of their Winter Fuel Allowance?

cascadian July 20, 2013 at 21:41

On a not unrelated topic, I came across a record of “Graduated National
Insurance Contributions” in my files a year or so ago. If I interpret it
correctly, I am entitled to the grand sum of approx 50p-a-week when I turn 65
years-old. I fully intend to pursue this pension as the deductions were taken
from me when I could least afford them. (As an aside, gross earnings 1972-73,
GBP 1791.33p as a junior engineer) Has any migrant here had any success in
claiming this?

belinus July 20,
2013 at 17:45

The Illuminaunty July 20, 2013 at 15:14

Nope to all, but today it is clear the country is in serious trouble of the
type of corporate takeover, exactly what you fought as the consequence of such
rising in Germany.

I question the understanding of duty incumbent on all Christian British to
uphold and protect the realm, if the answer by the older generations, and the
not so older, is to run.

DtP July 20, 2013 at 15:34

Boring alert (I accidently have a shite job) but A&E last year was
nearly 19 million, Outpatients about 90 million and coincidently APC –
Inpatients was about 19 million too. I desperately need another job!

JuliaM July 20,
2013 at 14:34

“What next? The sun goes in, it rains, and 760 deaths from drowning as
‘rain falls over England’?”

Violent thunderstorms forecast for Wednesday evening. Just sayin’…

ivan July 20, 2013 at 16:52

One day next week? You jest perhaps?

Down here we’ve had them every afternoon for the last two weeks,
including warm rain that vanishes off the roads and roofs a couple of
minutes after it stops so raising the humidity. This, of course, makes the
30+ C temperature appear much worse.

Engineer July 20, 2013 at 13:48

Anna – it’s even worse than that.

All week, I’ve been subjected to the horrors of glaring white hairy legs,
knobbly knees, and exposed torsos slowly turning crimson. And that’s just the
women. Some of the men are far worse….some people really should not be allowed
out in temperatures above 65F.

The sartorial inelegance of the average British male is sepressingly
highlighted by summer warmth. Crisp linen shirts and elegantly pressed light
cotton trousers? No. wrinkled, baggy not-sure-if-they’re-long-or-shorts,
trainers and stained tee-shirts. And that’s their Sunday best…

Engineer July 20, 2013 at 13:49

Sepressingly? Argh – no – depressingly. It’s the 79F heat getting to
me.

right_writes
July 20, 2013 at 10:19

If only we could send our shitty government to a nice “secure” holiday
home, “with a pleasantly warm climate”, so that they can research and report
away, to their heart’s content… I am pretty certain we would be better off
without it.

The
Illuminaunty July 20, 2013 at 10:03

You think you have it tough, m’dear.
Try a Frozen pension with your
Sangria.

http://parzivalshorse.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/brilliant-one-day-perfect-next.html

Anna
Raccoon July 20, 2013 at 10:24

Oh absolutely, please don’t think I forget about you guys who went to
live near your children and were penalised by HM Government. Disgraceful.

Personally, if I could arrange it, I’d pay the fare of every last Briton
abroad and arrange for us all to turn up at once and claim every damn thing
we are entitled to.

Then see them afford to pay for outreach centres for one legged Kosovan
lesbians with a case pending at the ECtHR. It’s the money we put in the pot
for years that they are playing with…..

Why the Hell don’t they just make it all taxable, then their few
fictitious ‘rich’ pensioners would get anything, but some of the people I
see round me who are genuinely struggling to stay afloat would suffer.

I know Eleanor ‘Andcart will tell me that she is happy doing what she
does and to keeps her fit – but can you begin to imagine the outcry if
pensioners in Britain were cutting acres of grass in this weather just to
make ends meet?

Disenfranchised of Buckingham July 20, 2013 at 10:52

Anna, you did not put anything into a pot. There is and never was a
pot.

Pensions were set up as a Ponzi scheme. Maggie tried to change this
with an opt out from the earnings related part. Otherwise every other
politician is complicit in conning the public.

I’m paying for current pensioners. Should I pay the pensions of the
English or of UK residents?

Anna
Raccoon July 20, 2013 at
11:25

“Should I pay the pensions of the English or of UK residents”.

Pensions should be paid to everyone who is entitled – by their
contributions – to one.
What are you suggesting — that Britain is on
a par with Russia which used to penalise and discriminate against those
who left the Soviet Union.
It’s quite illogical – those pensioners
who live outside Britain actually save Britain a lot of money -why
should they be penalised for doing so, and penalised via something which
they paid for?

The Illuminaunty July 20, 2013 at 11:51

Absolutely, m’dear. We do not put a cost onto the NHS; we don’t
wear out the roads or fill the rubbish bins. We do not even take up
the time of hundreds of bureaucrats.

Oh, but I did a few weeks ago..

I got a tax bill from the UK Gumnut for ‘taxes unpaid or
underpaid’. For 2011/12

A week later I got a second letter, the same, but for 2012/13.

Attached to the bill, which was for over 1000 squids in the first
instance and over 2000 squids the second, was a chart showing
‘personal allowance’ rates. In both instances the PE’s were much
larger than the amounts owed and double or more the untaxed original
amounts.

I had to phone the Tax Office from Oz, late at night. Each call had
me wait for 20 mins for a drone to answer. Once I pointed the issues
out they very quickly applied the unapplied allowances and declared me
tax-free.

Disenfranchised of Buckingham July 20, 2013 at 11:52

I wasn’t suggesting anything, I asked a question. However in my
opinion ALL benefits should be paid based on contributions, none based
on residence. I include health, education etc as benefits. Of course
the fine detail is for another discussion as it is way off topic.

Don Cox
July 20, 2013 at 16:00

“However in my opinion ALL benefits should be paid based on
contributions, none based on residence. I include health, education
etc as benefits.”

How can children pay for their education out of contributions, when
they haven’t yet earned any money ?

And if health treatment is to be paid out of contributions, how are
those who need very expensive treatment to survive ?

The whole point is to share the cost equally (so far as possible)
between all citizens. This is not a Ponzi scheme, because there is no
profit involved.

belinus July
20, 2013 at 13:42

Have to agree there, the pension funds were a con to be reaped by
those that set them up…the private fund that is the Bank for
International Settlements.
It is clear today they are setting the
pension funds up for theft, ergo there will be no more pensions for we
that pay today, so why should we?

In the new world there will be non left of the current generations if
the warmongers and the Frankenstein’s get to complete what they have set
forth from a eugenics point of view.

If we are to use common sense when judging the situation then those
who take the pension while out of the country, those who gave their
consent to the mess we currently suffer and therefore ultimately gave
us, which in their quick shift abroad they obviously don’t like, should
forfeit the cash cow. I mean having your cake (the booty from the crime)
and running of to eat the blighter, is a bit rich. And to then carp on
from afar about how things should be done to my mind shows a cowardly,
callous and inward aloofness to the fact, Britain is being destroyed and
you ran.

If those that made well their lives on the back of the British
taxpayer are to expect full on respect for the fact we consented and
funded a system for those whiley enough to make big cash, to do so, then
perhaps they might consider that in running as the shit hits the fan
because they had inside information, is not befitting the hero
status.

This includes all businessmen that made good here and then sold out
to the corporate empire and ran.
It pretty much boils down to this
for a great many of the above, they all joined together to make for
theirselves and leave the debt to their grandchildren and if the jack
boot does come out, left their own to the sword.
No thoughts of all
coming back to help sort this mess out as it is clear the majority of
people in this country today are fast asleep outside makeup, white
teeth, soap operas and xfactor to do anything ????

We are in a mess as such we should be sounding the get home quick
alarms to do what needs to be done, but then one does wonder what
conscience prevents this?

The Illuminaunty July 20, 2013 at 15:14

If I am reading you correctly, Belinus, then you are telling me
that when I joined the forces at 17, almost right after leaving school
and with the cradle-marks still on my arse, I should have known I was
joining a Ponzi scheme intending to rip myself off in my later
years?

That when I went overseas defending my country – and you for that
matter – killing several brown lads and very nearly getting my young
arse some additional holes to match the small, useful one already
there, I was actually a coward?

That all that time, some twenty odd years of it while I was paid at
one third the rate that my civilian counterparts were being paid, I
was actively involved in ripping you off?

That when I decided to move to live elsewhere after paying a
largish fraction of my small pittance into the funds that YOU still
continued to vote for, I was in fact running away from the inevitable
results of my previous decisions, which I had bugger-all choice about,
but was nevertheless all my friggin’ fault.

And now I should reap the sound thrashing on my larger arse now
free from cradle-marks and therefore ripe for some marks of a
different stripe?

Is that what you meant?

Anna Raccoon July 20, 2013 at 15:28

I suspect that is what he meant.

You hold him, I’ll…..

Grrrr…..!

The Illuminaunty July 20, 2013 at 16:21

Hold him? Nah. I just pour you a long cold drink of many
colours in my Tavern, my dear. You deserve it.

Elena
‘andcart July 20, 2013 at 19:46

Happily, the grass has stopped growing. But Sadly the weeds haven’t. Or
do I mean Happily the weeds haven’t?

Mark July 20, 2013 at 09:38

I need a pee. Better put some extra capacity into an unscheduled care
pathway.

Michael J.
McFadden July 20, 2013 at 09:15

37.5 here in Philly yesterday, and about the fifth day straight with highs
over 35.

I remember growing up in Brooklyn where the only AC to be had on days like
that was if you spent the afternoon at the movies.

Of course you could always go down to Coney Island and frolic about in the
waves while watching the older folks stretch out under the sun with big curved
aluminum reflectors to concentrate EXTRA sun on their bright red bodies.
Amazing any of them survived to see the following day!

– MJM

Joe Public July 20, 2013 at 09:00

As Moor Larkin alludes, if the Met Office was even half-way competent, it
would have predicted 3 months ago this brief spell of warmth in our weather.

Instead, it wastes a fortune with one of the worlds most expensive
computers, scaremongering that in 87 years it “might” be 2C warmer.

Moor
Larkin July 20, 2013 at 08:51

Maybe this latest climate catastrophe will mean a reduction in the 5M
holidays taken every month to “somewhere warmer” by the recession-hit British
masses.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ott/overseas-travel-and-tourism—monthly-release/august-2012/stb-monthly-overseas-travel-and-tourism–august-2012.html#tab-Trends-in-visits-abroad-by-UK-Residents–Reference-tables-1-4-5-6-
Or
perhaps Mum really will be going to Iceland (subject to the volcanic ash
clouds)……….

It’s not hot enough for the Global Warming lobby however. They have been
spotted rubbing their hands…….

Jeremy
Poynton July 20, 2013 at 08:30

As for “pathways”, it would seem that the Burnham Pathway dispatched far
more than the Liverpool Care Pathway,,,