Why we should be thankful that politicians don’t control the weather

We’ve had a couple of ‘severe weather incidents’ (media hyperbole for strong winds) in Edinburgh this winter. Most people have taken the hyperbole with a pinch of salt – a bit of caution is fair enough, but it’s hardly armageddon. The second big wind warning in January splashed across the media about the time the wind was already blowing. Perhaps the weather people got a bit coy after talking up Hurricane Bawbag in December.

Now, I think weather warnings are probably a good thing. I ended up listening to local radio during the January storm to hear what was happening. Not so much, as it happened – mostly property damage and lost power, since people were sensibly staying indoors. I gather an aircraft at Edinburgh airport was damaged by a flying bus shelter. (Fear not: an investigation was launched!)

The radio show had the Scottish transport minister on the line. With not much else to do, they hauled him over the coals because he had not made it to his ‘Resilience Room’ before the winds hit. I don’t often sympathise with politicians, but this line of attack struck me as bizarre. It seems risible that ministers should scramble to bunker-like command centres when a weather warning appears, and that if they do not, they are somehow letting us down. We all know what happened in King Canute’s command centre.

Suppose a minister makes it to their ‘Resilience Room’ in good time, what are they to do? The weather, being a natural phenomenon known for its capriciousness, is unlikely to yield to ministerial pressure. And those trained to respond to weather emergencies (power company employees, firefighters etc) are known for their ability to get on with the job without having politicians breathing down their necks. And yet the questioning went on and on.

So I wondered, what would happen if the weather did obey politicians?

Well, you can imagine the vote-getting ploys. ‘Vote Labour, and we’ll ensure that it only rains at night and never at weekends.’ Our current worries about global warming would pale into insignificance as politicians tried to out-sunshine each other. With the ability to wield weather systems at will, it would be a slow-witted politician who didn’t contemplate taxing sunshine.

So in listening to the sub-Paxmanesque interrogation of the minister, I felt glad that some things stay outside the remit of politicians. Sometimes, I think that the media view the government as some kind of ‘primum movens’ – the ultimate cause of everything. I’ll tell you this, if we expected such powers from the government, our tax bills would be astronomical (in fact they’d be cosmological). But I suppose you can’t get a hurricane into a radio studio, without causing a lot of mess.