Recently storm Ophelia caused three fatalities across Ireland in a single day. Of course, to put some perspective on that, on any average day in the country, around eighty people die from all causes, (30,000 deaths/year).
In the case of one guy during the storm though, he was on his way home from work when his problem happened. I did not listen too closely so I cannot say what killed the man but his widow was on this morning complaining bitterly that the Government didn’t tell us in more detail what to do in such a storm, hence her husband’s unnecessary death and her newly found victim status in the media spotlight.
I truly despair at the stupidity of that. This woman has kids she said so she is a wife and a mother and one presumes, a responsible, thinking adult. And yet she needs Big Brother to instruct her on how to behave herself during a fucking storm for God’s sake! In the days leading up to its arrival, warnings were everywhere. We had 24-hour non-stop live coverage on RTE for the duration of the storm itself and the damned thing only spent a few hours each place it went anyway. In Cork where I was, the wind rattled high all morning, really blew up about noon, was incredibly ferocious between one and two and it was all but gone by three. In that short space of time in Cork City alone, over six hundred trees were brought down and hundreds of others damaged. Slates were on roads all over.
From the beginning of the previous week, the Met Office was making noises about a bit of nasty weather developing over the Atlantic. By Wednesday they were fleshing it out, calling it a storm and giving the bitch a name. Then it was labelled a storm force eleven and an idiot knew it would be nasty. The night before the thing made landfall the Met Office ungraded the bitch to storm force twelve in gusts. That folks is a serious bit of weather not to be ignored. If you are the kind of adult who needs another adult to “tell” you what do in such circumstances then get yourself back to kindergarten and listen this time around.
But whatever we do, let’s not ask the politicians to do something about it. Their answer would inevitably involve the setting up of a new Government Department called the Dept. of Weather, Climate, Hot and Cold Air and with special responsibility for Wind & Waves. Some utterly self-possessed windbag who has kissed ass for years would be awarded this, “Most vital Ministry,” as Varadkar would likely tell us all and then quietly out of sight of the taxpayers, the Dept. of Weather would be assigned a budget of five billion a year. Of course, the money is not there but the answer to that is new taxes and a re-visit to some of the older ones as it has always been.
And a further frightening aspect of the stupidity of that is that the very woman who is asking for the Government to do something, will be one of the thousands of widows who may see their pensions lowered to pay for the shiny new Dept. of Weather.
Stupid, isn’t it?