Ertblog

Barbecue summer? Met Office's forecast proves a washout

I've never seen the point of long term weather forecasts in Britain. Why predict the weather when the weather hasn't decided what it's going to do?

So I should have known better when I got excited about the Met Office's prediction that Britain would enjoy a 'barbecue summer' in 2009. True, the end of June was hot and dry. But July has been a sunshine-and-shower fest, with August likely to follow the same pattern.

The weather men have, predictably, been making their excuses. "We only ever said there was a 65% chance of a hot summer. Wimbledon enjoyed a heatwave. We might still see a good end to the summer."

That's not the point. They have no idea if one summer will be any better than the washout that preceded it. The most expensive computer may marginally improve forecasts based on probability - but it can't tell you if we're going to have a summer to rival August 1976.

And another thing. Why do British forecasters spend so much time telling us about what the weather was like earlier? Why do they use such verbose language ("during the course of the latter part of the afternoon")?

M'learned friends on the move: goodbye to the House of Lords

For centuries, the House of Lords has been Britain's highest court. But no longer. The law lords have delivered their last judgment - an appropriately landmark one, about assisted suicide. In October, our top judges will form Britain's new Supreme Court, our new final domestic court of appeal.

Traditionalists have condemned the changes, but they mark the end one of Britain's most blatant infringements of the principle of the separation of powers - that judges should be separate from the executive and legislature. The Labour government has been under constant criticism during 2009, not least from me, but it deserves great credit for this historic change.

Just a load of bankers: Daily Mail's Alex Brummer blasts 'lying' banks

I touched a raw nerve yesterday when I asked a panel of Britain's top business journalists whether the recession had set back the cause of businesses communicating with the media and the public.

In his reply, Daily Mail City editor Alex Brummer dripped venom on Britain's banks, describing how the head of a major retail bank angrily told him that his company wasn't in trouble. Just days later, it collapsed, leaving the veteran journalist doubting everything a bank chief or press officer said. 

The event, organised by media and PR information firm Gorkana, was headlined, After the break - the communications challenges facing business for the rest of 2009. But as The Observer's business editor Ruth Sunderland pointed out, it's wrong to see the crisis as simply a communications challenge. We're seeing jobs being lost on a huge scale - and the British government has poured mind-boggling trillion pounds into the banking system. None of us knows if that huge gamble will work. But Alex Brummer starkly warned that if that safety net was pulled away, we'd have no banking system or economy left.

Brummer clashed with the BBC's chief economics correspondent Hugh Pym. Pym didn't share the view that the banks were solely responsible for the credit explosion. "We all benefited from cheap credit," said Hugh, responding to Alex's condemnation of the banks for creating an unsustainable consumer spending bubble. "We're all in this together, and it's too simple to blame the banks for everything that's gone wrong."

Despite his chilling words about the banks, Brummer acknowledged that bank chiefs such as HSBC chairman Stephen Green and Barclays chief executive John Varley have made a concerted effort to explain how their companies are navigating a course through the crisis. But he complained that Angela Knight, chief executive of the British Bankers Association, has all too often been a lone voice defending Britain's banks. 

Alex and Hugh had differing views of the way banks had centralised lending decisions over the years. Alex recalled the days when local bank managers (like Dad's Army's Captain Mainwaring) had the authority to agree loans to local businesses. They knew which companies on their patch were in difficulties and which were doing well, helped banks and businesses alike. Now, decisions are taken miles away at regional or head offices. I pointed out that this was the world portrayed in the BBC's 1979 drama Telford's Change, in which a high flying bank executive turned his back on head office to become a branch manager again, to play a greater role in the community. Hugh remembered Peter Barkworth's series, but thought the idea of returning to the days of Captain Mainwaring-style banking was unthinkable. 

The panelists poured scorn on Chancellor Alistair Darling's theatrical dressing down of banks chiefs over lending to British business. As Hugh Pym commented, it's absurd for the chancellor to tell banks who they should and should not lend to. The banks and government have conflicting objectives: to restore bank profitability, to return the part-nationalised banks to private ownership, to avoid a bad debt explosion - and to lend to business.

Finally, Ruth Sunderland condemned Britain's business and governing classes as 'pale, male and stale'. She questioned whether we'd be in this mess if the decision makers came from a more diverse background. It's hard to disagree: the overwhelming evidence is that the non executive directors of our failed banks shared the lemming like tendencies of disgraced executives such as Northern Rock's Adam Applegarth and RBS's Fred Goodwin. They were all caught up in a testosterone fuelled car wreck. Unfortunately, the rest of us are paying the colossal price of that male folly.       

The Gorkana breakfast debate took place at Clifford Chance in Canary Wharf. It was chaired by Michael Wilson, business editor of Sky News.    

Farewell to our Great War heroes: remembering Harry Patch and Henry Allingham

Just one British First World War veteran remains after the death of 111 year old Harry Patch. Mr Patch was himself the last eyewitness to the horror of the trenches of the Western Front. His death came just a week after the passing of Henry Allingham, the last British survivor of the Royal Navy and RAF from the Great War.

It's hard for anyone born long after the two world wars to imagine the courage and fortitude shown by Harry Patch and his generation. In an era when the media gets hysterical about a mild version of influenza, the thought of 19,000 men dying in battle on a single day is almost beyond our imagination. (Let alone the flu epidemic that killed more people than the Great War, including my grandfather's twin brother.) 

In the long hours waiting for our son Owen to be born last year, I read Mr Patch's moving account of his life, The Last Fighting Tommy, written with Richard van Emden. I was very conscious that Owen would be able to say in later life that he was born before the death of the last Great War veterans.

Hold the front page: Chalfont St Giles says goodbye to newsagent Gordon Patrick

The Chiltern village of Chalfont St Giles was in shock today as the hugely popular Patrick family prepared to leave The Olde Post House, the newsagents business they’ve run for almost 30 years.

Crowds flocked to the shop to say goodbye, as the Patricks prepared to hand over the reins at 1pm when the shop closed for the day. 

The family have been selling newspapers in St Giles for almost 40 years, starting at the newsagents at Three Households opposite the White Hart Inn. They moved down the hill when the Olde Post House came on the market in the 1980s. Gordon has been a parish councillor for many years, and also starred in a DVD devoted to the history of the village. The family have been famous for getting up before anyone else in the village, to take delivery of the day’s news.

Villagers recalled buying winning lottery tickets and 100^th birthday cards from the Patricks, not to mention brightly coloured gobstoppers.

Longstanding village resident Aline Sampson commented, “It’s amazing to think that the village found out about so many dramatic events by buying a paper from Gordon, Beryl, Rachel and Sharon. Happy events such as the Queen’s jubilees. Sad times, such as September 11^th and the passing of the Queen Mother. And frankly bizarre events, such as Jordan’s wedding and Eddie the Eagle’s Olympics. Come to think of it, Gordon’s got a lot to answer for!”

The day we went to the moon: memories of July 1969

Forget swine flu: moon fever is the real pandemic of the moment. The media have been constantly reminding us of the imminent 40th anniversary of the moment Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon.

I'm lucky enough to remember the excitement of July 1969. I was just five at the time, and about to finish my first year in school, at Bishop Perrin in Whitton, Middlesex. Our teacher, Mrs Carol, explained to us that the Apollo 11 space mission was trying to make history. We listened to radio reports as the mission unfolded, but not the actual landing, which happened in the early hours of a British Saturday morning. She made clear the risks Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins faced as they headed for the moon: the chance that the 'satellite' (presumably the orbiter) might crash to the surface of the moon, leaving all three men in mortal danger. Happily, as we all know, the mission was a triumphant success.

Looking back, Mrs Carol was right to stress the dangers. The near-disaster of Apollo 13 the following year showed that going to the moon was an extraordinary thing. This 953,000 mile mission relied on amazingly primitive technology: less computing power than my washing machine. But it all worked triumphantly. The moonshots turned unassuming astronauts like Neil Armstrong into household names around the globe - along with commentators such as James Burke, the presenter of the BBC's moon landing coverage.

Back in 1969, it was easy to believe that moon travel would soon be commonplace. Jonathan King's 1965 hit Everyone's Gone to the Moon captured the mood of the era. But soon after NASA's July 1969 triumph, the moon programme was slashed, and no one has stepped on our nearest neighbour for 37 years. Like Concorde, the moon landings did not represent the future, but a moment in time.

Armstrong's famous 'one small step' wasn't the only famous event that Bishop Perrin pupils followed that Sixties July. We also watched Prince Charles' investiture as Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle live on television. The school's involvement of children in current events was unexpected in many ways: Bishop Perrin appeared a very traditional establishment, and made no concession to the revolution in teaching methods that were sweeping the country after the famous Plowden report of 1967. We learned to read with the help of pre-war Janet and John books. The headteacher, Mr Davies, told the education authorities that he would adopt their methods when they could prove to him they were more effective than his tried and tested techniques. I discovered his success a couple of years later when we moved back to Cardiff and was shocked by how many of my new friends at Lakeside primary school still struggled to read at the age of eight. I owe a huge amount to my Sixties teachers, and not just memories of that giant leap for mankind.