A News Leek

A rather cold and grey day. Having nothing better to do, I turned my attention to the pages of advertisements in my daily newspaper. Although ostensibly addressed to English speakers these advertisements usually provide a few moments of merriment in otherwise dark times. While the companies advertising their wares are happy to give their money to the newspaper, they cannot find a few extra shekels to get an English speaker to run their eye over the advert before it goes in front of the world.

One company, worried about my leaking roof, offers me a way to find “leeks” with a thermal camera. I can probably find my way to the local greengrocer without their aid – I have a GPS in my car.

But my house is warm and comfortable and, finding nothing that I wanted to buy, I turned from the adverts to the news from an even colder and greyer country – the United Kingdom.
We are told that Prime Minister Boris Johnson is “freezing out his trusted advisers”. They will join the many other Britons who are freezing as British Gas leaves thousands of homes in the cold. Homeowners with the company’s HomeCare insurance have been unable to get anyone to answer their calls for help with their broken boilers.

Israel has the reputation of a country rescued from the desert while the UK is the place to find rain at any time. The figures, however, tell a different story.

Israel’s annual precipitation is around 550 mm (21.5 in), mostly in the cold half of the year
In the UK, the annual precipitation is around 885 mm (33.7 inches). Certainly, the UK gets more rain, but it’s not a huge difference.

Sadly, Israel is held as a Light unto the Nations in The Telegraph:
“Israel’s rise in Covid deaths is an important lesson for the UK on vaccines”
This is a lesson we would be happier not to give.

News of a more worrying leak comes to us from TROPOMI, a satellite that measures methane in the atmosphere. It has found that that oil and gas companies routinely allow huge amounts of methane to leak into the air. Methane, of course is the second most powerful greenhouse gas, following carbon dioxide in its effect on our warming planet. We are used to these mega-companies having their hands in our pockets; do we want them in charge of the air we breathe?

I would like to write more on this important subject but, alas, the dog wants to take a leak.