Strange times

There have been many things occupying my thoughts in recent times. I had a child free morning today as I was off in the city meeting with some people about some possible employment! I had time to sit down with some coffee after and read my novel in glorious peace and later had a wander around the mall where I stopped for a sushi lunch and read the paper. I was tempted to go and see a movie by myself but by then i was ready for company again. Particularly as I spent a good part of my lunch sobbing into my sushi as I read about teh devastating fires in Australia. I cannot imagine the horror that those poor people went through and are still going through. Absolutely unimaginable. I was struck by how some eyewitnesses described the fire as a beast that seemed to have a mind of its own, passing over some people cowering in cars or under wet blankets in pools of wataer and saying "I don't want you, .... I want you" and changing direction in a split second and bearing down on others who considered themselves relatively safe.

Tragic in an altogether different and ridiculous way was the BBC World Service interview with Sammy Wilson - Northern Ireland's Environment Minister and a Professor whose name I didn't catch who is a world expert on climate change. Good old Sammy has gone on record as saying that climate change is not a result of human action or contribution and therefore people shouldn't be encouraged to turn out lights and save power as in a recent UK advert that he has campaigned to have banned. What a joke. His thinking is that scientists were talking about an ice age in the 60s and 70s and were wrong so they're all wrong now. The Professor was quick to point out that that wasn't the climate experts so much as the popular press but all much the same to good old Sammy who was, let's face it, pretty busy with other business in the 70s when NI had a few issues of its own. All very embarrassing for us diaspora.