Politics

Right, August Bank Holiday is over so that’s the summer dispensed with. Here’s one for the previous administration’s scrap book:

Heatwaves are forecast to increase in frequency in the coming years – this plan provides important guidance on how to reduce the impact they will have upon health and in doing so, will save lives. Climate change is increasingly acknowledged to be a serious threat to population health. These impacts are highlighted in the updated report Health Effects of Climate Change in the UK 2008.

The Climate Change Act 2008 now makes it a requirement for all statutory sectors, including the health sector, to have robust adaptation plans in place. The National Heatwave Plan is an important contribution to this work. Further information on climate change and health can be found in the Department of Health guidance document and summary, The Health Impact of Climate Change: Promoting Sustainable Communities.

Climate change means that heatwaves are likely to become more common in England. By the 2080s, it is predicted that an event similar to that experienced in England in 2003 will happen every year.

In Northern France in August 2003, unprecedentedly high day and nighttime temperatures for a period of three weeks resulted in 15,000 excess deaths [note – it’s so unprecedented the French coined a word for it in the 14th century: La Canicule]. The vast majority of these were among older people.

The full document:

UK Heatwave Plan (March 2010) Department of Health

A peculiar Press Release from Giles Chichester, Conservative MEP for South West England and Gibraltar:

I am delighted that the Bank of England has taken note of the complaints of my Constituents and is instructing the banks to once again make £5 notes available from the ATM ‘hole in the wall’ cash machines.  To satisfy the obvious demand, Governor Mervyn King is making arrangements for a new multi-million printing of the notes to be made available at the end of the month.

Undoubtedly this economic recession is a prime reason for the reintroduction of the Fiver into ATMs.  In the good old days when banks thought we all had money to burn, they independently decided to stuff the ATMs with high denomination notes.  The Fiver was then regarded by them as ‘loose change’.  But now in a cost conscious Britain, it is back in favour.  The one thing we must not do with loose change is to hoard it like the banks have been doing.

Seems a bit of a marginal issue for a member of the Big Parliament but, regardless, this strikes me as a good thing.

On a slightly more important note, Ashley Fox MEP has been active in Parliament pointing out that the EU’s Accounts are still a load of rubbish. I believe this will bring us up to sixteen years of dodgy figures.