Dear Philippa,

 

I have been mocked for my unfashionable views about holidays but now you see the undoubted wisdom of my position. What will soon be known “Volcano Ashgate” as the incompetence and cover-ups emerge has laid bare the foolish recklessness of taking holidays, especially abroad. What we have seen has been a Gadarene rush to bask in the carcinogenic sun of Spain and even Florida where misery has been the result, all because of a collective failure to anticipate the probability of a million tons (tonnes, maybe) of volcanic ash being targeted, like an episode of explosive diarrhoea in a paedriatric ward, onto Britain whose harsh anti-terrorist laws we unleashed on a small nation of dodgy bankers with a population smaller than that of Leicester. They are resentful and their appeals to their Nordic gods have not gone unanswered.

 

Few have come out of this horror show with any credit, apart of course from those displaying the famed Dunkirk Spirit. I have watched with amusement mingled with contempt the posturings of key figures. After days of dithering our government launched what remains of our naval fleet to rescue our nationals from the beaches of Spain, hoping I suppose for the “Falkland Effect”, at exactly the moment when our airspace was re-opened. I am reminded of Harold Wilson’s fearless bombing of the Torrey Canyon vessel, beached off the Scilley Isles (where else?), in the hope of some association with Winston Churchill.  And the airline bosses, shuffling their feet over compensation, only that chap from Virgin, Ridgeway I think, among them making any sense.

 

But the real turds in the water pipe have been the “scientists” at the Met Office and their clients among the air traffic control nabobs. It turns out that their decisions were based on computer models without benefit of any hard data, collected the hard way. I imagine them as detached lunatics staring at their screens with absolute certainty that what they are looking at is revealed truth. The Americans after the eruption of Mt St Helena had 30 military and research aircraft up within an hour collecting data. I remember when my son Edward was doing his D.Phil. in chemistry speaking disparagingly about  the “wet chemists” in the labs, breathing noxious fumes and getting their fingers stained, while he relaxed in a clean office “modelling” proteins, and I thought at the time ”Can this be right?”

 

No-one who knows me well, or hardly at all, would describe me as a scientist – a poet perhaps, or a plunger – but I think that even I see a problem with over-reliance on computer modelling. Look at the weather forecasts – up to five days ahead, based on real data uncomfortably collected some of it, they are spot on. But long term forecasts are abysmal, based solely as they are on computer models, as it will turn out will be climate predictions that ignore entirely rich resources of actual data (thousands of ships’ logs going back hundreds of years) that will involve close and tedious study and analysis, anathema to to modern boffins who want a million calculations done in a micro-second. But don’t get me started..

But there is one (that I know of) hero of this Ashgate situation. The headteacher, Rob Williams, of our local comprehensive school, an excellent school by the way if you’re looking in this area, found himself stranded in Spain with his family having gone there to refresh himself after a hard term at the chalk face. Did he burst into tears? He did not. At a cost of £7000, and with some ingenuity, he hired a coach to come and get him and flogged off the extra places to other benighted holiday makers until the bus was full. Now, teachers are not often seen as entrepreneurial but in this case we saw an example of the best of what we are capable. I hope he made a  fat profit on the extra seats, and that a little of that profit may trickle down to the Friends of Malton School, in which I must declare an interest.

 

So, what is the take-away from all this rubbish? Don’t trust people who look at computer screens too much, look for leadership in quiet places, and if you really must take a holiday – go to Bridlington. Or Scarborough if you’re feeling flush.