Saturday, 22 November 2008

Weather Warning

You might like to sing them all to yourselves just once more before New Labour abolishes the British Isles.

7 comments:

Raedwald said...

Alas, no more Finisterre - banned. They renamed it Fitzroy after, I think, a meteorologically inclined admiral.

hatfield girl said...

And what has happened to Heligoland?

They mean to abolish it. The Beast called Iceland people terrorists - and Iceland in the Shipping Forecast - For shame, he is utterly unspeakable.

Anonymous said...

Errr - how could a political party ban a geographical entity.

I thinks you are confusing the political amalgam that is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, with the Island of Great Britain (Great to distinguish it from the Little Britain aka Brittany).

Did the Island of Ireland cease to exist when it split into two political entities back in the 1920's.

No.

The big problem is that folk in the south of this Island find this England/Britain/UK thing pretty hard to understand.

You all really do need to try and keep up - the world is changing all around you - whether you like it or not.

Anonymous said...

I fondly recall drifting off to sleep in the back of beyond on many nights listening in the dark to the midnight shipping forcast being intoned on the World Service. Happy days!

"The big problem is that folk in the south of this Island find this England/Britain/UK thing pretty hard to understand".


Since my word ver is denstub (and as one who has never been further than Surbiton) I feel I have no alternative but to agree!

Elby the Beserk said...

Finisterre went because there is a different area of the sea legitimately called that by Spain or Portugal and thus it was decided to change it, to avoid confusion.

Howsomever, the shipping forecast is a joy to listen to. When Bill Bryson went back to live in the USA a while, he said the two things he missed the most were the shipping forecast, and the reading out of the football scores by James Alexander Gordon, on Sports Report.

Quite so.

Calfy said...

When I was younger it was my ambition to read the shipping forecast. Whenever I hear it badly read I feel personal pain.

Anonymous said...

Rain later; good.

Poetry, pure poetry.

Unless, of course, you're out there and you hear something like this:

"Malin, Hebrides: Southerly Gale 8 or Severe Gale 9, veering Westerly and increasing Storm 10, perhaps Violent Storm 11 for a time. Rain then Showers. Poor becoming moderate or good."

Still poetry, but now with menace.

"For those in peril on the sea"