Sunday, December 27, 2015

Floody Hell!

I happened to catch the Mail on Sunday today (and no, I didn’t buy it…) The front page was about the floods that are happening hereabouts (North of England anyway). “Cities submerged” it said. That didn’t sound quite right to me. So here are the first definitions of the word ‘submerged’ I could find on-line:

"Cause (something) to be under water".

"Descend below the surface of an area of water".

"Completely cover or obscure".

So presumably at least 2 British cities were submerged. Under water. Completely! But when I turned over the page somehow the floods were a little less serious. In fact the Mail on Sunday considered a picture of Barbara Windsor dressed as a nurse in a Carry On film more important than the floods. Turn over again and there was more flood news – apparently there were “towns like Venice”. Hang on the Mail on Sunday - between page 1 and page 4 (with only a brief stop-over for Barbara Windsor) the sunken cities you were reporting have become partially flooded towns? Bad enough, but not quite the same eh?

Later on I’m sure I heard Radio 4 say that Leeds was flooded too. I drove to Leeds today (with no hold-ups on the road since you ask and no floods visible) and it turns out that it's not flooded - parts of Kirkstall Road and other bits near the river are flooded. Bad enough, but there are people out there who might think that there were submerged cities in the North of England and that Leeds was flooded. Some places are flooded. But not 98% of Leeds. And no cities are submerged.

Mind you, there are parts of Birmingham that are no-go areas to non-Muslims - Ha!

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