This has been the driest February for 30 years and the 8th driest since 1836.<\/p>\n
According to the National Drought Group, England is only one hot dry spell away from widespread drought conditions. \u00a0Clearly action is needed. \u00a0So, surely what we need is a Minister for Drought. \u00a0Back in 1976 as soon as the hapless Denis Howell MP was appointed, it began to rain. \u00a0As\u00a0Wikipedia<\/a>\u00a0notes:<\/p>\n In the last week of August 1976, during\u00a0Britain's driest summer in over 200 years<\/a>, he was made Minister for Drought (but nicknamed 'Minister for Rain').[4]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0Howell was charged by the Prime Minister with the task of persuading the nation to use less water, and was even ordered by No.10 to do a rain dance on behalf of the nation.[5]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0Howell responded by inviting reporters to his home in\u00a0Moseley<\/a>, where he revealed he was doing his bit to help water rationing by sharing baths with his wife, Brenda.[5]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0Days later, heavy rainfall caused widespread flooding, and he became known as \"Minister for Floods\".[6]<\/a>[7]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0Then, during the harsh winter of 1978\u20131979 he was appointed Minister for Snow.[8]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0[9]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Such was the power of Labour governments back then.<\/p>\n Happily, I live in Wiltshire where we need not worry about such things as the\u00a0council has a \"clear commitment in its business plan to take responsibility for the environment and work to becoming carbon neutral by 2030.\" \u00a0Indeed, a recent Peer Review by the Local Government Association, says that Wiltshire Council is \u201cexcelling in work to address climate change\u201d. \u00a0It added: \u201cThe council\u2019s work to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change is impressive, with many activities that would be considered exceptional in other organisations being seen very much as the \u2018day job\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n Thank goodness for that!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This has been the driest February for 30 years and the 8th driest since 1836. According to the National Drought Group, England is only one hot dry spell away from widespread drought conditions. \u00a0Clearly action is needed. \u00a0So, surely what...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}