In message , Brian Lawrence
writes
On 07/01/2015 10:48, John Hall wrote:
In message , Brian Lawrence
writes
On 06/01/2015 19:50, Malcolm wrote:

snip a load of crap, even dangerous crap considering the alarm that your
forecasts may have engendered among the elderly.

Well yes, but how many 'elderly' will have seen those 'forecasts'?

Quite a few, I would think, if they read papers such as the Daily
Express. (And even the Daily Telegraph isn't above running alarmist
weather stories from time to time.)

Yes, but no one sane should take seriously what the Express says about
weather,

They /shouldn't/, but probably many do. Not everyone is as clued up
about the weather as the readers of this newsgroup.

and while their readership can be pigeonholed as 'elderly', there are
not that many of them. Actually, there are very few readers for any
newspapers these days - poss. except the Sun, but Sun readers
rarely care about the weather (unless it's presented on page 3.)

Certainly newspaper circulations have been declining in recent years,
but I suspect less amongst the elderly - who tend to be set in their
ways (I include myself in that, before anyone accuses me of being
ageist) - than amongst the young. And - judging by Will's anecdote - I
suspect that weather scare stories spread by word of mouth to many who
haven't actually read a paper. (Often getting misattributed to the Met
Office in the process - I suspect that many still don't realise that
there are any other forecasters and just assume that all forecasts must
have originated from the Met Office.)

I don't keep track, who provides weather 'forecasts' for which 'paper
these days? (Clearly if the Telegraph article is by Philip Eden, it's
worth reading - which I usually do).


Philip Eden provides a weekly article for the Sunday Telegraph, but the
Daily and Sunday Telegraph forecasts are by an outfit called Accuweather
(and the forecasts are pretty poor).

Also,
unless they are suffering from dementia why would they take them
seriously|?


Clearly a lot of people /do/ take them seriously, even including Boris
Johnson who, whatever his faults, seems unlikely to be suffering from
dementia.

I've heard/partly read what he said/wrote, but am not aware of the
context. He likes to make jokes, and sometimes says things to provoke a
reaction, or to make a point.


This was in an article in the Telegraph a couple of years ago, and he
was clearly being serious. I like to think that he will have noticed the
huge disparity between Pier's forecast for December and what actually
happened, and that the scales will have fallen from his eyes.
--
I'm not paid to implement the recognition of irony.
(Taken, with the author's permission, from a LiveJournal post)