Quite what the good citizens of Poland, Russia and the Ukraine ( where it has been -35c) would have made of us so called stoical Brits had they tuned in to BBC News 24 in the last day or so is anyone’s guess. It seems that every time we get seasonal weather (in this case winter) the media get that little bit more hysterical, our latest smattering of the white stuff being described as a “major snow event” causing travel chaos across the country. Here in Basingstoke our predicted snow event gradually turned in to a sleet event then a rain event, leaving the local kids with no option to go sludging yesterday morning. It was, in reality, a snow non-event.

However, that didn’t stop News 24 spending license payers money by sending out reporters on a snow chase that ended in Sussex and Kent where they showed repeated runs of a plane struggling through two centimetres of slush at Gatwick, three people trying push a spinning rear wheel BMW that was being driven by an imbecile, and some kids sledging through a combination of mud and snow before it all melted.  One reporter commented that the temperature had already dropped to zero degrees centigrade in the London area…..fuck me, zero degrees in February………..there is going to be a huge contingent of penguins and polar bears arriving on our shores at this rate!

Basically speaking the weather in this country (as with every other country on this planet) is dictated by the wind direction, this means every now and then it will come from the east rather than the other three options available. This means that it will be cold, a phenomenon that is associated with winter, a season that runs from December to March. Quite how the media continue to be surprised by this when it happens year in year out, I am not quite sure, but surprised they are and they continue to create Mount Everest out of a mole hill. Twenty five years after the Met Office suffered the the embarrassment of the October 1987 hurricane, they continue to operate in worst case scenarios rather than reality, this is something the media and the public feed off ravenously, meaning that any mention of a snow shower on the Yorkshire Moors has nutcases emptying the supermarket shelves of bread and milk.

I read somewhere that easterly winds from Siberia were being “blamed” for the “Big Chill” which made me wonder whether there were several hundred members of the Met Office and The Daily Express standing on the beaches of Margate and Ramsgate shouting in to the wind “IT’S YOUR FUCKING FAULT!”

Remember this winter rule, it’s quite simple and it happens every year:

Southerly Wind: Warm & Wet

Westerly Wind: Cool & Wet

Northerly Wind: Cold, Frosty, Dry

Easterly Wind: Very Cold, Frosty, mainly dry, possibly snowy

Snowbound: My back garden on Monday morning

I started this post by talking about Poland and Ukraine, wondering what they thought of our attitude to the weather and purely by coincidence I have also been wondering what the same two countries (they are hosting Euro 2012) think of the joke that is our football association (FA). The Italian manager of the England football team has come out in support of his captain (John Terry) who has been dropped by the FA powers that be because of a racist allegation that has yet to be proved. It is one almighty mess that Jesus Christ himself would find difficult to solve, but I will try anyway. Lets start with Fabio Capello.

Capello feels that he has been undermined by the FA over Terry’s latest incident, claiming quite rightly, that he (Terry) is innocent until proved guilty. However, this is the same Fabio Capello who stripped Terry of  the captaincy after an alleged affair with a team mates wife. What the hell is  he (Capello) playing at? Is he suggesting that it is okay to deny someone the England captaincy over an alleged affair with a team mates wife, but not for an alleged racist insult against a fellow professional? Whether he realizes it or not Capello is creating divisions all over the shop. You really have to wonder if he actually cares less what happens, his reputation may take a knock, but his £6.5m salary will not.

The FA. What a bunch of retards these lot are, crisis after crisis after crisis, they are a joke, nationally and internationally. They have got in a right old mess this time. If they were to take the captaincy off  Terry because of an alleged racist incident, why not do it as soon as the allegation was made? They (and Capello by the way) don’t even seem to realize that not one person outside Chelsea wants Terry to represent England as a captain regardless of this incident. By ignoring fans opinion they are isolating themselves from a blindly loyal support base that is second to none, I have never known such apathy towards the England side as in recent weeks, they are a total joke.

John Terry: I have stated before that I can’t believe he is what I would term a racist, I just can’t see how his black team mates would suffer it in 21st century Britain. However, he is not a viable captain for England and never has been, no one outside Chelsea likes his arrogance, ignorance and general public demeanor.  I can’t claim to know the guy, but he carries little respect among England fans and is turning the public and more critically, international players away from  “Team England.” Can the FA or Capello not see what we all see, or is the preposterous bubble that surrounds professional football that big? Terry claims to be a proud Englishman, but I am not proud to have someone with such cretinous self belief as the England captain.

This is what will probably happen. Capello will be England manager at Euro 2012. Terry will go to Euro 2012 as Capello’s unofficial captain. England players will be divided in to Terry, non Terry factions, some may not even bother going (Rio Ferdinand?). England will be even more shit than they usually are when embarrassed by Europe’s top sides. It’s all so bloody obvious it is almost perverse.

I think I shall just sit in the slightly cold weather and watch Reading.