IT STILL AIN'T HALF HOT, MUM

It is May in Britain, and the nation is once again being gently roasted—not by some vengeful sun god, but by the familiar combination of high pressure and high dudgeon. Temperatures have climbed into the low-to-mid thirties, pensioners are sitting in their gardens wondering if this is what the Algarve feels like without the airfare, and the usual suspects have declared a national emergency. The weather maps, those innocent rectangles of isobars and shading, have been recoloured in shades of apocalyptic crimson that would make a Victorian fire engine blush. One almost expects the Met Office to issue a severe warning for the imminent arrival of the Four Horsemen, probably delayed by Southern Rail.

The liberal climate alarmists are up to their old tricks again, and one must admire the consistency. Every warm spell is no longer mere weather—perish the thought—but a harbinger of the End Times, brought to you by ordinary people who persist in wanting affordable energy, functioning boilers, and the right to drive a van without a guilt surcharge. The script is as reliable as an episode of Midsomer Murders: record broken (provisional, of course), maps turned volcanic red “for accessibility reasons,” solemn experts wheeled out to explain that this is what normal British May weather looks like when the working class refuses to embrace socialism.

One pictures the scene in the newsroom. A junior producer, fresh from a seminar on decolonising the jet stream, rushes in waving a graphic. “Look! Dark red over Kent! It’s worse than we thought!” The senior correspondent, who once reported on actual wars but now specialises in thermometers, nods gravely. “The public must understand: this is not a heatwave. This is neoliberalism’s fault. If only we’d nationalised the clouds and taxed the Gulf Stream.” Somewhere in the background, a think-tank fellow is already drafting the inevitable piece: “Why Your Barbecue Is Killing the Planet.” The recolouring of the maps is particularly inspired. Not so long ago, a pleasant 28°C was rendered in a polite shade of primrose or optimistic orange. Now the same temperature requires hues previously reserved for the surface of the sun or a particularly angry vindaloo. One suspects the graphic designers have been taking lessons from Hollywood trailer editors: more saturation, more drama, fewer facts. 

The aim is not to inform but to unsettle. A quiet pensioner enjoying a cup of tea on his patio must be made to feel that his very existence is contributing to the downfall of the Maldives. Never mind that Britain has experienced hot Mays before—1944, 1976, and various other years when people simply opened windows and got on with it. History is what happens to other people. The deeper comedy lies in the class politics of it all. The alarm is loudest among those who can afford to lecture from behind double glazing or, better still, from a second home in the Dordogne. For the ordinary working man— the plumber, the delivery driver, the factory hand sweating in overalls—the heatwave means coping with a van that turns into a mobile kiln and coming home to a house designed like a brick oven. No one is installing air conditioning on a roofer’s wages. Yet it is these same people who are cast as the villains: stubborn, short-sighted, insufficiently enthusiastic about net-zero targets that require them to shiver in winter and boil in summer while Beijing opens another coal plant. 

The solution, naturally, is more windmills, more subsidies for the already subsidised, and a quiet acceptance that energy bills will rise until the lights dim in solidarity with the planet. One wonders what the alarmists would have made of 1976. That year the country baked for weeks, reservoirs turned to dust bowls, and people queued for water. Did they declare the death of Western civilisation? No, they put on shorts, complained about the hosepipe ban, and carried on. There were no endless rolling broadcasts about how a warm summer proved the need for international wealth redistribution dressed up as climate policy. The difference is not the temperature. It is the ideology.

The real objection of the righteous is not to heat but to normality. A British heatwave reminds us that the climate has always varied, that humans are adaptable, and—most unforgivably—that most people quite enjoy a bit of sun. They like ice cream, pub gardens, and the gentle satisfaction of knowing the barbecue won’t be rained off. This cannot stand. Joy must be problematised. Every cheerful family on the beach is an affront to the models. Hence the frantic search for villains: insufficiently green voters, insufficiently repentant consumers, anyone who fails to treat a warm Bank Holiday as a moral failing.

By the time you read this, the heat will likely have broken. Rain will return, as it always does in these damp islands, and the same pundits will pivot seamlessly to flooding as further proof of the same narrative. The wheel turns, the grants flow, the maps are updated with fresh alarming colours. Meanwhile, the ordinary punter— the one who pays the taxes and endures the sermons—will simply remark that it’s been a decent spell and wonder why everyone else is in such a state. The climate may or may not be changing; the evidence is debated by those who bother with data rather than drama. 

What is beyond dispute is that the alarmists never miss an opportunity. A heatwave is not weather to them. It is recruiting material for the cause. And if the maps need to glow like the embers of capitalism itself to make the point, then so be it. After all, it’s only a little artistic licence in the service of saving the world. Pass the factor 50—and the salt for the next sermon.

KYLE BUSCH (1985 - 2026): AN OBITUARY

Kyle Busch, the American racing driver whose name was synonymous with both velocity and a certain theatrical volatility, has turned his last lap at the age of 41. He left this mortal coil much as he navigated the final laps of many a race: suddenly, noisily, and with the air of a man who had already calculated the optimal line through whatever came next. 

Born in Las Vegas in 1985, Busch discovered early that life, like a restrictor-plate pack at Daytona, rewards those who refuse to lift. He entered NASCAR’s top tier in 2005 and proceeded to treat it as his personal coliseum. Two Cup Series titles, 63 wins, and a rap sheet of memorable on-track altercations followed. To the uninitiated, he was simply “Rowdy.” To those who understood, he was a driver of ferocious natural talent who could make a heavy stock car dance with the delicacy of a matador.

It has long been fashionable in certain European drawing rooms to dismiss NASCAR as mere left-turning chaos for the culturally deprived. Formula One enthusiasts, sipping their prosecco while watching million-euro prototypes whisper around circuits designed by architects, would do well to abandon such snobbery. The skill required to pilot a 3,400-pound stock car inches from disaster at 190 mph, surrounded by 39 other competitors who all believe they are the hero of their own story, is not lesser than that demanded by any other code of racing. It is merely different, louder, and more democratically entertaining. Busch proved this repeatedly. He could wheel a car with the best of them, and frequently did so while appearing to be conducting an argument with physics itself.

Off the track, he was a more complicated figure: blunt, occasionally combustible, yet possessed of a surprising loyalty to his crew and family. He built a formidable legacy not only in victories but in reminding the sport that personality, for better or worse, still mattered. In an era increasingly dominated by data and diplomacy, Busch remained gloriously, defiantly human.

He is survived by his wife Samantha and their children. The racing world will be quieter without him, though the echoes of those V8s he so loved will rumble on. In the end, Kyle Busch did what all great drivers strive for: he made the rest of us feel, for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon, that life itself was travelling at full throttle.

JUDITH CHALMERS (1935 - 2026): AN OBTIUARY

Judith Chalmers, the television presenter whose genial countenance once lured the British public towards dubious package holidays, has died at the age of 90. She passed away with the serene inevitability of a charter flight delayed on the tarmac at Gatwick, surrounded, one hopes, by family rather than a film crew demanding one more take of her waving at a slightly disappointing beach.

in Cheshire in 1935, Chalmers began broadcasting at the implausible age of 13, a detail that always carried the faint whiff of precociousness mixed with wartime necessity. By the time the 1970s arrived, she had settled into the role for which she would be remembered: fronting Wish You Were Here...?, a programme that combined the educational value of a travel brochure with the emotional range of a municipal brass band. For nearly three decades, Chalmers stood on balconies in the Mediterranean sun, smiling gamely as she informed viewers that, yes, this particular hotel did indeed have a swimming pool, and no, the plumbing was not entirely theoretical. 

Her genius lay in making the ordinary exotic and the exotic faintly ordinary. While contemporaries chased harder journalistic edges, Chalmers offered something more valuable to the British psyche: mild reassurance. Here was a woman who could pronounce 'Costa Brava' without sounding like she was mocking the locals, and who could enthuse about a Greek taverna as if it were a notable event rather than a tactical retreat from British weather. Viewers trusted her the way one trusts a reliable estate agent — optimistic, but not delusional.

In private life she was married for over sixty years to the sports commentator Neil Durden-Smith, a union of such durable contentment that it must have seemed, to television executives, almost subversive. She raised children, collected an OBE, and generally conducted herself with the sort of understated professionalism that now feels as quaint as a handwritten postcard.

The age of streaming and influencer narcissism eventually rendered her style obsolete, yet there was something enduringly decent about Chalmers. She never pretended the world was more glamorous than it was; she simply suggested that, with the right lighting and a decent glass of retsina, one might almost enjoy it. In an era when travel has become both easier and more exhausting, her gentle exaggerations seem almost touching.

She is survived by her family and by several million middle-aged Britons who still associate the word 'holiday' with her voice promising sunshine, even if the reality involved rain and a faulty kettle. Judith Chalmers didn't change television. She merely made it bearable for a while. In her quiet way, that was achievement enough.