cold, cold water surrounds me now...

At the risk of sounding like a survivalist or as a supporter of some strange millennial Christian cult, I have to say that I find it quite alarming just how close to the Dark Ages we appear to be.

A little bit of water (well, several weeks of solid rain... finishing up with a month's worth falling in a single hour on Friday), and the fabric of our nation seems to be on the verge of falling apart. Apparently 350,000 people in Gloucestershire are going to be without running water tonight - an irony that is surely not lost on them as they sit in their sodden homes.

In spite of our pride in our wonderfully advanced civilisation, it seems that we are only ever around 72 hours away from chaos.... the 72 hours that it takes for the supermarkets to start running out of supplies. Apparently supermarkets across the west of the country have started selling out of basic essentials like water, bread and milk as people panic buy now in case they don't have the opportunity later. I should think that come tomorrow, it will be a case of the survival of the fittest, as hunter-gatherers in coracles strike out looking for their next meal, and the rest are just left to rot in their lovely detached houses with double-garages.

... and to think that only this weekend I was laughing at the British National Party's plans to build a refuge in rural Croatia. Apparently this is where the leaders of Britain's premier political purveyors of racist stupidity are planning to go when the oil supplies finally run out and the world collapses into anarchy.

As The Observer reported yesterday:

"One day some in the party hope it will become a sustainable community, one that is not reliant on fossil fuels or outside power of any kind but instead is capable of harnessing solar energy and tapping into local streams for fresh water."

I'll bet that sounds like a mighty attractive proposition to large portions of South-Western England at the moment (the terrible company you'd have to keep notwithstanding).

Oh hold on, what's that last bit about tapping into local streams?

Have those deep thinkers at the BNP taken flooding into account, do you think? Wouldn't it be ironic if this blissful idyll was destroyed by rising waters caused by global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels?

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people, obviously.

(The BNP, I mean. Not the people of South-Western England. I'm sure some of them are lovely.)