www. refers to what Jools Holland calls the inter-web.
Those of us who take the risk of maintaining a presence on the inter-web get used to typing it, www.
But this summer www has a whole new meaning.
Warm
Wet
Windy
It is, possibly, an acronym for global warming.
There were lots of articles in the press about how wonderful it would be, picking oranges in Cumbria or grapes on Hadrians Wall.
But what we are experiencing this summer is global warming in all its technicolour reality and it is not pleasant.
Warm, wet and windy weather that serves to make life just a tad unpleasant.
My two hobbies are on hold, motorcycling in www is no fun and www means that there is too much water in the river for fishing.
But of course www or global warming has another aspect to it, the arid, dry, unbearable heat of the southern hemisphere which makes life impossible and means that folk with no hope of survival in the hostile climate of what used to be their homelands up sticks and migrate north to a more temperate climate.
So Europe and the temperate countries become destinations.
We live in a migrant world.
Our time in Italy in 2011 and our stay in Spain in 2012 made the migrant world real.
The constant ebb and flow of young, mainly African, men, selling a wide variety of goods, mainly very poor copies of designer wear.
In the Port of Genoa the goods were sold on sheets laid on the pavements which were quickly lifted and thrown across a shoulder as the sales force made themselves scarce when the Guardia di Finanza arrived and then like flocks of migrant birds reappeared when the danger had passed.
It was a cat and mouse game.
But the mice were seeking to gain a foothold in Europe and those we spoke to made it clear that their ambition was to get to London.
The migrants destination of choice.
In Spain the sun beds on the beach, available to rent for nine euros a day, were often used at night by the young african street traders.
Often sitting in a beach front cafe with an early morning cafe solo you would witness the owners of the sun beds arriving and rousing their overnight guests before dusting the beds down for the day customers.
But just as in the fifties, the signs outside the boarding houses are going up again, but this time round, the signs are hanging on the dock gates and airport terminals.
The condems are rehearsing their anti immigration policies aided and abetted by the Labour Party.
When young Libyans arrived in Italy and headed for the French border they were left to camp at the gates on the Italian side in an echo of the camps outside Calais when immigrants tried to cross the Channel.
The social impact of www is increasingly troubling.
It is hard to imagine the future.
But large scale emigration is likely to be one effect of global warming but it will not be the only social disruption.
Certainly raising the drawbridge as recommended by Liam Fox is no solution.
What I find so scary is the new generation of MP's, in the main folk younger than I am, who went from PPS at University to a job as a researcher and then into a safe seat or even a seat in the House of Lords and are charged with developing policies to address the complex problems that the future will bring.
The result of this is both a failure of imagination and a complete loss of the large and spiritual ideas needed if we are to face the challenges of the future.
And as happens too often with the www, googling will not produce the answer.
Those of us who take the risk of maintaining a presence on the inter-web get used to typing it, www.
But this summer www has a whole new meaning.
Warm
Wet
Windy
It is, possibly, an acronym for global warming.
There were lots of articles in the press about how wonderful it would be, picking oranges in Cumbria or grapes on Hadrians Wall.
But what we are experiencing this summer is global warming in all its technicolour reality and it is not pleasant.
Warm, wet and windy weather that serves to make life just a tad unpleasant.
My two hobbies are on hold, motorcycling in www is no fun and www means that there is too much water in the river for fishing.
But of course www or global warming has another aspect to it, the arid, dry, unbearable heat of the southern hemisphere which makes life impossible and means that folk with no hope of survival in the hostile climate of what used to be their homelands up sticks and migrate north to a more temperate climate.
So Europe and the temperate countries become destinations.
We live in a migrant world.
Our time in Italy in 2011 and our stay in Spain in 2012 made the migrant world real.
The constant ebb and flow of young, mainly African, men, selling a wide variety of goods, mainly very poor copies of designer wear.
In the Port of Genoa the goods were sold on sheets laid on the pavements which were quickly lifted and thrown across a shoulder as the sales force made themselves scarce when the Guardia di Finanza arrived and then like flocks of migrant birds reappeared when the danger had passed.
It was a cat and mouse game.
But the mice were seeking to gain a foothold in Europe and those we spoke to made it clear that their ambition was to get to London.
The migrants destination of choice.
In Spain the sun beds on the beach, available to rent for nine euros a day, were often used at night by the young african street traders.
Often sitting in a beach front cafe with an early morning cafe solo you would witness the owners of the sun beds arriving and rousing their overnight guests before dusting the beds down for the day customers.
But just as in the fifties, the signs outside the boarding houses are going up again, but this time round, the signs are hanging on the dock gates and airport terminals.
The condems are rehearsing their anti immigration policies aided and abetted by the Labour Party.
When young Libyans arrived in Italy and headed for the French border they were left to camp at the gates on the Italian side in an echo of the camps outside Calais when immigrants tried to cross the Channel.
The social impact of www is increasingly troubling.
It is hard to imagine the future.
But large scale emigration is likely to be one effect of global warming but it will not be the only social disruption.
Certainly raising the drawbridge as recommended by Liam Fox is no solution.
What I find so scary is the new generation of MP's, in the main folk younger than I am, who went from PPS at University to a job as a researcher and then into a safe seat or even a seat in the House of Lords and are charged with developing policies to address the complex problems that the future will bring.
The result of this is both a failure of imagination and a complete loss of the large and spiritual ideas needed if we are to face the challenges of the future.
And as happens too often with the www, googling will not produce the answer.
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