Ministers Without Umbrellas

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 261 Report by Joyce Johnson Competitors were asked to imagine that by the next General Election man will have learnt how to control the weather; a prize of £5 was offered for an extract from any political party pamphlet dealing with this issue.

ALTHOUGH the Acts of God (Rationalisation and Control) Act of 1955 envisaged by John MacDonald has yet to become law, his entry came through the gales and blizzards from Stornoway all right. 'In the sad, conviction that all parties would treat such an exciting subject at their customary level of awe- inspiring dullness,' Hilary Wright submitted a good piece of Whitehallese, and there were others in the same vein. Half were Labour, the rest being fairly evenly divided between the three other parties and some new ones; and, of these, I particularly liked Ongar's League of Jehovah's Weather Prophets. At the other end of the scale, A. D. Bennett Jones deserves a mention for the sanest entry, and acknowledgements are also due to John Kilburn for my title.

After several recounts, the three success- ful candidates are N. Hodgson, Findlay P. Murdoch (£.2 each) and E. C. Jenkins (£1), who Win by a narrow majority over John Digby, Douglas Hawson, R. Kennard Davis, Ongar, D. R. Peddy and Keith B. Thompson.

FROM CONSERVATIVE PAMPHLETS Vote for Labour and 'Clement' weather if you please, but Dame Nature has had rather more experience and moreover cannot be questioned in the House. (A. W. DICKER)

Which will you choose: to make your own snowballs when and how you wish, or to have them rammed down • your neck by the cold

hand of officialdom? (G. J. BLUNDELL)

FROM LIBERAL PAMPHLETS

We believe in Meteorological Free Trade; but we deprecate the unrestricted dumping of snowstorms from behind the Iron Curtain.

(a. KENNARD DAVIS)

Rain will fall only at night except as far as those who work at night are concerned; in their case it will fall during the day only.

(KEITH It. THOMPSON) FROM LABOUR PAMPHLETS

Labour's weather policy will be one of Fair Showers for AIL To waverers we, would say, . 'Remember 1954.' (o. R. PEDDY) SUN IN YOUR EYES? Let there be sun, the Tories said, and turned on ten hours a day from the Met. Reg. . . . The Tories had you sun-drunk, and hit low. You were sun-brown and done brown. It's time you had the sun out of your eyes. (JOHN DIOBY)

PRIZES

(N. HODGSON)

WE are preparing a Bill to establish a Central Bureau of Weather Control, to which alone in future all petitions about the weather must be addressed. We warn the Church of England that Parliament is competent to alter the Prayer Book.

WE shall set up joint committees of weather producers and consumers to ensure a day's fair weather for a fair day's work.

WE shall end the scandal of a system under which the weather control of the Lake District has been given to a manufacturer of umbrellas with an interest in a cough mixture firm:

BY increased administrative efficiency we shall abolish the bungling which last August, to take an example, caused the nudist section of the Amalgamated Bottle Washers to be caught in a snowstorm on Ilkley Moor.

WE are opposed to Imperial Preference and shall cancel the concession to imported Test teams. British weather for British cricket!

(FINDLAY P. MURDOCH)

. . . As to the Government's policy of laisser fileuvoir wherever the interests of the workers are concerned, the Minister of Weather, so aptly named 'le roi soled' by Mr. Geoffrey de Frytus, seem? to have forgotten that the State is rather more than our present dry-bob nabobs, who are now openly manipu- lating the state of the weather to intensify the

class cold war and damp the enthusiasm of those who air progressive views.

It is significant that last summer Bourne- mouth had a record period of sunshine, with- out a single day's rain, while Blackpool had the coldest and wettest spell ever recorded. It is even more significant that the last Labour Party Conference was (meteorologically speak- ing) a complete washout, whereas Churchill could dryly observe at the Tory Conference that he had not been called upon to preside at its liquidation.

(E. C. JENKINS) -

THE NATIONAL SUNSHINE PARTY The under-privileged people of Britain have too long been denied the Weather they Deserve. When Smog, Fog, Drizzle and Snow descend on this great country the exploiting classes desert to the Riviera. to cavort in Cannes, and to squander the Wealth created by You in the sun-drenched casinos of Monte Carlo. THE MED. FOR THEM. THE MUD FOR YOU.

Remember the Umbrella. Man ! The National Sunshine Party offers Britain A PREMIER WITH A PARASOL.

NSP have planned for the immediate creation of a National Weather Board charged to give You the Weather You want, where and when You want it.

For the Sportsman : The Right Wicket for British Cricket.

For the Housewife: l'so More Wet Wash Days.

For Everybody : More Fun in the Sun.

Let the National Sunshine Party be YOUR Fair-Weather Friend.