Tuesday 26th March

I thought that after the snow of Saturday things might start to warm up, but it was still just 1 degree this morning, ice half forming in the puddles and the wind as biting as ever.  So, no sign of a thaw yet.

The ice chancellor, surrounded by his frosty ministers stands tall and cold, looking on as his people shiver.  Even the froth on the penny’s worth of beer he tossed them looks more like scum now that the dead reality of another pointless budget sinks in.  The government still insists that there is no alternative, and that eventually their policies will work.  The office for Budget Responsibility still maintains, just as it did three years ago that things will start to improve in about two years time, though they seem to present no evidence for this apart from a wet finger held up to the icy breeze roaring in from the continent.  So, no sign of a thaw yet.

A deal of sorts has been hammered out over Cyprus, though the real damage may be more long-term in the serious attempt to punish ordinary bank customers for the mistakes of the rich and greedy.  The Austerity solution that has failed so drastically in Greece, Spain and Portugal is being applied with ever tighter thumbscrews on tiny Cyprus.  So, no sign of a thaw yet.

Obama is flitting form one middle east country to another, desperately trying to rescue a foreign policy success for his flagging legacy.  But Isreal is as intransigent as ever, in fact speeding up the building of new settlements in the disputed territories, and the Palestinians are as divided as ever.  So, no sign of a thaw yet.

And so the world carries on, the leaders frozen like rabbits in the headlights of the oncoming blizzard, seemingly incapable of making a decision.  And the winter carries on, with no sign of a thaw yet.