It’s been a wonderful summer (so far) and yesterday we felt happy for some rain. I know it doesn’t feel quite that way the further north you get but down here in the south it has been a summer like never before. Old folk like me were around in 1976 and can remember such brown grass but can anyone remember the intense heat from day to day, week after weak.
And into this has come a new prime minister and a new confidence in Government, even if parliament hasn’t sat much since he arrived! Many things are better. The index of our stocks tells us things are better in the firms we work in
This is an indicator of confidence for some people but there are more subtle indications that we are feeling better about what’s in our back pocket.
Ok – in all – we aren’t that happy – it is a long road to a recovery to the happiness of a couple of decades ago, but you’ve got to hit the bottom sometime and I reckon it was a couple of years ago.
Yes , older folks like me find it harder to shrug off old habits. The FT article I’m quoting from finds no such bounce in sentiment since 2016, ten years of depression (and I use the word in an economic sense). Here’s how Amy Borrett (its author) finished up.
Helen Dickinson, BRC chief executive, said consumers aged 18 to 27 had driven an improvement in expectations for personal finances and spending plans, noting that the less pessimistic outlook had delivered a “honeymoon boost” for new Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
“[However] maintaining that momentum will depend on whether the government can ease the pressure on household budgets,” she said.
“The Budget will be the acid test of this government’s real commitment to growth.”
On that challenging note I’ll stop,hoping for more good news.
If you have some spare cash burning a hole in your pocket buy food necessitites with a good shelf life before the significant price rises in Q4.
“can anyone remember the intense heat from day to day, week after week?”
Look at John Dee, a stats blogger. The summer of 2026 has been remarkably like that of 1976, until very recently when our hot spell this year has proved to be a little longer. But, as he admits, he hasn’t applied any correction for the poorer quality of temperature measurements in 2026 which act to exaggerate the problem.
I have looked at John Dee over on Substack.
I’d characterise Dee’s view as a legitimate caution about measurement comparability, wrapped around an arguably overconfident conclusion.
The legitimate bit is
“Don’t treat two temperature observations from different eras as perfectly equivalent without considering changes in observing conditions and instrumentation.”
Absolutely. Slow-responding liquid-in-glass thermometers in 1976 to fast-responding solid state devices in 2026, for example.
The questionable bit is
“These factors mean the 2026 figures are exaggerated.”
Not demonstrated.
And the particularly questionable bit is the implication that his probability value statistical test establishes something stronger than it actually does.
The striking finding seems real to me at the level of the published Hadley Centre Central England Temperature (HadCET) observations. 2026 is currently well ahead of 1976 for those 106 comparable dates which Dee considers.
Whether the magnitude of that difference should be adjusted for instrument and urbanisation effects is a separate empirical question, as yet unanswered.
I would not, however, react to Dee by saying “the instruments are better now, therefore his argument is nonsense.” That would be too simplistic. I’d ask him the much harder and more productive question:
“What is your estimated correction, in °C, for each of the two alleged confounding variables, and what evidence establishes its sign?”
Until he can answer that, “measurement differences exaggerate the problem” is for me an assertion, not a demonstrated result.
‘“These factors mean the 2026 figures are exaggerated.”
Not demonstrated.’ What demonstration could you possibly require? A resistance thermometer, for example, responds quickly to every small fluctuation; the inertia in a mercury thermometer means that it averages those temperatures over a longer time span. The mercury thermometer therefore reports hotter maxima and cooler minima. I used to do a lot of temperature measurement in the lab and on industrial plant. Such phenomena were universally recognised.
Similarly the “urban heat island” effect is universally recognised though representative magnitudes are disputed. But its sign is not disputed. Unless you expect Dee to provide a huge literature survey with every blog post your demand is absurd.
Oh bugger; sorry. I meant “The mercury thermometer therefore reports cooler maxima and hotter minima.”
And another thing: the blessed CET itself. Consider this from one of Dee’s posts:
“There you are extolling the virtues of the world’s longest running temperature record only to find it has more holes than my garden sieve!
We’ve got a shortlist of eight stations that are supposed to make the HadCET data record what it is (Radcliffe, Rothamsted, Ross-on-Wye, Stonyhurst, Malvern, Squires Gate, Ringway, Pershore College), so it occurred to me to count how many of these eight were operative on any one day, then convert these daily counts into percentages that could be averaged over the year to get a feel for overall completeness of the data record.
What came out of this shocked me somewhat, for the maximum daily count only managed to reach four operative stations out of the eight at best! TBH I had to cross-check my files a few times to ensure I hadn’t made a blooper. I hadn’t, and 50% was thus the best capture rate we could expect.
Herewith a handy little time series plot that reveals how the annual mean capture rate varies from just 12.5% (just one station operative) to 50% of stations operative (largely driven by Rothamsted, Malvern, Squires Gate and Ringway) …”
Once again – for this has happened many times – someone scrutinises official temperature records and is appalled at the shoddiness, or downright dishonesty, involved in the reported temperatures. Meanwhile the world is full of mugs who accept the official figures as the Gospel Truth.
As I’m unable to post the following comment/question on Dee’s Substack without upgrading to a paid subscription, I’ll leave it here:
Someone needs to press Dee (or similar critics) to answer the following, for which I certainly don’t need a huge literature survey:
Given HadCET v2.1’s documented homogenisation steps, what residual bias (in °C) do he/they attribute to (a) instrument response differences; (b) site/exposure changes; and (c) urbanisation,
for the 2026 vs 1976 period?
And what empirical basis (field studies, intercomparison periods, or re-analysis) supports each number?
Until he/they supply even rough, defensible numbers with uncertainties, his claim that “2026 figures are exaggerated” remains for me an untested narrative layered on top of a very real but incompletely quantified methodological caution.
A simple sensitivity analysis could look, for example, at how large a uniform +0.3 °C or +0.5 °C bias in 2026 would need to be to erase the observed lead over 1976 in the HadCET daily series.
That for me anyway would turn this qualitative dispute into a more concrete, numbers‑based argument.