CAN weather forecasters please go back to just forecasting weather and not acting like a meteorological version of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

Years ago Michael Fish and John Kettley just told you that it was going to be hot and to enjoy it, now we get the full Armageddon every time you watch the news and weather on television with everybody from rail and airport bosses to school headteachers putting their two ha'p'orth in.

Why shut schools for a few days of hot weather? when I was young when it got hot the teacher would take us outside into the shade and we would have the lessons there.

I'm sure that all the teachers whose schools closed went home and worked on lesson plans and marking homework and you would not have found one of them by an outdoor swimming pool, on the beach or downing a cold beer outside a pub.

Why are railways closing and airports cancelling flights? A few years ago I landed in Dubai airport in weather as hot as we have had for a few days, but that was at midnight and the plane didn't sink in a sea of molten tarmac.

In Perth, Western Australia I've seen the once weekly train leave for its three day journey to Sydney over 2,000 miles away, again in temperatures far hotter than here and for far longer periods with no problems.

If they can do it why can't we? Are we using cheap inferior steel for our railways, did a gang of men pull up at Luton airport and say they had some tarmac left over from a job and they could do your runway for you cheap?

If this is climate change and not just good old fashioned weather are the people in charge of the infrastructure of this country already looking at ways to change things so we can carry on as normal or will they just close everything down the next time it happens and sit twiddling their collective thumbs. If it is climate change we need to address these things because things aren't likely to change anytime soon.

Nobody, even those protesters who glue themselves to anything to disrupt our lives don't really want to have to change their lifestyles. And to stop everything that is supposed to be causing all the problems everyone on the planet will need to go back to how we lived two or three hundred years ago. Ain't gonna happen is it?

We have to prepare for this or be the laughing stock of the rest of the world that copes perfectly well with heat.

As for the health experts telling me I need to keep out the sun and drink more fluids when its hot, I hope that from October to May they will be telling me to wrap up and keep warm every day because its cold, as official figures show there are many many more excess deaths in this country due to cold than there are heat, but we don't get bombarded every day about keeping warm.

On the bright side, given the temperature, I suppose all the social media snowflakes bemoaning their discomfort will be little puddles of water next to their keyboards.

Paul Morley

Long Preston