Bill Harvey: Life’s a gas

As a lifelong, though eternally disappointed, Birmingham City fan, I have grown used to seeing my city near the bottom of many a table. So, I was surprised to see this week that Birmingham sits around the middle of a newly published league table of UK cities based on the average waiting time needed to see a GP.

At 2.25 weeks, Brum is still not within the government target of two weeks, but safely above my new home Bristol (2.69 weeks) and
bottom-placed Belfast (3.33 weeks). Glasgow is top, as is so often the case with eye care, at 1.66 weeks.

It is hard to imagine the high temperatures suffered this week throughout southern Europe, heat pulled up from Africa by the same jet stream dragging cool and wet air over us.