Back Again

Well that's me back to reality after two weeks in the beautiful Greek island of Crete, and I can well recommend it as a place to take a holiday. But whilst sat in a bar enduring the brain frying temperature of 45c (113f) and watching reports on TV of torrential rain and major floods back in the UK. It really does seem time to believe that something must be behind these extremes in weather that we are seeing more and more often. Like it or not climate change is now a fact of life. Locals told me that they had not endured temperatures as high as this for the time of year for twenty years or more, and constantly warned visitors not to stay out too long in the blistering Sun. Most folks were sensible, but of course some weren't and the local medical centres did a roaring trade, with heatstroke and bad sunburn cases galore. When holidaymakers end up visiting these medical centres they are impressed by the treatment that they seem to receive. But what most don't seem to realise is that most of these places located in holiday resorts don't work like the good old NHS, they are private clinics and are purely and simply there to make money. If you limp in with a sprained ankle don't be surprised if you are given blood tests, X-rays and an ECG and any other expensive procedures and tests that they can dream up. OK we know that your travel insurance is going to end up paying for it all, and that's exactly the idea of having insurance, but these places are one of the reasons that it's so expensive.