Many years ago I used to listen to the wonderful 'Round the Horne' on Radio 4 or, more probably then, the Home Service. One of the mainstays of the programme was a sketch piece involving the eponymous Kenenth Horne with Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick as 2 camp fellows introduced by Williams with the line "I'm Julian and this is my friend Sandy".
Few living on the eastern side of the United States will be considering their 'Sandy' to be a freind this morning as the storm-cum-hurricane of that name does its best to bring huge parts of the country to a halt. Airports and subways are closed, the streets are deserted and thousands have evacuated their homes. That mighty bastion of US society, the New York Stock Exchange, was closed yesterday and will remain closed today, the first time since 1888 that it has failed to open for 2 consecutive trading days. Some have no doubt lost their lives, many will suffer personal, business and financial loss and the Presidential election campaigning has been brought to an abrupt halt. What the eventual costs will be cannot even be guessed at, though the overall effect on the global economy may eventually be positive as repair and restoration work gets underway. Only the future will tell us.
This is not the first hurricane to strike the US and it will not be the last; they are battered by 10 or 20 every year but this one has hit its most important centre of population and finance in devastating fashion. At a time when the human race and, in particular, the United States, believes itself to be all-powerful, this storm has issued a salutary warning. Not only are we, and they, not all-powerful, in the face of nature in all its pomp, we are all but powerless.
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