Paper Monitor
10:59 UK time, Thursday, 5 July 2007
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Paper Monitor is feeling rather chastened after making light of the Daily Express' prediction last Monday that Britain was expecting its wettest day for 50 years, only for just such a thing to happen.
So, all snorts of derision should be silenced when the Express asks, as it does today, "will the sun ever come out?"
"We asked Britain's scientists, psychics and mavericks [by insinuation, there's nothing maverick about psychics in the Daily Express universe] to predict just what the next 10 weeks have in store."
No time to run through each, so, here's the potted conclusion: it's going to be a rainy but dry but wet but very wet but warmer August heatwave with sun in September but beware August 12.
So that is that (as a certain former prime minister might say). Hold on, beware August 12 - what's that all about? Express regulars may detect the hand of resident astrologer Justin Toper behind such bizarre cautionary advice, and they'd be right.
But Toper's forecast seems to be cloaked in something more scientific than star gazing. "Britain's top astrologer" begins by linking occurrences in the solar system with the weather on Earth. Sun spots, for example.
As the primary source of energy to the earth and, by a long chalk, the biggest nuclear reactor in our solar system, the sun's role in delivering us a hot summer is pretty conclusive. But before you know it, Toper is ascribing rather more dubious qualities to it and other stars and planets out there.
"The sun," we are told, "is currently situated in Cancer, another water sign, and we're experiencing those effects now".
As for 12 August. Toper's Law of Metrology goes like this: The date is a new moon, when the sun (warmth) is overshadowed by Neptune (wet connections). That's it.
Weather be damned… there's only one sun that Paper Monitor deigns to orbit in its universe: The Sun. Its lead today - Scotland Yard's refusal to fly the Union Flag. Its headline: "Cop Out". Its proof that flying the flag has no racist or nationalistic connotations: pictures on the inside pages of women in headscarves and Muslim men happily brandishing the flag.
The 
