Two million people fled, leaving behind only a handful who decided to let the latest weather nemesis do its worst. It was against official advice but it looks like their gamble paid off since Gustav doesn't seem to be in that much of a raging temper after all.

Television news showed a steady, calm stream of cars, buses and trucks moving slowly out of New Orleans headed for dryer pastures and the safety of their auntie's, their grandma's or wherever the heck it is people go when they are ordered out of their homes.

As the population took to its vehicles, there was the odd traffic jam but it was small stuff, nothing you wouldn't see here in Leeds on any normal day of the week.

But can you imagine the situation if Leeds people were told to get out of town pronto?

Our roads, gridlocked on any run-of-the-mill day, would seize up within moments of the announcement. If a car so much as stalls on Kirkstall Road or York Road or Otley Road on any normal morning, the ensuing jam backs up for miles.

People have brought the city to its knees by merely stopping to stick a letter in a postbox.

So under the kind of pressure created by three-quarters-of-a-million people trying to move at once, our entire transport system would just curl up and die within seconds.

Laughable

Getting as far as the nearest junction of the M1 or the M62 would be as practical as getting a seat on a train to London without a reservation. A laughable impossibility, in other words.

With no tram system or underground system to help take the strain and with a bus system built for profit, not need, we would go nowhere at all.

So I'm grateful for our temperate climate which helps to mitigate the intemperate emotions I feel every time I think of our transport system –or lack of.


O Brother where art thou?

IN 1997 it was Tory voters, in 1991 it was Communists, in 1945 it was Nazis and in 2008 it is Big Brother viewers.

They are the people who disappeared. After Labour was elected with an overwhelming majority and Tony Blair was the man of the moment, it was darn near impossible to find anyone who admitted to being a Conservative voter.

Likewise, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the former party members dissolved like instant coffee in a cup of hot water – and at the end of the Second World War there wasn't a self-proclaimed Nazi supporter to be found.

Ideology

I'm not suggesting Big Brother viewers necessarily have anything in common with any of the above, actually I doubt most of them would know an ideology if it smacked them in the face, but it's interesting that they seem to have disappeared.

Ask almost any group of people if they watch now and the answer will be a puzzled shake of the head, as if they can't quite comprehend the question.

Which leaves just me then. I haven't exactly been an avid watcher – but I know this year's major runners and riders. How unfashionable an admission is that?


Playing by the rules

ISN'T it irksome when politicians who put family values at the heart of their political pitch then protest that any focus on their own family is an invasion of privacy?

Sarah Palin, the Rebublican candidate for vice-president in America, has an agenda all about living according to certain rules. She seemed to tick all the boxes as a feisty family woman for presidential candidate John McCain on the two occasions he met her.

But now that her family doesn't seem to join her in living by those rules – her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, her husband was once arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol – noises are being made about her privacy. Having cake and eating it springs to mind – or moose, in the case of the huntin' and shootin' Sarah.


Classic fashion fiction

EVERY so often it happens. Someone comes along with advice on how to build a classic wardrobe of clothes or "pieces" as they become known in this context, that can be worn year in, year out, that will lift their wearer above the mire that is silly old fashion.

Funnily enough these books are always written by fashion editors, those at the heart of silly old fashion.

The latest is by Nina Garcia who has come up with The One Hundred: A Guide to the Stylish Pieces Every Woman Must Own.

Recommendations include a crisp white shirt, a denim jacket, knee-high boots and a tuxedo jacket – obviously there are 96 more.

It's as entertaining a way as any to make yourself feel inferior, as you acknowledge with sinking heart that you do not, have never and will never own a panama hat or a dangerously sexy black dress – other suggestions on the list.

These are fantasy wardrobes, and we like them in the way blokes like fantasy football teams.

But here's the thing: just like fantasy football teams, classic wardrobes are a complete ficton. There is no such thing.

Fashion's entire reason for being is change. Similar looks and themes come in and out of fashion all the time – but they are never exactly the same.

If you women out there don't believe me, drag out a wrap dress, or a trench coat or pencil skirt from five years ago – they're all fashion "classics" but they will look wrong. Something about the silhouette, the line, the cut – whatever you want to call it – will look out of date.

So read every list of classic clothes you like, then spend hundreds of pounds on your clothes, or pick them up from Primark.

But don't for a second believe you will be wearing them years down the line – because by then they will look as out of date as Princess Anne's hairstyle and Jodie Marsh's tan.