The Prime MInister is responsible

for lightning strikes. He is also responsible for people who fail to clear the dry vegetation around houses. He is responsible for people who throw out live cigarette butts. He is responsible for people who use angle grinders and other equipment likely to cause a fire. He is responsible for arsonists. He is responsible for drought. He is also responsible for climate change.
If you believe the media and the trolls you will believe all that.You will also believe that preventing bush/wild fires is a simple matter. 
I thought of all that this week because of something else entirely. The Prime Minister has been criticised for taking a short holiday out of the country. Apparently he should be here directing operations with respect to the various catastrophic fires around the country.
There is actually very little, if anything, he could do. He is not an expert in fire fighting. He knows far less about it than a previous Prime Minister who has been out there actually fighting fires. The present Prime Minister will take advice. He is at the other end of a mobile phone if a national decision needs to be taken. Fire fighting is a state responsibility, not a national one. 
And, like everyone else, the Prime Minister needs a break - even if  it just a short one. He won't work effectively unless he has one.
The same has to be said of someone else I know. Ms W's father has a high level legal role. He works very long hours, often under a lot of pressure. He should be taking his annual break right now. The election in the UK and certain other matters within the EU mean that he is still working. He is in Europe now. When he was told he would need to go he pointed out that school holidays were about to start and that he had planned a getaway with Ms W. Each year they try to go somewhere. He leaves work behind for a bit. They spend time together. Often it has been spent at a beach somewhere with a pile of books. It is what they both want. 
I thought it might change as Ms W has grown older but she seems to be more certain than ever that this is how they spend their holiday together.
So, this year? Ms W's father needs to be there right up until Christmas and then after Christmas. Some things may close down but others, things the rest of us usually know nothing about, will continue to be worked on. Ms W needed to go somewhere but her father was not prepared to simply pack her off to the only family they have. The nation's capital is no place to spend Christmas with people you really don't know well and don't particularly like. "My aunt's okay I suppose but her boys aren't." 
When Ms W's father said he at least wanted to delay his trip long enough to get Ms W there his boss had another solution.  He is already aware that Ms W is a weekly boarder at school - and sometimes needs to stay weekends - because of her father's work load. Somehow he pulled strings and Ms W left for Europe yesterday. She is supposedly in the care of another staff member headed for the same destination. When I met his wife yesterday she told me, "It is a matter of her looking after him, not him looking after her."
Ms W has been to Europe before - Switzerland and Italy last year. This trip was unexpected but still welcome. "I'd go to the middle of the Sahara if I can be with my Dad." 
At first she will be staying with people her father and I both know. I also know that they will give her a good time and that she will be a sensible and thoughtful guest. Her father will have a short time away from work over the Christmas and New Year period. He needs it and he needs her as much as she needs him. 
I thought of this as I was reading criticism of the Prime Minister for being absent. Is it really the wrong thing to take a short break and come back refreshed and ready for another year of hard work? Is it really wrong to do that if there is nothing you can usefully do? It seems to me that this is more about politics than reality.