London May Stink But Meet The New 'Euro Whiff' Hitting The UK With Greater Force

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It can be said that there is a bad smell in the air when it comes to the far from sweet smelling odors which have been adorning the shores of the British Isles so far this year, and you would not be far wrong in thinking that, yet there is something in the wind, to quote Bob Dylan, and it is not political as the tune suggests, but more agricultural.

It has been dubbed the "Euro-whiff" by our white coated chums at the Met Office in the UK, and let's face it, it takes many a brain cell to come up with a title such as this. Yet humour aside, the agricultural smell which has been wafting across the UK has been due to Eastern winds blowing the smells of farming and other agricultural past times over the country. The smell is actually coming from a mixture of sulphur and manure - how lovely. The bad smell, we have been told, is being thoroughly investigated.

However, we would not be true Brits if we did not complain about it, and the Met Office has been snowed under with hundreds of calls complaining about the bad odor - not a lot the Met can do about it, yet we have to moan at someone. At the same time, the BBC have also been blamed (?) meaning that the broadcasting chaps have received over a thousand emails also complaining (the wonders of technology allow us complain even faster.)

Yet it can only be blamed on the way the wind is blowing and the Met Office are certainly sticking to that. Speaking on behalf of the Office, Sarah Holland told BBC News,

"Basically, over the last few days, we've had fresh, strong winds from an easterly direction. As a result some of our air is coming from continental Europe."

She went on to explain that the smell was down to farming pursuits in Western Europe which was being transported over to the UK on high winds. She said,

"Normally, our winds are westerly, coming off the Atlantic Ocean, which bring little or no pollution with them."

So it could well be that a farmer in Germany who is happily spreading his crops with certain manures could be to blame, but to actually blame someone in a particular country would be pretty impossible. She added,

"I don't think there's any way we will know. The air over that part of Europe has been very stagnant over the past few days, so there won't be any way of telling where it is coming from."

As some residents in the Eastern region of the UK have said, it is the kind of smell you can taste - what exactly that may mean, we are not sure - perhaps someone in Anglia knows what manure actually tastes like. Others have described the odor as being one similar to the whiff of dead animals. One BBC website reader said,

"I thought there was something that was dead, like a rat or a cat, and it was their decay that was causing the smell. I quickly got into the car and drove off, then at the station I parked the car and got out and the stench was still there. I had a serious scare now."