Poor call cancelling schools has inconvenienced thousands

THE call to cancel school today was made too early and has needlessly inconvenienced thousands of parents. 

At 2pm yesterday Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk stood in front of a bank of cameras and said: "We are going to see heavy rainfalls, we are going to see thunder - this is a severe weather event, that is why we took the unprecedented step of closing all of the schools today." 

And so today thousands of parents are forced to stay home from work, thousands of families are left out of pocket and thousands of businesses will take a hit - all because the Premier and her team got trigger happy. 

Adding to the stupidity of the situation the Premier followed up with the following Tweet which set news reports buzzing across the state. 

The Toowoomba Chronicle was forced to quickly to write a story clarifying school would still be on, but anyone who has ever seen a map of Queensland would be well within their rights to ask exactly how the Garden City does not fall within southeast Queensland?

And the simple, plain and inarguable fact today is here on the Sunshine Coast there is no reason schools could not go ahead. 

The same is true no doubt for many areas where it has been canned. 

Why was it deemed impossible to wait until the weather hit and see which areas would need to be shut down?

Or better yet, why not wait until after the storm has passed and assess which areas have been hit hard enough to warrant such drastic action?

And let's not forget this call was made based entirely on a forecast, not on any factual information. 

I'm not a parent but I will become one in just a few weeks. 

And today, if the daycare or school my child will go to was closed, then either my wife or I would have to take the day off - for absolutely no reason. 

The Premier and her government should apologise for needlessly inconveniencing thousands of people.