It seems every year we have the hottest/coldest/wettest/driest/whateverest year/month/day/half hour since records began (look up the Texas Sharpshooter, it’s always going to be the somethingest something even if it’s the most average year since records began). If we accept that the weather’s going to veer from one extreme to the other every year is there something stopping us getting prepared for it before it happens? This year Brighton and Hove Council has less grit than it had last winter. Remember last winter? A lot of Brighton’s were virtually impassable for over a week because nobody had made the proper provision for snow. In January. In Britain. This lack of preparedness anywhere else would cause shock and protest but here it’s just one of those things like shockingly inefficient administrative bureaucracy and cucumber sanwiches, things no-one really likes but we put up with because it’s the British thing to do.
In Stockholm buses run on time in over a foot of snow. In Brighton last winter after 4 inches fell the bus drivers packed up and went home leaving commuters, pensioners and school children stranded in that same 4 inches of snow it was ‘impossible’ for them to drive in. The state of the roads meant there was no mobility cars were careening all over the streets, the road up to the County hospital was the only one consistently clear, darkly ironic since if the other roads and pavements had been gritted the hospital might not have been such a necessity. The reasoning the council put forward for this debacle is that in Sweden they know it’s going to happen every year so they can budget for it. What happens to it if you don’t use grit one year? Does it go off? Does it melt in the sun? You might want to put snow chains on your Nissan NV200, go over to Motability and see if they can do studded tyres for mobility scooters
in Scandinavia fewer elderly people die from hypothermia than in Britain. A lack of planning and the conformity of the British who are afraid to turn the heating up because of the usury prices the gas and electric companies charge. If you’re old, and your cold, turn the central heating up and burn the bills, what are they going to do, send you to prison? At least you’ll be warm there and you’ll be dead before they send the bailiffs around anyway so live it up!
