A Few Inches Of Snow – Britain Comes To A Standstill!

Wow!What a week we have had here in the Uk!Four full days of ice and snow, the like of which we haven’t seen round these parts for almost twenty years.
The whole country has come to a standstill (according to the press), kids have been sent home from school, parents have to stay a home to look after them and British Industry has lost billions of pounds because of it (according to the press)! The motorways are closed or grid-locked, buses have been taken off the roads, trains have been cancelled and to top it all, some local authorities are running out of rock salt and grit to spread on the roads!
Why the country cannot cope with a few inches of snow I don’t know. Maybe we should send a party of people to the U.S. or Canada to study how they manage with their much more significant snowfalls.

When I was much younger and at school, the winters we had used to be just as harsh as we have seen this week, if not worse. I don’t ever remember being sent home from school or the school being closed because of the weather. In fact, school in the snow was something we all looked forward to.
The problem that schools have nowadays, is that most of the teachers don’t live ‘local’ to the schools that they teach in. So they have to travel and if the roads are grid-locked or impassable, the school has to close through lack of staff!
I don’t remember any grown ups from my family ever missing work because of the weather. In those days, the majority of people that worked were paid by the hour. This meant that if you missed work, you didn’t get paid for the time that was missed. These days, a lot of workers receive a monthly salary, so if they miss work, they still get paid. It would be interesting to find out the stats (from the people that claim the country has lost billions, surely they have a break down of the statistics) for salaried against hourly paid workers failing to turn up for work!

Filed under: Uncategorized

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!