Well.. what a few weeks we have had!.. the coldest in a long time.. and it’s much more like how I remembered when I was young and probably colder!
I have to say our local authority has coped rather well with the weather, especially as the length was un expected… its ashamed the Govt didn’t implement the recommendations it got last summer but I guess we have come to expect this dithering on things that really matter and implementing interfering nanny state type rules, to trip us up etc etc… (I could moan about the expiry date on a photo driving license here as the paper ones didn’t expire… but I’ll save that back handed trip up by our govt for another day)
I’d hope the people realise a few things about the clearing of ice or snow / gritting in general… Firstly we aren’t a Scandinavian country that experiences this for months a year, therefore we don’t put the huge resource into it… and if your saying why not… ask yourself would you like to pay for it in higher taxes cause that’s the only way it could happen, and it won’t be just a few pennies and if we did ..but then what about the waste of tax payers’ money over the last decade when it would have clearly not have been necessary
The council has basically gritted the main roads, by doing this its meant that life carries on as near to normal as possible.. ie your shop gets restocked by the supplier but we have to cope on the local estate roads with snow… now just think if we had played this a different way this year say in the first few days we gritted everything (not possible due to lack of man power but we are being hypothetical here) we would have run out of salt/grit half way through the cold spell and after such a point we wouldn’t have gritted anything.. Therefore even your local shop that you could probably walk to that’s on a main road wouldn’t receive any goods and then soon people wouldn’t even be able to buy bread or milk…. It’s just a thought but I’d rather struggle on the local roads and have the main ones clear so life continues as best as possible…
We haven’t even considered pavements yet.. They aren’t like roads and they would need to be treated differently. If you were expecting the Authority to grit them, they would have to do it manually and by walking, not like the roads you couldn’t use “gritters”.. it would be totally un practical for them to do.. just think how long it would take to walk round your estate… or into town? Maybe how long it would take to walk into town, but going up and down every side street on the way…. You get the picture! Though I really don’t see why we try an move the onus back onto the resident to clear the pavement outside their house, it would bring back some community spirit and would save us all a bill at the end of the month! The sad thing is at the moment the law is an ass and discriminates against people who do this and actively makes them at fault should there be an accident. However did that get on the statute book I wonder!!
Anyhow all that aside, hopefully we will have a big enough rest bite to restock before we get any more cold weather, I suspect a bit more later this month or in Feb… and in all honesty I think we may be seeing a few more winters like this… I wouldn’t be surprised if we are on the way back to proper old style winters.. and that’s the reason I’m goanna be buying me a Ranger Rover (late 90s pre the govts wicked £400 retrospective car tax) soon (don’t worry I do have some off road intentions too…)… and if the weather gets worse over the next few years then a winch and some snow chains too…