Sensational shite about snow – Again!

Two days into the UK’s ‘adverse winter weather’ and already I’m absolutely sick to the back teeth of all the media bollocks again!

The BBC News report; “Northern Scotland and north-east England had fresh snowfalls, and snow is moving over Wales, where there is a Met Office severe weather warning” (read more). No doubt the media frenzie already in place, given that the ‘problem’ has so far only had an impact upon the NE and Scotland, next week is likely to be ‘the end of the world as we know it’ when/if the snow hits the South and the Home Counties.

Why is it that every year (when we actually get snow), the first thing the media do is announce the country is grinding to a halt but why? Probably because we actually do. With an almost total reliance on the motor car, and the overall poor levels of driving skill in the average British motorist, it generally means that as a nation, we suffer if there is any adverse weather, no matter how severe.

Wake up and smell the coffee, contrary to British belief, winter is supposed to have snow!

Perhaps we should look at snow a bit more like our Scandinavian and Germanic cousins? They don’t spend millions on grit and ploughing, they have far more snow than we do, far more regular and for many more months of the year than we do and, their bloody nations don’t grind to a halt. They actually have an expectation they need to keep a winter set of wheels and tyres for their car, their motorists face prosecution for not preparing themself properly for winter conditions and, they don’t lord it around in fancy 4×4 ‘Chelsea Tractors’ with slick road tyres. It is ludicrous that even the majority of those who posses a 4×4 in this country also get stuck when the weather terns bad. The great British motorist… Pfft!

Why is it that our people always want to blame anyone and everything for their own incompetence? And whilst doing that, they do also have the absolute brass neck to complain about living in a nanny state, FFS get a bloody life! Perhaps we should factually stop gritting and ploughing our roads at all, that would actually give them something to moan about. Perhaps that would actually make them become more skilled and self-reliant as drivers.

Once again though, the media hype about snow is probably more about inventing news than actually reporting news. Michael Blastland of the BBC highlights this in his column; “The thing about news is that it has to be unusual, otherwise it’s not news, it’s just life. That’s one theory at least. But it presents all sorts of problems” (read more). Another piece of interesting and topical bit of news, at least for weather geeks or those with a technical or social media bent, was reported in The Guardian…

guardian.co.uk So how’s the snow where you are? And more importantly, how many marks would you give it out of 10? We only ask after a rather ingenious weather map turned to Twitter for help in mapping the wintry conditions hitting many parts of the UK. Marks are awarded not for artistic impression – or how good your snowman looks – but the severity of the snow. One or two for a “few flakes”, 5 for “steady snow” and 10 for “Arctic blizzard conditions”. Oh, and 11 if it’s so cold your iPhone‘s seized up.

Related Articles

• Drivers struggle as snow grips UK (mirror.co.uk)
• British grit their teeth, not the roads (annaraccoon.com)
• North-east UK struggles as snow blows in (independent.co.uk)
• Heavy snow to blanket Britain as bitter cold weather heralds arrival of winter (telegraph.co.uk)
• Twitter’s snow map | Media Monkey (guardian.co.uk)