To think that the TV and newspapers wouldn't give a shit about this storm if it hadn't happened in the South East?

[CiderBomb]

All morning I've been hearing on the news about the terrible storm that has apparently hit " Britain" in the early hours of this morning, however here we've had absolutely nothing apart from a bit of heavy rain. Seems like it was just the South East, but no surprises there because for a lot of people in the media that's where the British Isles apparently begins and ends....

I've just watched This Morning and they are talking about it like the whole country is affected, then Eamonn makes a snotty comment along the lines of "people on Twitter are saying that just because they are not affected we shouldn't be talking about it". Maybe they are just thinking the same way as I am, that a small part of the country was affected by bad weather, but the majority of us got off scot free?

I can't help but wonder how this would have been reported had the storm come in from the North Sea and devastated Scotland and the North East?......

Oh yes, I remember it well - I was one of the people stuck on the M8

Bizarre and preposterous op.

When people say that the news shows a London/SE bias, are they forgetting that more than 10% of the UK population lives in London? I expect the total for London and the SE is more than 25%.

But this storm has affected the South West, the South Coast, South Wales, London, the South East, East Anglia and the South Midlands.

Why the hell wouldn't it be newsworthy??

I'm not sure if YABU or not.

This storm did deserve the coverage it got. But maybe I just don't know about the extreme weather that has affected other parts of the country on the same scale because it isn't reported.

What's naffing me off are the 'hilarious' photos on fb, twitter etc of patio chairs flipped over captioned with 'it's a disaster' or whatever. 5 people are dead and thousands of others have had a nasty day for all sorts of other reasons connected to the storm - it's not funny ffs.

SirChenjin that day was horrible, I was stranded at work with no way to get home.

A sympathetic colleague took pity and drove me as close to home as it was possible to get.

XP also decided that he 'had' to drive poor DS home from 40 miles away because he had something important to do the next day...idiot.

lots of really silly posts on here. A similar storm in Scotland would not get the same coverage precisely because it is a more common occurrence and consequently the landscape and plants are subtly different so the damage is far, far less. And this is happening while the trees are still in full leaf down here so the damage is far worse because they catch the wind more. Four people died in this storm and that simply doesn't happen every time the wind blows in Scotland. On my mile-long journey to work this morning through central London, I saw two enormous trees down and another tree that had fallen onto an entire block's worth of four storey scaffolding bringing the whole lot down - fortunately it happened in the middle of the night otherwise each one of those three events could have killed several people - and that was in the space of a mile.

Equally silly remarks after the 1987 storm along the lines of "it happens in Scotland all the time" even though 15 million trees came down as a result which clearly doesn't happen all the time in Scotland - it was news precisely because it rarely happens in the SE and therefore the SE is less adapted to these conditions.

Likewise the snow. It quite rarely snows in London and therefore when it does snow very badly, it can cause gridlock. It would be surprising if snow in the Cairngorms caused the same amount of disruption. When Scotland has extreme conditions in the other direction, that will be in the news - three months of drought and record high temperatures causing forest fires destroying homes - as in Australia. That would be the equivalent of last night's weather in the SE and it will be on the news because it's unusual.

Me too MissBetsey. People have died, there's huge structural damage to vast swathes of the country..I fail to see the humour.

A similar storm in Scotland would not get the same coverage precisely because it is a more common occurrence and consequently the landscape and plants are subtly different so the damage is far, far less

What are you on about??!!

Umm, huge swathes of Scottish countryside do not look like the South East. We have different weather conditions and therefore different flora and fauna.

how much coverage was there of Cockermouth
or Malton
or Hull
sorry but YABU

the South East was very very badly hit in 1987 and its where the most people per square mile live

we had no big probs round here but if it had been oop north it would have ben covered

how much coverage do you get of the Tornadoes that hit Selsey or Hayling each year - every year - at least one?

Quangle A storm which killed four people, caused a huge amount structural damage and also happened in Scotland would get national coverage for the same reasons this one has.

You also seem to have a rather odd idea of what Scotland is like. My experience is that we aren't much better prepared for freak weather conditions than the rest of the UK...and the weather isn't that much different, albeit generally cooler.

And large swathes of England don't look like Strathclyde, the Lothians, Lanarkshire etc etc. Scotland is just like England, with areas of dense population - not sure why you think a storm of this type would not get the same coverage, or why you think it's a more common occurrence. It really isn't.

THe population of the whole of Scotland is less than that of Central London
if the News should report on what impacts on those who pay licence fees, oddly enough the South east will get more coverage

It is, yes - doesn't mean the coverage shouldn't be the same if a storm of this magnitude should hit north of the border.

I don't mean Scotland is better prepared (practically) although it probably is. It's just that it's silly to say "We get these windspeeds and storms all the time in Scotland and it doesn't make the news" - when it's not the windspeeed that's the news item. It's the damage it causes. And when 80mph winds meet enormous deciduous trees which are, unusually, still in full leaf, more damage will be done than when they meet coniferous forests or moorland.

I think its best to remember the people who have died here. 2 of whom were teenagers.

bit of respect wouldn't go amiss for them and their devastated families.

Yes - that is true for trees in some parts of rural Scotland, just like it's true for some parts of rural England. We're really, really not better prepared - so if the same storm level hit here (as in the densely populated central belt) then I would expect/hope the same level of coverage.

for the last couple of days our headlines in the south have been about 800 people losing their jobs in scotland. And if this number of jobs were lost in the south they probably wouldn't even bother mentioning it at all in the news let alone the headlines, and presumably not the headlines in scotland as well.

The density of the population is only part of the issue - although many more people are affected here because we are densely populated. The issue is about natural adaptation to climate. A harsher climate (which Scotland has compared to the SE and I don't think that's in dispute) will give rise to hardier plants. That's my only point and it's hardly controversial. Our trees could not withstand winds of this speed and they came crashing down all over the place. If a storm of the same magnitude hit Scotland, it would not have the same impact on trees because the landscape is different - the plantlife on average will be hardier.

I'm not suggesting that our houses are less strong or our roads less prone to flooding. But the landscape is different.

Oh yes, the important thing to take from this thread is that there are hardier plants in Scotland and the trees won't come crashing down in quite the same way.

Most interesting Quangle.

But that's precisely why it wouldn't be news

Have we lost touch with our geography so much that we don't understand how much weather impacts on landscape/flora which in turn affects whether particular weather conditions will be absorbed or will cause damage? Unusual weather conditions for a particular region will cause more damage than the same conditions in a region that typically has such weather. That may be the most boring sentence ever but it is the case.

OK have bored myself now. Am going to bed with a book about isobars.

Smile and nod, smile and nod.

I missed that last bit. I had to go and clean out my bagpipes, air my kilt and put the porridge on a slow boil.

Mind you I'm a a bit distracted at the moment what with the raging storms going on up here. Expect I'm not because they happen all the time and anyway people up here posess a magical forcefield which makes them impervious to freak weathe conditions.

And don't forget the trees Flippanda, it's the trees that make all the difference....

I've just ventured outside the croft to round up the haggis from the hills - they seem to have weathered the storm quite well, which is only to be expected I suppose, given us Scots natural propensity to cope well with all the storms that hit our country at regular intervals.