To feel this country should be able to cope with snow fgs?

[QueenEagle]

Why does everything come to a standstill in this country when we have a bit of snow?

We don't even have half of what we had when I was a kid when we just got on with it even when we got snowed in for days on end.

Are we soft or what?

is really deep here riven, not nice to walk or drive in

was it deep?

did you have to be towed out? i'm worried this will happen to me eventually

suppose it is all relative,and what you are used to.scotland it snows and you try get on with it.the london snow is reported as worst in @20yr so has had catastrophic impact

I've been watching learner drivers going along my road all afternoon (its a wide, very quiet and very snowy road) hardly any other cars. I've found it quite funny - they all look terrified! I had snow driving lessons, but still wouldn't even consider driving down any of the local steep hills and tight corners - which pretty much rules out snow-driving altogether

Still snowing steadily here, only up to 6 inches though.

In our town the buses have been running all day, the kids made it in to school, but the secondary school then announced that they were going to shut at 5 minutes notice as not enough teachers had turned up. Round here, most secondary school kids make their own way to school, so there were some worrying implications of this, particularly as they are not allowed to carry mobile phones.

YABU if you're referring to areas like London which rarely see snow like this. If we experienced such huge snowfall every year then yes, I'm sure even soft Brits would invest in measures to counteract snow slowdown.

However I do think our local councils should have got off their arses and gritted more roads.

Well said ScottishMummy!

I remember a few years ago, it snowed so much people had to sleep in nightclubs and in the bus station :O. I walked home, after the cinema, in heels and no socks (WHY) it took dp and i hours to walk about 5 miles. No taxi would stop for us lol.
The snow was no where near that bad today, but when i opened my curtains this morning i didn't want to leave the room, i think that night put me off snow.
Still, i wish it wasn't dark when i got in from work so we could have made a snowman.

Well I couldn't get into work because my trains were either delayed or suspended. It takes about 2hrs for me to get into work and I had a hospital appointment at 3.30pm so would have had to leave work as soon as I got in.

I'm glad for the snow as I had a nice day in. I'm not going out in the ice on the trains for people to push me around or risk slipping on ice in my pregnant state. My baby and a well deserved lie in comes first.

It's pretty logical really.

Countries further north of Britain are colder and get more snow, so people make adaptions to their lives to enable them to continue as normal, such as snow chains, winter tyres or triple glazing.

The weather vaires greatly here, and as a result we do not make as many major adaptations. If tax payers money was being stickpiled in huge numbers of snowploughs and gritters, then people would complain.

It rarely snows in the south of England, so it is not surprising the country has difficulty.

I am bust making the most of it. I am from Britain, but lived in Scandanavia for some time, where there is snow all winter - but everyone's lives are adapted to living with snow and ice, and where it make finacial sense to do so.

Having said all that, if i was in London I would not have gone in, as last time i got stuck on the M25 and north London area for about four hours. Colleagues spent until midight and beyond travelling home.

I maybe agree that it's not reasonable to expect us to be able to cope with snow like this that happens every 20 years, but the fact is that parts of this country can't even cope with tiny amounts of snow. It may not bring about the complete closure of the London transport sytem, but it invariably creates far more disruption than other countries with equivalent climates.

OK, so I would expect Scandinavia or Russia to make different provision, but there are plenty of countries further south than us where it snows occasionally and whose capital cities don't grind to a halt, even in conditions like this. Paris probably wouldn't, and (heaven forfend) Berlin almost certainly wouldn't. And before you say that parts of France and Germany get lots of snow, that's true of this country too.

Dont confuse countries that are South of the UK and less snow. The UK is pretty far North but our weather is affected by the warming of the North Atlantic Current and pretty much everywhere is within a 100 miles of the sea - which stops it getting too cold. Sure there are parts of Europe that are South of us that deal with snow better but this is because they DO get more of it.

Well yes, I do realise that , but my point is that places which don't get more snow than us do cope better with it. Berlin perhaps wasn't the best example, but parts of France have a similar climate to Britain and they cope far better with it. As do countries which have warmer climates than us.

I think they struggle too. You have to read the whole of this article...but there were problems everywhere.

www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g2-qCgCklHKRxhx-xwFBMykMTpKw

Yes blackrock, but my point was that it's always like this in this country, regardless of how much snow there is. This week has been exceptionally bad, but every time there is a centimetre of snow it's 'transport chaos' in the South. That's what I find ridiculous.