Tim Worstall

Britain and Snow

I know we English love to to talk about the weather but this really is ridiculous:

The heaviest snowfall in 11 years closed airports and schools yesterday and
caused travel chaos on roads and railways, proving once again that Britain
just cannot cope with seasonal snow.

Once a decade is not seasonal. As far as I’m aware we have four seasons a year and having a couple of day’s problems once every 40 or so can hardly be regarded as ticking around each and every winter season, can it?

Amid calls for a parliamentary debate on why Britain unfailingly grinds to a
halt during inclement weather, Jack Straw, Leader of the Commons, admitted
that Britain coped badly with snow. He said: “It is extremely important we
upgrade our efforts all the time to defy the weather which, after all, not
withstanding a day’s snow, is much more moderate than many other countries
who frankly are able to cope a bit better.”

Stupid, stupid, stupid. How much will it cost to "upgrade our efforts"? How much do we lose once a decade?  If the latter is less than the former then we should just take the occasional enforced break rather than pissing away the wealth of the nation on something that makes us all poorer.

In

9 responses

  1. dearieme Avatar
    dearieme

    “grins to a halt” my arse. Seems more like “teachers decide to have a day off from having to spend time in the presence of foul little savages whom they normally baby-sit”.

    Reply
  2. dearieme Avatar
    dearieme

    Actually, “grins to a halt” might be an inspired typo.

    Reply
  3. Mr Eugenides Avatar
    Mr Eugenides

    I await an Independent front page explaining why the “unseasonal” snow is actually evidence of climate change.

    Reply
  4. dave heasman Avatar
    dave heasman

    “I await an Independent front page explaining why the “unseasonal” snow is actually evidence of climate change.”
    Climate isn’t weather, but in a period of rapid climate change there’ll be more extreme weather. Over a middling period, 10-15 years, it’ll be noticeable. The odd hurricane in Kensal Rise once in a while, that sort of thing.

    Reply
  5. JuliaM Avatar
    JuliaM

    “..in a period of rapid climate change there’ll be more extreme weather.”
    A couple of inches of snow in February = ‘more extreme weather’…?
    I can remember about 30(ish) years ago having to stay off school for two days because we had a snowfall so deep, it came up to my fathers knees. And that was a suburb of London, I’d hate to think what it was like in rural areas.
    Of course, all the scientists were then convinced it was evidence of the ‘New Ice Age’ we were heading into!

    Reply
  6. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    Tim, you normally put figures on this sort of thing. Here’s a go –
    GDP per working day is about £4bn (probably a bit more than average as Saturday and more so Sunday must be less)?
    How much gets disrupted? 10%? And how much would be disrupted with better planning? 5%? So that’s £200m per day, and if we say there’s two a year, that’s £400m cost. Is this way out?
    You can argue that the work just gets delayed, and people do more next day, but I’m not sure that’s legitimate as there is a cost there, ie the harder work.
    Tim adds: Well, I think we’re saying that the cost is actually £ 400 million a decade in the costs of disruption. If it costs us more than £ 40 million a year to avoid it, then that’s a bad deal.

    Reply
  7. john b Avatar
    john b

    JuliaM: actually, no peer-reviewed scientific articles were ever published in support of the “global cooling” theory. But apart from that, spot on.

    Reply
  8. Marij Sak Avatar
    Marij Sak

    I read your headline in an RSS and got all riled up, logged on to tell you what I thought, only to find we think the same. So apologies!

    Reply
  9. JuliaM Avatar
    JuliaM

    “…actually, no peer-reviewed scientific articles were ever published in support of the “global cooling” theory.”
    Perhaps if the scientists of the 70’s were as media-savvy, fame-hungry and beholden to their/their backer’s political views as the scientists of the noughties (hate that term…), there would have been some…. 😉

    Reply

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