Is the 'South' still there?

[Drago]

Holy god dammit - a sensible guy!!!

I list confess I had to wrestle with the urge last night to go to the chippy in he next village
and put the Land Rover through its paces, but sanity prevailed on the basis it was hardly essential, and while I'd be fine if left to it Sod's law says there's be some ill prepared muppet who'd happily slither his bald tyred FWD heap into the car and get me on trouble with Woman.

 

[AnythingButVanilla]

I got let away from work at 4pm yesterday because of the "snow". The fact that it had stopped by the time I left and the trains were all working perfectly meant that I was in the house for half four but I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

There's next to nothing here in Clapham and I can't believe how namby pamby people are being about it.

 

[ComedyPilot]

I used to work on a farm where I had to go on a night check to make sure the animals were ok. One day it had snowed, and I remember ploughing through bonnet deep drifts to get to the farm. The road was un-treated, just ploughed, so there was about 2" of packed snow to drive on. Trouble was the stretch of road was exposed to wind, so every gate hole meant 3 foot high drifts across the road.

Same road in Feb 2006 travelling to my mum's funeral, and the hearse was doing the same thing through the snow drifts.......

My mum hated driving in snow......

 

[Pennine-Paul]

It's not over yet and now destined to get catastrophic, the forecast says 17 feet of snow heading for London and the East; the Prime Minister has already declared it a disaster zone, international forces are being sent from all over the globe including Scandinavian and Canadian mountain rescue experts who are en-route as we speak.

Is that the headline in the Daily Express then??

 

[Brains]

Holy god dammit - a sensible guy!!!

I list confess I had to wrestle with the urge last night to go to the chippy in he next village
and put the Land Rover through its paces, but sanity prevailed on the basis it was hardly essential, and while I'd be fine if left to it Sod's law says there's be some ill prepared muppet who'd happily slither his bald tyred FWD heap into the car and get me on trouble with Woman.

Back when I were a lad in Cornwall (mid 1970's) a local farmer & his wife drove his LWB Series II Landie over to ours for dinner. After dinner they drove the two miles home, the snow had drifted into the deep lanes to such an extent that the Landie got stuck. They did the remaining half mile on foot.
Next morning they took out the tractor to pick up the Landie.
They ran it over !.
He only realised it was there when the rear tractor wheels went through the roof.

 

[grumpyoldgit]

Once upon a time, in the Kingdom of Heaven , God went missing for six days. Eventually, Archangel Michael found him on the seventh day resting. He enquired of God,

'Where have you been?'

God pointed downwards through the clouds. Archangel Michael looked puzzled and said,

'What is it?'

'It's a planet,' replied God, 'and I've put LIFE on it. I'm going to call it Earth and it's going to be a great place of balance.'

'Balance?' inquired Michael, still confused.

God explained, pointing down to different parts of the Earth. 'For example, North America will be a place of great opportunity and wealth, while South America is going to be poor; the Middle East over there will be a hot spot, and Russia will be a cold spot. Over there I've placed a continent of white people and over there is a continent of black people.'

God continued, pointing to the different countries. This one will be extremely hot and arid while this one will be very cold and covered in ice.'

The Archangel , impressed by God's work, then pointed to another area of land and asked,

'What's that?'

'Ah,' said God. That's the North of England , the most glorious place on earth.

There are beautiful people, seven Premiership football teams in the North West alone, and many impressive cities; it is the home of the world's finest artists, musicians, writers, thinkers, explorers and politicians. The people from the North of England are going to be modest, intelligent and humorous and they're going to be found travelling the world. They'll be extremely sociable, hard-working and high-achieving, and they will be known throughout the world as speakers of truth.'

Michael gasped in wonder and admiration but then proclaimed,

'What about balance God, you said there will be BALANCE!'

God replied very wisely,

'Wait till you see the bunch of plonkers I'm putting down South !

 

[JtB]

The problem down here in the south is that there's not enough snow for my mountain bike and too much snow for my road bike :-(

 

[coffeejo]

I was shocked yesterday at the number of schools that were closed in my bit of Somerset. All the roads were clear, there was no ice and it wasn't especially cold - I didn't put the heating on til it got dark. (It's colder today and the heating's still not on.) Considering the snow we had at either end of 2010, I really don't get the hullabaloo this time around.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

Oh??

Actually that's not too bad as a session beer...while you build up to some proper stuff

 

[Scoosh]

It strikes me that the Met office is playing ultra-safe these days. They will post all kinds of fancy-coloured Warnings about rain, wind, ice, snow, fog - maybe even sun - in order to prevent being accused of not being good enough or 'getting it wrong'.

Call it 'Michael Fish Reaction'.

The result is lots of warnings and (too often) not much weather disruption - but the Met Office statistics will look good, I'm sure.

 

[coffeejo]

I don't think it's the warnings that are the problem so much as the panic and/or lack of response, and then not being prepared and running into problems.

Not learning how to drive in the snow/ice, for example, or trying to drive through flood waters without knowing how deep it is (especially when there are road closed signs up!!). Or taking the attitude that because our cold winters are so short, it's not worth improving the infrastructure.

 

[Arch]

Now that the BBC have mostly moved oop t'north to Salford* this is the first real snow most of them have ever seen, so not surprising they are doing special programs about it
(I genuinely had to do a Google search to find out where the place is as it's north of the border Severn-Wash Line)

Nice try, but I'm in Salford at the moment, and there's about a mm of snow left in the few places were it hasn't all melted away anyway. Probably not more than a cm fell in total.

If you really genuinely had to google Salford, you're pretty ignorant. How about Manchester generally, had you heard of that?

 

[Brains]

Nice try, but I'm in Salford at the moment, and there's about a mm of snow left in the few places were it hasn't all melted away anyway. Probably not more than a cm fell in total.

If you really genuinely had to google Salford, you're pretty ignorant. How about Manchester generally, had you heard of that?

Heard of the place, but never been there.

 

[grumpyoldgit]

Now that the BBC have mostly moved oop t'north to Salford* this is the first real snow most of them have ever seen, so not surprising they are doing special programs about it
(I genuinely had to do a Google search to find out where the place is as it's north of the border Severn-Wash Line)

THat is the silliest thing ever,to go from owning the studios to renting Salford from Shepperton Pinewood Group.There is no infrastructure in place up there to do all the work,so people are paid to travel up & get paid expenses as well.

 

[snorri]

I don't think it's the warnings that are the problem so much as the panic and/or lack of response, and then not being prepared and running into problems..

I think the warnings are a problem. Some younger people may have been led to believe this country has just suffered a snow storm, how are they going to react when we get a real snowstorm? I don't blame the public for being concerned, they should have been preparing and making arrangements to cope if the going were to have become as difficult as the forecast had suggested.
There should have been a public apology by now from the Met office, "We are sorry, we got it wrong by a country mile". Perhaps it's time for a funding cut or some form of penalty when they get it so wrong. Otherwise they will just carry on issuing warning after warning to which the public will become ever more apathetic, and when a real storm arrives we'll all be caught with our pants down, apart from the people who are always prepared and, probably the same people, who look skywards from time to time and make up their own weather forecasts.