More Hyperbole

I heard a news reader the other day ask someone from the met Office what the cause of the current snow was. Bear in mind that these news readers are paid £92,000 a year! The cause is obvious, its Winter for goodness sake. We live in Britain, a northerly country on the same latitude as Canada, where no one wonders each Winter why they have had far more snow than there has been in Britain! I heard another comment that there had been more snow “than for many generations”! Complete hogwash. There was definitely more snow in 1963 and 1947.

The real question, and one that the Climate Change deniers have avoided is why is it that for the last twenty years we have had so little snow!!! I can’t remember going back into the 1950’s so well, but during the 1960’s, the kind of snowfalls we have had over the last couple of weeks were nothing exceptional. They were what you expected each year. Having to use an outside toilet during all that time, you do tend to remember such things. I can’t remember that many White Christmases, but I can remember, most years, going out Carol singing, in the weeks before, in the snow. And from when I was 12 I ran papers, and every year had to trudge through deeper falls of snow than are currently on the ground. The northern end of the village is terminated by Kidsgrove Bank, which marks a sharp geological divide with the Cheshire plain that stretches out beyond it. Every year the Bank was impassable, every year snow drifted so high that it covered the tops of cars.

I can’t remember a single year when I was a kid when there wasn’t enough snow to make large snowmen, and to roll into huge balls down the hills in the fields. I can’t remember a single year that there wasn’t enough snow to go sledging in those fields, usually on a cardboard box, or the side of an old washing machine. But, I also can’t remember a single day when snow caused us not to go to school. Partly that was because we could all walk. Those who came from the next village had about a mile to walk, which many people wouldn’t consider today (as the 118 advert says, “anymore than 20 paces, and I get a taxi”), but in those days no one even thought about. Some of the teachers also lived in the village. But, also you knew it was going to be like that in the Winter so people acted accordingly. As now the main roads were usually mostly clear, in fact, less traffic on them meant fewer people to get stuck, and an easier path for buses and snow ploughs. Its only because people have become so inseparable from their cars that they think they are trapped if they can’t drive from their front door to wherever they are going. Side roads are impassable by car, but does no one think to stick on their wellies, and simply walk to the main road to catch a bus??

I can remember even as late as the early 70’s when I first started driving it was quite common for people to carry snow chains with them over the Winter. Today, I doubt most drivers even know what snow chains are! Yet, snow chains would mean that few people had any reason to get stuck. It’s a bit like I’ve written before. The News is no longer really about providing News. It is about providing entertainment, capturing viewers, and for that reason everything has to be hyped up, even distorted. Last night the BBC had a reporter in Wiltshire who told us that it had been snowing for 5 hours, and so on. Yet, his coat was immaculately free of any snow, there was no sign of any snow coming down, and behind him the fields were so little covered in snow that they were still distinctly green. In a later interview he actually admitted they had missed the worst of it. But, for anything today to be NEWS, particularly News that you have to keep endlessly repeating every 15 minutes, only something unusual will do. Everything has to be the worst, the best, the most or least of whatever it is. That is made worse by the fact that the News readers themselves are relatively young. If you are only 30 years old then you will think the uncommonly mild Winters of the last 20 years are normal, and a bit of snow like that now will seem inexplicable.

Many people have commented about the fact that the country seizes up. My son was talking to someone in Scandinavia the other day, who thought it was hilarious. In Scandinavia they don’t even bother using salt on the roads, because below –4% it has no effect. I’ve actually been to the Salt Union mine in Winsford. Its very impressive, but how ridiculous is it that the salt whose purpose is to keep the roads open is transported by road?? Again, I can remember when I was a kid the side roads never got gritted. As few people had cars that didn’t matter too much. But also, I remember that because we all had coal fires, whenever it snowed, in the morning, when people emptied their grates, they would tip the ashes on to the road, so we didn’t need the street gritting.

What has been good though is the extent to which people have co-operated to help deal with the problems they face. It shows once again that whatever the apologists of Capitalism and class society might say to try to denigrate the real nature of human society, to portray us all as the greedy, self centred beings that they are, the majority of human beings remain, co-operative, compassionate people, who recognise that such actions are also to their own advantage.