BS: OK, England does have 1 fault

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Feb 03 - 06:17 PM

Canadian scientists have discovered the chemical formulae of snow.
A senior scientist was overheard giving away this valuable piece of information during snow clearing operations in his driveway.
Wh1Te   Sh1T

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: vectis
Date: 01 Feb 03 - 08:53 PM

I HAD to travel to Milton Keynes from the south coast on Thursday night (I had been called to my mum's hospital bedside). All was fine until I got close to the M1 turnoff from the M25 then the whole system ground to a halt. The radio stations were giving air time to people whinging that there were no gritters out. They were wrong, there were plenty of gritters out. I know. Two of them were stuck fsat in the same traffic jam I was in.
I was lucky enough to be close enough to a junction to crawl off the M25 after a few hours.
Less than 5 miles of sheet ice later the roads were clear and empty of traffic. I made it to MK by 1am; and yes, mum was still alive so it wasn't a wasted journey.
Traffic was backed up because roads had been closed, mainly because they were blocked by stuck and crashed vehicles. There was absolutely no excuse for this. We knew about the snow for several days before it arrived. People who can't drive in snow should have stayed off the bloody roads and left them clear for those of us who can drive and needed to travel despite the conditions.

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: Hrothgar
Date: 01 Feb 03 - 10:13 PM

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha .................

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Feb 03 - 10:20 PM

Not at all, Terry. What I feel is envy for those who live in warmer places, and a longing to join them there whenever I can. I detest Canadian winters.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: GUEST,Ms Penelope Rutledge
Date: 01 Feb 03 - 10:26 PM

England has a number of faults, but snow is not one of them. It looks lovely in the moonlight, and without it we would not get a chance to take the sleigh out and exercise Wellington and Beauregard. A splendid sight we are, dashing across the fields, just like in the song ("Jingle Bells"). I should be quite sad if Twillingsgate did not get at least 2 or 3 good snowfalls in a winter.

* PR

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 02 Feb 03 - 05:57 AM

The majority of people have no idea how to modify their driving to cope with snow. What is needed is driver education, and some more of the excellent Public Information Office type films, and adverts we used to have.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Feb 03 - 02:44 PM

Well it's all gone now. Untrampled fields still looked glorious in yesterday's sun.
It seems that the gritters were held back till the last minute, but thousands of people heeded the forecasts and left work early. The roads filled up, the gritters were stuck in the traffic, and the soggy snow froze on hitting the roads.
The underlying problem seems to be that our chronically underfunded transport infrasructure is so overloaded that any minor crisis brings it down.
London's mayor says that if he was allowed to keep a fraction of the wealth London creates, it could have a world class transport system.
Instead it is all taken to subsidise and featherbed the rest of the country. But I'm not saying that.
Oh the good times of old England,
Keith.

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Feb 03 - 02:58 PM

We knew about the snow for several days before it arrived.

Oh no we didn't. Well, I didn't anyway. In fact it was fairly localised, and weather forecasts aren't reliable at that level. Anyway, I can't uderstand them.

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: Deda
Date: 02 Feb 03 - 03:36 PM

Here in Colorado (Boulder, on the eastern side of the Rocky Mtns) we're used to having snowy winters, but we're now in a 4-year drought (caused, in some complicated way, by the warming of the oceans). January brought not one single snowflake here, and the mountain snowpack that provides 80% of the water for the plains is down at around 50% of normal levels. We're getting a tiny dusting of snow now as I write, but what we desperately need is several very severe blizzards, with snow measured in feet, not inches. I've lived in this semi-arid climate for something like 28 years and I've never seen it this dry. In contrast to the old "Home on the Range" song, we're praying every day for the sky to be cloudy today. And for the clouds to shed some precip. I collect the tap water when I'm waiting for it to heat up and give it to the trees. We have no real hope of a garden this year, or of green grass either, but we're trying to save the trees.

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: Gurney
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 04:51 AM

I remember English winters. Black ice, freezing fog, fish not biting...
Fortunately, you are extravagantly well supplied with places of liquid refreshment that you can walk to and there complain about the weather.

Chris in Auckland. Sweating in a T-shirt. Yeah.

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 05:45 AM

Giok: The makority of drivers have no idea how to modify their driving to cope with any change in conditions!

It's not just England; on Radio 2 this morning I heard of several lorries jack-knifed on the motorway in the snow last weekend, between Ulm & Stuttgart in Germany.

Nigel

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: HuwG
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 05:51 AM

As one who lives at one end of the Snake Pass, notorious as the first road in England to be closed in bad weather, I have a different definition of "road closed" to many people.

Theirs: There is a hint of snow on the road, and the local council has put red bollards up.
Mine: The sump is dragging through the snow. Usually, the suspension arms are too, which makes the steering a trifle heavy and unpredictable.

If I have a pet whine about driving, it is against far too many of the people who own these whacking great turbo-charged, 4x4 armoured personnel carriers, who use it to ferry their 2.4 children to school (to the hazard of other children who have to, or prefer to, walk), and are generally competent to drive these vehicles as far as Tesco's and back and no further.

Far too often, crashes and blockages on the hill roads in my neighbourhood in bad weather are caused by these overcompensated fools, usually because they are not capable of handling the power available. (Power steering, automatic transmission and over-servoed brakes won't help them get any feel for the conditions, either).

Apologies to any SUV-owning 'Catters. (Are there any?).


Incidentally, I nearly got caught yesterday; a blizzard hit while I was driving through Castleton in the Peak District, and I only just made it up the notoriously steep and narrow Winnats Pass. However, all's well that ends well etc. etc.

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: Grab
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 12:53 PM

Huw, I know what you mean. We had to stop once while the police sorted out some woman who'd rolled her top-heavy 4x4 pram coming back from Eyam (in fog; we think she ran up the verge, and momentum did the rest). Baby in there too. Luckily both the woman and the baby were OK.

Good job you made it to the top of Winnat's though - that is not somewhere you want to be sliding down backwards! ;-)

Graham.

PS. One of my fondest memories is of coming down Winnats and seeing a Ferrari struggling to get up there, with a big queue of people behind him! Guess they don't build them to go up hills... :-)

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: HuwG
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 05:12 AM

TheCountryside around Buxton snowed under last night, someone in a van was blown sideways by a crosswind and blocked the main Buxton to Manchester road, which was a twelve-mile long stationary nose-to-tail jam by the time I tried to get on it. Two other main roads out of Buxton (to Macclesfield and Congleton) were blocked by snow.

I got past the blockage via a back road, a quarry access road and part of a golf course (I think; it was hard to tell whether it was a bunker or a snowdrift).

The roads were not gritted in advance, and drivers were not warned that bad weather was expected that day (though people should pay more attention to weather forecasts).

In a part of Britain well known for harsh weather, I saw very few drivers equipped with basics such as wellingtons or other boots, shovels, warm clothing (everyone just sat with the engines idling and heaters going full blast for an hour and a half).

I don't consider myself much of an enterprising or resourceful character, but my successful detour was emulated by barely a dozen drivers out of several hundred.

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 10:42 PM

Most people posting here don't seem to realize the very important difference between snowy roads and icy roads.

Snowy roads are not much of a problem. Remember the phrase "nothing abrupt." Also remember that driving in snow takes more fuel. Of course, if the snowfall is so heavy you can't see far, then go slowly or try to get off the road for a while.

Icy roads are much more dangerous and unpredictable. I'm sure that most of the cases of cars off the road, cars that couldn't get up hills, and cars sliding are due to ice, not to snow. When it's icy, stay off the roads if at all possible.

Those of you who live where it's bitterly cold and snowy have got to realize that mild climates which produce icy roads are more dangerous to drivers.

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 11:21 PM

Definitely so. We had freezing rain here yesterday, and lots of ice today, and just about everyone avoided driving if they could manage it. Much nastier than the really cold weather.

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: Tam the bam fraeSaltcoatsScotland
Date: 08 Feb 03 - 12:37 PM

The reason I keep changing my name is because I sometimes get fed up with it.
And I always say a change is as good as a rest.
Tam

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 08 Feb 03 - 04:54 PM

a non sequitur I presume

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: GUEST,jaze
Date: 08 Feb 03 - 06:29 PM

And here I always imagined England to be very cold andd snowy in winter. Maybe that's just from Dicken's movies. You sound just like us. In Central Virginia, supermarkets shelves are swept clean of bread and milk at the first forecast of snow. No matter how much is forecast! But we're getting good at it now. After our 4th! snow this winter, a friend who really had to do her shopping said the store was not mobbed. If there were public transportation here, I wouldn't care how much it snowed. But as a health care worker who is "essential", I have to get in. Then it can be a drag.

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: Penny S.
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 01:13 PM

Dickens wrote under the influence of the memory of some very bad winters at the end of what is called The Little Ice Age, in which the northern hemisphere became much colder in the 14th century and continued until the mid 19th. This was what caused the Norse settlements in Greenland to fail. There was one particularly bad winter, with deep snowfall that hung about some time, and during which some people in South Street in Lewes, Sussex, were killed by an avalanche. If you go there, look for the Snowdrop Inn, and look up at the steep slope behind it. I imagine that snow blew along the chalk down, Caburn, and formed a cornice overhanging the homes below.
Since Dicken's time, the climate has warmed, but there remains a division between North and South Britain - the north has far more regular snow than we do in the south. There has been another step up in temperature over the past few decades. There are fewer heavy falls that hang around than I remember in my younger days.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: Tam the bam fraeSaltcoatsScotland
Date: 12 Feb 03 - 08:01 AM

Please speak English so that I can understand Goik

Subject: RE: BS: OK, England does have 1 fault
From: HuwG
Date: 12 Feb 03 - 08:51 AM

"Non sequitur" - Latin = "It does not follow". [Note: sequitare ?? is one of the awful "deponent" or "semi-deponent" verbs; its form is passive but its meaning is active. That's as much as I remember from fifth-form Latin thirty years ago.*]


The phrase is beloved of lawyers, and it means roughly, "The conclusion does not follow from the arguments". Or in this case, your post immediately above his, doesn't seem to be part of this thread. However, it is in reply to an earlier post of Keith A of Hertford's, in which he said:

"Thanks for the warm welcome Tam.
(Why do you keep changing your Mudcat name?)




*
That, and "amo, amas, amat", and "Mensa" = "O! Table!". And of course,

Caesar adsum jam forte,
Brutus aderat.
Caesar sic in omnibus,
Brutus siciniat.