From the Mail Online: (h/t to Richard North of EUReferendum)
But the forecast is the bigger worry, not the lame-o self help from the local government:
Council chiefs have sparked outrage after proposing residents dig themselves out of the snow as Britain braces itself for another winter of Arctic conditions.
As long-range forecasts suggest the country will be hit by blizzards and temperatures plummeting to -20c, bosses at Camden Council prepared to hand out spades.
But their solution to the bitter weather has been slammed by those who remember the headache of last year’s gritting crisis which brought widespread disruption and left people trapped in their homes.
The north London council’s proposal involves a ‘self-help’ scheme in which people can ring and request a shovel.
The authority plans to give out more than 2,000 spades to community centres and groups, shopkeepers and families to help clear clogged-up roads and pavements.
Eleanor Botwright, director of Castlehaven Community Centre, said: ‘It is not quite dig your own grave but it is a double-edged sword.
The coming winter is worrying many in Britain, and it seems that such “shovel ready” programs really don’t help that worry.
The MetOffice might lift spirits if they forecast a BBQ Christmas.
Sounds like a reasonable solution. Either they dig themselves out, possibly losing weight in the process, or they don’t and starve.
Looks like they are in for some weight loss this winter!! I am assuming the Eco-Nazis will not allow them to use gas snow blowers of course!!
I won’t be clearing the pavement in front of my house in much the same way I didn’t do it last year. Why? Because if anyone slips on ice that has formed over the bit I cleared I’ll get the pants sued off me because it’s ‘elf an’ safety, innit…
I’ll clear my path when they dump that stupid law and people learn to watch where they put their feet.
Joanie says:
October 8, 2010 at 9:47 pm
What is wrong with personal responsibility? These people can’t buy their own shovels? Maybe if the UK government would stop handing out free, useless, cheap stuff to whiny residents, they could save enough money to do something that is actually useful. (like stock enough grit, or get a few snow plows or something)
Didn’t they hand out light bulbs at one point, that didn’t fit the sockets or something?
If the people in the US know that a hurricane is coming, they board up their windows… with plywood that they BUY FOR THEMSELVES which costs much more that a freakin’ shovel.
Wow, what has happened to the world?
To be fair Joanie, the proposed shovel distribution isn’t a UK wide proposal, it is only being suggested in one borough of London. You have to bear in mind that London effectively shuts down when it gets more than 1 inch of snow, as (probably due to the considerable UHI effect created by 10 million people) very few of the inhabitants have any experience of driving/walking in snow or ice. Those of us who inhabit more northerly extremes of the British Isles (i.e. the Scottish Highlands) can usually get about and function in -20C and a couple of feet of snow without the need of a state of emergency declaration. But even we struggle compared with how the Norwegians and Swedes stroll along at -30C and worse. It’s what you are used to. IIRC some of the citys/towns in north-west Canada spend 30% of their total budget on snow clearing, I’m guessing but in the UK the average would probably be a fraction of 1%. It should be noted that the death rate here rises rapidly after snowfall – older folk keen to clear the snow from their drives often suffer from heart attacks as they exert themselves too much.
Half the comments here are funny for their lack of knowledge of the UK.
When I was a boy in the 1960’s and 1970’s we and all our neighbours did dig out the snow and clear the roads (it’s called the blitz spirit).
As snowfall in the UK never lasts long we have very few snow ploughs as it is not cost effective.
What has happened is that we have had 25 years of very little snowfall so people under 35, don’t remember this.
Over the last 3 years every time it snows I clear a 50 metre footpath outside my house to the main road and I don’t expect the council to clear it as it would again not be cost effective.
Lastly a council is not the UK government and our current government is not a socialist one (as the old one was kicked out in the May 2010 election), however if many of your readers think that any european government not led by “Adolf Hitler” is socialist then I might need to concede the point 🙂
Byz – snow may not last long where you are in the UK but we had about 70 days of snow cover last winter and about 60 days the winter before. (Highland Perthshire). They had much more further north in Badenoch and Strathspey – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA02SAlOeJU
My strong hunch is for another hard winter.
Some pointers:
1. First snowfall in the Alps down to 1500m in August and a second similar fall in September. The earlier this happens, normally the harder the winter to come. 1981 in Austria saw 30cm+ at 800m in mid JULY. I know because I was on exchange that summer and came into breakfast to see all the snow on the ground. The first big winter snowfall that year came at the end of October, with up to a metre falling that early and staying. The snows left the farming belt in late April in 1982.
Big early snowfall in Canadian Rockies too, e.g. in Lake Louise………
2. Rich and early blackberry crop in SE England.
3. Magnificent blooms of berries, rosehips etc etc, indicating a need for the squirrels to build up big stocks in their dens for the winter to come. The squirrels are seen more regularly and in greater numbers at this time. Smart cookies, squirrels.
4. 1984/5 and 1985/6 were horrendously cold in Cambridge, I put my 5 season winter bag inside my bed to keep warm when at college and the Cam was ice for 6 weeks – we are at the same stage of the solar Hale cycle now.
5. El nino headed toward La Nina. Always helps it get a bit colder.
6. Joe Bastardi’s thoughts are always worth taking into account. He reckons another hard one too.
7. I await what Piers Corbyn has to say with interest. I’d be surprised if he went for a mild one, but he knows his science and his methods better than I do, so we’ll wait and see.
I’d go 60 – 70% confidence on a hard- to really hard one and less than 10% that we get no snow lying in SE England through the whole winter.
Snow?
Mike in Houston
Piers Corbyn has his forecast ready for the winter. He needs a commercial sponsor to release it. Has anyone got any spare cash. Considering the previous accuracy of his forecasts, you would think Camden Council would be paying up.
It’s not far from Camden.
WeatherAction
Delta House, 175-177 Borough High Street. London, SE1 1HR
Here’s a country at fifty something degrees north, and people don’t have their own spades?
I wish global warming was here now I live in sydney and I still have the heater on , and our govt is looking to start the ETS and all our power bills will double GOD SAVE AUSTRALIA . WE NEED HELP TOO TURF OUR LABOUR GOVT OUT .
Steinar – we have spades in Scotland. And I am sure that most folk in the English countryside do also. It is just the southern townies that are incapable (they are probably too busy sourcing imported blueberries).
10/10 – just in time for a snow warning across the South Island of New Zealand, a month and a bit away from summer.
And from a Southern Hemisphere heading towards summer, a late-snow story from Mount Hutt – went for a final-Saturday schuss with the grandkids, and spent the day in semi-whiteout at 1500m, with 3-5cm of nice new white stuff to – er – schuss on. Very hard to ski gracefully without reference marks, and Cold!
Had to fit chains to the trusty Forester to get back down the hill (Hutt has managed 4 deaths this year – mainly people skiing/boarding out of bounds and encountering – whodathunk – ice, so is being ultra-careful in the Health and Saftey Department.)
Snow caused by the usual suspect – a deep low which swept very cold air straight up from Antarctica. Hey ho.
The Blitz Spirit is right – altogether now:
“There’ll be blueberries over the white cliffs of Dover … “
@ur momisugly FatBigot says: October 8, 2010 at 9:41 pm,
Sir, I know not which part of darkest Sussex you visited but where I live in Sussex the hedgehogs have booked into all of the hedgehog dens I have concealed about my garden. Each den has an occupant quite ready to defend their tenancy against all comers!
I think something not being taken into account here is the cultivated incompetence of the English in the snow. It’s happened so rarely for the last couple of decades that everyone wants an excuse to take a day off work when it snows. It was amazing how everyone stopped fannying about last year once the novelty had worn off and they started worrying about getting paid.
Forgive me. I’m a cynic.
I expect that, if you carefully check the money-trail, you will see that either:
1.) The shovels were purchased from China at a bulk rate (15 pence each) by Politician A’s brother-in-law, and then purchased by Politician A at a higher rate (95 pence each.) Then an administrative fee was added. Politician A’s son-in-law was paid to hand the shovel’s out, as Assistant County Subdistributor. Total cost to taxpayer for “free” shovels: 5 pounds 85 pence each.
2.) Politician A is running a State Operated factory, which only stopped making brooms and switched to shovels when the snow melted last April. They now have a huge surplus of snow shovels, but the fact they have made shovels is almost a sure sign there will be no snow this winter.
In either case, the shovels will be cheap and break after ten minutes of use.
If you want a job done well, let the private sector do it.
Council chiefs have sparked outrage after proposing residents dig themselves out of the snow as Britain braces itself for another winter of Arctic conditions.
I don’t get what the “outrage” was about – after all, most able-bodied people are perfectly capable of digging snow – preferring self-reliance over Government-dependence – and it would leave the taxpayer better off. I would also suggest we can provide our own bloody shovels.
I suspect it is the Council diggers who are outraged.
Byz says:
October 9, 2010 at 12:19 am
…our current government is not a socialist one
Are you for real? PM Cameron may be a Tory, but he’s as liberal as anyone on the Labour bench. The days of UK Conservatives promoting individualism, free trade and small government are long gone, now replaced by Green propaganda and “Hug A Hoodie” campaigns. And the Lib Dems? They’ve always been ultra liberal left-wing. Your statement is completely false. Our current government is a socialist one.
Mike McMillan says:
October 9, 2010 at 12:46 am
Snow?
Mike in Houston
I have a friend in Houston who said it flurried for awhile late last winter, and everyone panicked even though it wasn’t sticking. Know you are joking, and that Houston normally never gets snow, but you do never know.
I am still rooting for snow in Cancun in December, but we know the odds of that too (-:
Steinar Midtskogen Oct 9 12:51 am:
Nah, we’ve got the Gulf Stream!
Actually, despite the Daily Mails hysterical announcements, snow in London is not that common. This is old England, not New England. London is more typically mild, wet and misty as anyone who has visited that fine city will tell you. I’m not sure why shovels are being given away, but lets get this in perspective.
1) The Council has stated that these shovels will not replace snow clearance and gritting on roads and pavements.
2) The shovels are available on request , to be returned after use. This is in keeping with an idea of give the people the tools and they will help themselves out of any mess.
3) It is likely that as the climate in the UK cools and we get regular snow falls, people will adapt and have a store of appropriate tools.
4) These issues have to be seen in the context of the UK having a liberal democracy and welfare state. Examples such as the NHS are born out of this philosophy. The Daily mail is a propaganda sheet for the hard right in the UK and has been campaigning for an end to this type of government for many years, even to the extent of support ing the Nazi party at the time. They feel government should rule on a basis of everyman for himself, but that is not within the UK character. Our liberal democracy will always lie somewhere between totalitarian authority and complete liberal anarchy, in other words a mature democracy.
And as a result, if a Council occasionally makes shovels available to those who are unprepared for our notoriously unpredictable winter, it’s no great issue, there are many other things to get more wound up about. My advice is to think as carefully about the accuracy of Daily Mail stories, as one would with regard to Guardian climate change scares.
Oh – I can visualise it now…
Phone rings next January at Camden Council offices.
‘Hello – Camden Council Self-Help Group..’
‘Hello – yes – I’d like one of your free shovels please, to clear the snow from my front path..’
‘Sorry, sir – we can’t get them out, due to the snow….’
(There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza….)
The MetOffice might lift spirits if they forecast a BBQ Christmas.
lol
There’s is something more epic going on here not mentioned.
We’ve gotten used to the UK media just shouting ‘it’s going to be record hot every year every season’. Now for the 1st time, they’re not doing it.
This could be a sign there has been a decision made at the top e.g.
‘ look, britain is getting colder, we need to face that sooner or later, we’re losing the mass public’s trust. We need to make the switch to the story ‘ GW causes gulf stream to be diverted, europe loses heat source ‘.
This story has always been around, at least since the start of the GW campaign, and now would be a sensible time for them to promote it to ‘excuse of 1st resort’.
Arctic signals that control movement of the jet stream are similar to the last autumn negative Siberian end (Kola) SST anomaly, while Greenland-Hudson Bay positive.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
This pulls jet-stream further south which would bring colder weather and strong precipitation (snow) in Northern Atlantic.
Why is this happening:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC21.htm
(note the reverse scale for the magnetic field to reflect temperature trends right way up)
Since last October the Hudson Bay – Siberia differential has deteriorated by another 94 nT, due to the Hudson Bay’s intensity further weakness.
When I lived in Sweden, I was told that it was a legal requirement for houseowneres to clear the snow from the footpath along the full frontage of their property.
As far as competence is concerned, I also remember an occasion in when I was waiting for a train on the day after the first snow. (About 1 cm.) It was late. I asked a porter why the train was late. His reply (translated) was “Well, it’s all this snow, innit? It’s a natural phenomenana, innit? We can’t do nothin’ about that.”
This in a part of the country where 50cm would be normal.
Later that year, a Swedish newspaper made unfavourable comparisons with the Norwegian Railways’ ability to cope with snow. (Practically treason, to suggest Norwegian superiority in anything!)