On Wednesday, 29 January 2014 23:34:49 UTC, Adam Lea wrote:
On 29/01/2014 20:27, John Hall wrote:

In article ,

Dawlish writes:

The pictures testify to the depths of snow.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25949795



Thank goodness It's not just areas of the UK that grind to a halt

with 3"" of snow. *))



As the article says: "Barely 3in (7.6cm) of snow caused havoc in a

warm-weather region where many cities do not even have snow ploughs or

fleets of salt trucks." The amount that it's worth spending on anti-snow

precautions has to be linked to the frequency and severity of such

conditions. By that token it's unrealistic to expect the UK to be as

well-prepared as Canada or Switzerland, but we ought to be better

prepared than the US Deep South.





It has to be said though the idea that the SE grinds to a halt over a

couple of inches of snow is highly exaggerated. Looking back to the

significant snowfalls in December 2010 traffic was still moving around

my area on the main roads, shops were functioning normally and people

were carrying on as normal. It was only on untreated rural country lanes

that people were struggling and even then it wasn't everywhere. The

problem is that the media shoot a few pictures of localised areas where

there are severe problems and people then think that that those

localised places are somehow representative of entire counties.



Heathrow tends to suffer simply because it is running at pretty much

maximum capacity, and capacity here means capacity on a benign weather

day. As soon as anything even a little disruptive occurs the theoretical

maximum capacity drops, the airport becomes super-saturated and the only

thing that can happen then are delays and cancellations. I suspect that

airports in countries with routine heavy winter snow do not try to

operate them at the capacity that Heathrow does.



The fact the TFL stopped buses in December 2010 was more to do with all their revenue being taken in passes and Oyster cards. I worked on London Transport in the winter of 78/79 which was infinitely as a winter far worse then anything we've experienced since and yet I can not recall one bus route being stopped-delayed yes but stopped no. But remember then all London buses collected the bulk of their fares in cash.


These things are important to know when someone tries to revise history by saying the December period of 2010 was so bad it stopped some London bus routes. Pish I say: The lazy money already grabbed *******s took some time off as the money had already been collected.

Up the workers eh? Poor sods had to walk.