These were taken over Christmas Day and Boxing Day near Winchester (Otterbourne) with just a handful of shots – the batteries for my ancient Canon 1DS are somewhat reluctant in the cold – and it was very cold on the second morning!
Grazing In The Misty Morning
Misty Morning
Mist On The Downs
Almost the very first thing that gets mention in the media when snow descends on the UK is the travel chaos preventing people from getting into work. Employers are worried that their employees are skiving; employees are worried that they won’t get paid because they can’t travel into work.
First of all, skiving is relatively rare not simply because people don’t want to let their employers down, but also because they know that those who do manage to get in will have to work harder because of the lack of people. They don’t want to let their colleagues down.
Of course this is one time when as many people as possible should be working from home. Again skiving isn’t very likely; as someone who has had occasion to work from home myself, you tend to work harder from home than you do from work. There is perhaps less clock-watching and more goal orientated work. This doesn’t work for all kinds of work, but sometimes employers are just a little too reluctant to allow this.
In addition working from home needs practice – you need to make appropriate arrangements so that people can do their work from home, and test those arrangements. As an example, there are places that have arrangements to allow working from home which rely on systems sized for normal levels of working from home – these will often get overloaded during adverse weather. Plus people need to be confident that they can do their work from home, and find out what works and what does not – for that they need practice.
One thing that gets left out from the usual discussion is what about the people who do make it into work ? We hear that most employers do not penalise those who cannot make it in, which is fair enough. But what reward do those who do struggle in get for going the extra mile ? Don’t we deserve a little reward for making it in ?
Lastly there is an interesting assumption that if you have to travel any distance by car or train, you may need to leave early to travel home safely. That is undoubtedly the case when you are talking about fresh snow falls. But what gets overlooked is that walking to and from work becomes far more dangerous after pavements have had the snow trampled down into sheet ice. In some cases it should be those who live locally encouraged to leave early to travel home safely!
As there are reports of large accumulations of snow, it is worth bringing up a point I have made before – winter tyres.
There are drivers out there who under the mistaken belief that their local council is responsible for gritting and salting the roads and mysteriously making them safe to drive on.
Well it doesn’t quite work like that.
Gritting and salting roads actually doesn’t accomplish much by itself – if it’s too cold it is not effective, and even when it isn’t, it requires the action of tyres grinding it onto the road to produce any effect. Of course the first few cars and trucks are not going to see any effect from the grit and salt – they’re going to get as much grip on the road as they would if it wasn’t gritted.
In most countries where conditions in the winter are conducive to snow and ice on the roads, special winter tyres with far deeper treads than normal tyres are commonly used. Indeed in many places it is illegal to drive without. Drivers are expected to take some of the responsibility for remaining safe on the roads themselves.
Yet in the UK, whenever we have traffic chaos on the roads the councils are blamed for not gritting enough – even when the conditions are too extreme for grit to be effective.
If you want to be safe on the roads this winter, get winter tyres – they will help!
Today (and probably tomorrow) the South of England has been subjected to the heaviest snow-fall for 18 years or so. As can be expected for such an unusual weather event (the Met office dragged out it’s rarely used “extreme” warning), anyone travelling this morning found things more than a little tricky.
As usual the whingers are also out in force claiming that we should have prepared better and comparing us to countries that are more used to extreme weather. They have a point: if we were to spend huge amounts of money to prepare for events that happen once every 20 years we could cope better.
And some of the whingers need to take note that some of the preparations need to be made by them; motorists in countries with more extreme weather make some of the preparations themselves. So many of the whingers share in responsibility for the lack of preparation.
But does it really matter that much ?
Oh businesses will complain, but what does it really harm the world if we take a day off ? At least those who live any distance from work. In many cases people can work from home which reduces the risk for those who really have to get in (and not just because their medieval bosses do not trust them to get something done).
The real answer is to lighten up and enjoy the different weather – it may be cold, but at least it is bright too!
Hardly very topical, but it is about time I talked about snow in the UK. We do not get much snow in the UK … at least not in the highly populated areas, and when it does arrive we end up in a situation which could be described as chaos. And every time we get snow, there is an incredible amount of fuss about all the chaos that results. Why?
Ok. So there are plenty of countries that cope better with snow than we do, but we always forget the why … they get more of it. If you have practise, you get used to it. And we don’t get used to it, so what is all the fuss about ? So we have travel chaos for a day or two. It is not the end of the world after all.
Admittedly being stuck in travel chaos is hardly what you could call fun, but what is the travelling for ? On almost every occasion in recent times, snow has been forecast in advance and we’ve been given the advice of not travelling unless it is absolutely necessary. Of course nobody explains what this means.
Let’s have a law that gives everyone who wants it a day off if it snows. Instantly we stop all the complaints about schools being shut whilst parents have to work, and it would keep many people off the roads making it easier and safer for those who really have to be on the roads.
Employers who really needed employees to come in could provide employees who volunteer for it a snow kit and training … snow chains, shovel, and basic survival gear for the snow. Employees who came in despite the snow should be able to ‘bank’ half a day on top of their ordinary leave entitlement.
I can imagine that any employer reading this would scream at the thought of giving people an extra day off and the cost to business of doing so. Sure it would cost some money but there are things more important than money. For instance it is easily possible to imagine people being killed in traffic accidents caused by snow, which is far more important to stop than saving a few pounds. Maybe a few businesses would go to the wall if we had such a law, but surely any business that is that close to the edge would fail anyway.
One other thing that has only just occurred to me (as I’m not a parent); kids greet snow with joy. At the same time, we are always being castigated for not spending enough time with our children. What better time for a bit of parent-child bonding ?
It is time to stop treating snow as a disaster and start treating it as a minor inconvenience that can be a bit of fun too.