Cold Comfort

If it's Monday it must be time for a rant. Bearing in mind that we had some snow over the weekend, I think you can guess what I'm going to rant about: the weather. To be more accurate, I'm going to rant about the way the media, as ever, used the weather to try and scare us all. As soon as they thought there was a chance of snow, the TV weather forecasters started ramping up the fear factor, with their dire warnings of 5-10cm of snow covering the whole country and the massive disruption to travel that would follow. The news programmes followed suit all with their usual hyperbole: if you try and travel in these conditions YOU WILL DIE!!! Local TV, as always, was the worst offender. My local BBC news programme went into overdrive at the prospect of heavy snow, gleefully issuing dire warnings, its presenters visibly excited at chance of a repeat of the chaos of a couple of years ago. Sadly for them, my region largely escaped any snow, much to their obvious disappointment. The lack of snow also didn't stop a frenzy of panic buying in my town centre on Saturday, as people ran around like lunatics, apparently stocking up for a siege. Bizarrely, the only thing they weren't buying was snow shovels - there were stacks of them left unsold in local shops.

Not the failure of the snow to paralyse the country deterred the media from trying to scare us - once it had become obvious that the snow had failed, ice became the new threat: if you try and travel when there might be ice about YOU WILL DIE!!! In the wake of the snow, we still got the inevitable stories of stranded motorists and train travellers. All accompanied by the usual lament from motoring organisations of "I just don't know why they didn't heed our advice and stay at home". Well, those motorists, like me, probably thought that as we're living in the twenty first century, in one of the world's wealthiest and most advanced nations, it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect the authorities to be able to keep the roads - let alone the railways - clear of snow and operational during a short spell of wintry weather. I'm always left exasperated by that 'Don't travel unless you really have to' advice during bad weather. The reality is that most of us do have to travel in order to work, regardless of weather. The overwhelming majority of us don't automatically get a day off if it happens to snow. Besides, if everyone heeded this advice then the country really would grind to a halt, with no shops open, no deliveries, no power, nothing. Not that such considerations bother the media. All they seem to be interested in is starting a panic.