It took me just under an hour to drive the eleven miles into work this morning. This was entirely due to the adverse weather conditions. However, it usually takes me just under an hour to drive to the office due to the adverse traffic conditions - so nothing was lost. Away from the main roads the surface was slippery and treacherous, but on the whole the roads were tolerable.
And yet there were only six other people in the office.
Six.
There are usually a couple of hundred.
But only six bothered to even try to get in. I'm pretty sure that most didn't try because if they had they would have made it - there wasn't any real difficulty. The buses were running, the trains were running and the roads were manageable.
The local schools were closed and, in at least one case, the decision to close the school was taken before any significant snow had fallen!
What has happened to the British people? During the Blitz people would struggle into work through all sorts of difficulties often to find, when they arrived, that work had been bombed and there was nothing to do except help clear up. Now they give up when a little bit of snow falls.
This country is in the depths of a deep recession - a recession which I believe will still materialise into a long depression lasting a decade or more - and yet it seems that half the country can't be bothered to go to what work they do have. We deserve to end up as a third world nation if this is the sort of spirit we show - the give up and stay at home spirit.
Credit where it's due, though. The paperboy got up and delivered our paper this morning. Shame the postman couldn't make the same effort.
3 comments:
We learned about the schools in last winter's snow: if a school stays open and only a few pupils make it in, that counts as a very high level of unauthorised absence, but if the school is closed then the absence is authorised and doesn't count against the school's figures.
So parents now have to second-guess how likely the teachers are to fancy a day off before setting out to work themselves.
True, Stan. The 1962-3 mini ice-age winter started just before Xmas as well.
As I recall, we all struggled to school somehow, and the TV reported the sub zero temps and mountains of snow in a very "matter-of-fact" way.
Now of course we are confronted by over-excited TV weather girls waving their arms about, while roving reporters with ashen faces blubber about climate change.
THAT'S the problem, people watch the news reports, get frightened and stay in bed. Pathetic.
I heard the weather reporters and newscasters describing the weather as "severe". Since when has a temperature around freezing and a little bit of snow been severe? It's cold and inconvenient but it is far from being severe.
God help us if we ever get really severe cold weather!
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