England STILL Can't Handle a Bit of Snow

Meth users must have beautiful teeth then! : )

 

Well, what can I say? Lindsay Lohan does meth all the time. Her solution? Go to a celebrity dentist and get new teeth. Californians are so obsessed over appearance.

But apparently meth's a big problem in the UK as well. Meh; you'll find druggies everywhere.

If you REALLY want to get grossed out, look here.

 

At least if you use a needle, you have an indicator for how long down the bad path you've gone based on which unpleasant location you're currently resorting to stick a needle in. That looks like a blood vessel in my eyeball.. Carefull now... steady... ahhhh. That's great.. WTF I can't see!

 

I tried being daring and clicked that link.. I scrolled through the pictures and I thought, these aren't even all that bad.. I mean like half of them are repulsive.. but the others look like perfectly normal ordinary looking people!

Then I realized it was before and after pics.

 

Very true, but they aren't cheap, and it could be years before you'd ever need to use them. It just wouldn't be worth the cost of doing it for most people to enable them to drive for the one or two days every few years that they would be really useful. That's what alot of it boils down to - how much is worth investing in equipment that will only be used for a couple of days every couple of years.

In the case of an airport like Heathrow, they have invested quite heavily in the relevant facilities, but it's so busy that they have to cut down the number of flights to allow them to get that machinery out on the runways to do their job, so it backs up. In the case of smaller airports, it's not so busy, but they can't afford the same kind of facilities, so they have to shut down for a while to allow what they do have to get to work. It's certainly not as simple as putting a bit of salt down, obviously - that's not enough to deal with the volume of snow that's been coming down. The same is true of roads, of course - many have been well salted and gritted, but there's only so much that can do as temperatures drop and snowfall continues. You can't buy a snowplough for every road (it's obviously not cost effective), so it takes a while for the facilities that there are to get about and do their job effectively (and if more snow is coming down, they have to do it over and over again), so there's always a bit of disruption for a day or two, especially while the snow is continuing to fall.

What is ludicrous is the way that the media have built this all up into a supposed blind panic situation, causing a panic-buying frenzy, and wailing about it being a huge disaster. It isn't - all that has happened is that we've had one of those occasional bouts of snow that make driving difficult for a day or two, so people have stayed at home instead of going to work for that day or two if they can't get out (and likewise some schools have closed for a day or two). That really isn't a significant problem at all - not at all worth making anything like the kind of fuss that the media are making about it.

Because the UK doesn't get months of snow every year, it isn't worth investing in the level of facilities that there are in places where it does, and that applies to private individuals (as far as winter tyres, 4x4 vehicles, etc. goes) as well as to councils, schools, businesses, etc.. Everyone accepts that reality, so everyone expects a bit of disruption for a day or so when there is heavy snowfall. It's inevitable - that's life.

So some had to have a day off to take the rare opportunity to play in the snow with their kids (who got an extra day off school). Is that really such a huge issue?!

 

The one two years ago was way worse..

Good point about the runways; it sounds like the proper investment would be more runways..

But I recall hearing on the news, I'm not sure if I remember correctly that it was Heathrow and not some other airport, but they wanted to build more runways but they couldn't because of some big controversy.

 

That is correct - there is huge ongoing controversy about possible new runways for Heathrow, for various reasons related to the problems it would cause, the damage it would do, and the alternatives that are available:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansion_of_London_Heathrow_Airport

The problem with an airport running its runways at 99% of possible capacity is that there is no margin for anything that goes wrong (like a bit of snow meaning that machines have to be put to work on the runway to clear it, or even reduced visibility meaning that they have to space the planes out from each other a bit more) to not cause disruption to flights. That's why Heathrow suffers particularly badly from anything like that compared with other international airports of a comparable size.

 

Good point..

I suppose the natural solution, the only solution, would be to use a different airport for an international hub, or if you don't have one, then build another airport to be the international hub, and use Heathrow for local planes, or at least reduce the number of international flights there.

Any reason they can't do that?

 

Aye, is colder n' a well-diggers arse, matey...

More than 3,000 schools closed amid snow chaos across Britain
21 Jan 2013 • More than 5,000 schools closed • Heathrow forced to cancel 175 flights • Two people killed in severe weather • Severe delays affecting at least eight rail networks

See also:

Snow shuts schools and hits travel
21 January 2013 - Further snow and sleet are predicted as the week continues, along with widespread frost and ice

 

Space is a major issue. The UK is very densely populated - over 63 million people in an area a little smaller than the state of Michigan, if that helps to describe it, and that population is far from evenly spread. It is disproportionately concentrated in the south east, around London, which is obviously where they would want to build any major new international airport (and the more sparsely populated bits tend to be mountainous, and unsuitable for building something like an airport). The most 'empty' parts are in Scotland anyway - England itself has a population density almost as high as the state of New Jersey.

There isn't really room for another Heathrow runway, let alone a big new airport - anything like that would probably mean bulldozing whole towns!

The other alternative is to expand other airports to increase overall capacity (there are a couple of others near London, and others around the UK that could be expanded more easily), or possibly build another smaller one near London, to take the pressure off Heathrow. It wouldn't really solve the 'international hub' issue as such though - it could potentially mean a trip from airport to airport to get 'connecting flights' to some destinations. There aren't really any airports that could easily expand enough to become a replacement 'hub'.

There is a big problem with the centralisation of population and resources in the South East of England at the expense of other regions of the UK. That area has really run out of space, while the regions are being drained of employment and the like. The Heathrow issue is really just a symptom of that much bigger long term problem.

Many people favour expansion of regional airports as an alternative partly to help stimulate the local/regional economies of other parts of the UK, but that solution also isn't without its problems, and sometimes similar ones to the Heathrow issue. In fact, one solution proposed a few years ago to expand another airport would have meant, along with several similar problems, bulldozing the entire village where my mother was born (population of about 1600, old enough to be mentioned in the Doomsday Book of 1086, many of the current houses built by my late grandfather, who was the local bricklayer) to turn it into a big car park. The locals weren't pleased, and it didn't go ahead, but that's the kind of problem that exist throughout England.

 

Out of curiousity, have you ever posted anything without mentioning the Jews?

 

we can't be so lucky as to have that POS island sink..........

- - - Updated - - -

nope, he can't

 

About forty years ago we had a problem with flights in and out of New York City. The air traffic was so congested with connecting flights from Europe, that it was quite common to circle about for three hours before being given permission to land. I know of one instance, where a plane actually flew to Chicago and back again.

I lived in N.J. at the time, and it was the only place in the New York City area that was sparsely populated, so they were thinking of cutting off the top of the mountain in front of my house for the airport, but that was dropped. What they did instead was to stop the connecting flights, and have the planes leave directly from other cities. This might work for Britain too, unless they want to chop off a mountain?

 

It really feels like the start of a mini ice age...

It’s snowing, and it really feels like the start of a mini ice age
20 Jan 2013 - Something is up with our winter weather. Could it be the Sun is having a slow patch?

 

Okay how about this then:

Bullet train to and from MAN to LHR.. Tax incentives to get some businesses shifted from London to Manchester.

Plus London now has a toll for driving on their roads, to try to cut down on traffic and make more people not drive there if they don't have to, do a similar kind of thing for business, only modest at first, until you can kind of push people to other parts of the country.

Manchester seems to me like a good place for some more of these things.. But I've not been to Liverpool or Birmingham yet so I wouldn't know if they might be better even.

 

Where I live in the UK you do get people going crazy when it snows a bit, the roads is what gets me you have people in 4x4's loaded up with fifty loaves of bread, creeping around at 5mph holding me up in my ten year old vauxhall corsa!

 

Hahaha - perhaps so., however in the area where I live , people are fortunately, more balanced. I've not encountered any problems - driving within an approx 20 mile radius , which is enough for me in my present retired situation , after many years racing around like a maniac..

. My present old Ford Focus 1.6 serves my present needs well . however there are days when I still hanker/ remember a time as an expat working in Saudi when entrusted to drive
my Saudi sponsors Lamborghini, along dead straight desert roads. It was motoring heaven .


I nearly cried when I had to hand the keys back

..and leave her.

Life's not fair , is it ?

 

Often.

But those about Jews, Israel, the US and Muslims, tend to be those that get the posts.

Others have gone totally dormant.

 

Apart from which - Jews in general - ceaselessly strive to remain in the spotlight/grab front page news ..

...

 

You obviously won't remember the winter of 1962-3. It came down heavy just after Christmas, and we had snow on the ground until March. Entire towns were cut off, animal feed had to be airlifted to farmers, trains got stuck in snowdrifts for days. It was bloody cold!http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_1962–1963_in_the_United_Kingdom

 

That's the kind of solution that needs to be explored for overall airport capacity. There are several airports currently running under-capacity, or that are capable of relatively easy expansion, but that need some encouragement towards infrastructure investment (not just terminals and runways, but also road/rail links) to get them going. The short and long term economic benefits to those areas could be huge, and also help to alleviate the issues in the South East. Cardiff is one relatively local (to me) example that springs to mind - underused mainly because of the current poor road and rail links, but really not far from Heathrow if there was a decent rail link (Cardiff Central to London is about 2 hours at the moment by train, and there's already electrification planned that could reduce that by about 20 minutes, but there's no direct rail link to the airport).

In more general terms, the first thing that could be moved out of London easily (and done immediately and directly by government) to start working towards re-balancing the regional position of the UK would be government departments themselves - it's not like they need horseback messengers and carrier pigeons to communicate theses days, and it seems daft to me to have something like a 'Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries' or a 'Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' based right in the centre of the largest city in Europe!

 

Most of the posters are responding to the hatred and lack of reasoning in those posts, that's why they are so active. :

 

And now, for something completely different - although in some ways, totally the same -

Heatwave Strikes Britain!

Sounds terribad - until you Google up a celsius to fahrenheit converter:



By Jove! Our UK friends are melting into a puddle and their roads are disintegrating - in 95 degree heat! Blimey! Today's high was 103 where I am and (looks outside) the roads look okay to me.

Bottom line for the members of Airstrip One; They can't handle snow - OR heat.

 

Nope, not used to 'extremes' here!

 

And for exactly the same reason. It's so rare here that we aren't used to it, or equipped for it. We just don't get temperatures up in the 90s here - I can remember perhaps half a dozen times in the last 40 years or so where we've had anything like that last for more than a day or two. We are melting, because we don't have air conditioning in most of our homes, workplaces, etc., and we don't have it purely because we don't need it (or need it so rarely that it just wouldn't be worth the cost of installing or maintaining it). Don't know about the tarmac issue, but I guess some of our road surfaces may be of a type that doesn't stand up to this kind of heat so well for a prolonged period, because we just don't need it to (it might just be cheaper stuff, or it might be a different 'blend' that deal better with cold and wet, or something - I don't know).

Try looking at it a different way - what what happen in somewhere like Texas if they had cool, damp conditions, with lots of rain (along with intermittent cold and wind) pretty much non-stop for a year? They probably aren't really geared up for it, because it's the kind of weather that just doesn't happen there on such a sustained basis (but I guess anything is actually possible) - they'd survive, of course as we survive, but it just isn't what they are used to, and it would probably cause a few problems of one sort or another. Those are the kind of conditions we are used to here, though, so that is what we are geared up for. Sustained periods of heat and heavy snow (in the south of the UK) just isn't, so we inevitably struggle a bit with it.