London - functions in Blitz, but snow too much to deal with! Obvioulsy ran out of salt too!

As you can see from the photo London had some pretty deep snow, starting Sunday 1st Feb (my birthday) and really picking up Sunday night to cause a transport disaster for millions on Monday morning. The headline in a lot of the papers is that London can cope with the Blitz at wartime, yet cannot cope with snow....... the excuse being thrown around is that we haven't had snow in these volumes in 18 years!!! I can understand if buses (yep the great RED London bus we all know and love) were not running in certain areas but NO! a central decision was made to have NO buses in the whole of London yesterday......... At least a lot of snowmen were made and kids had two days off school (pros and cons to that) and there were a lot of fun snowball fights....... but really........ how embarassing that London came to a standstill like that.

Even though most people couldn't get into work yesterday, my route was unaffected so I was at work by 830. Some transport resumed today (like the buses) BUT as the snow became compacted from people walking on it, and grit still wasn't being put down ... and temperatures were still low, the pavements which were lovely and crunchy and picturesque yesterday, were like ice rinks today.

I watch Dancing on Ice on a Sunday, I don't practice it to and from work thank you :-)

I slipped 4 times, but lucky did not fall.......... But gosh when I was younger London DID used to cope with snow and you would see salt everywhere. They didn't even bother to put any on my station platform....Salt was obviously in short supply yesterday and today. They obviously some years ago sold our snow ploughs to the highest bidder... are you telling me they sold our salt tooooooooooo??? And that was probably the action of some bright spark trying to make their excel budget look good...........

Across London more than 1,000 colleges, nurseries, primary and seconday schools closed for a 2nd day today. Ice on the roads (you know the ones WITHOUT salt) made the school run dangerous...........

It's like someone did an order at a dehli and said:
Heavy on the snow and hold the salt!

I love what I read in the london paper tonight:
"Boris is happy to take the credit when things go right; he should show some leadership and take some responsibility when they go wrong".

As I said in the subject heading the buses did not even stop in the BLITZ! The entire bus fleet was suspended yesterday - a measure not even taken during the blitz. 10 out of 11 tube lines were either completely or partially suspended.

And back to Boris (oh Mayor of London - bring back Ken Livinstone!) he was photographed on the london paper tonight jogging and cycling this morning....... oh how VERY dare he! He is jogging ON THE ROAD, on the black bits where the tires clear.......... a clear admission that the pavements were like ice rinks! What message does that send..........? London take to the streets..... stay healthy and keep up your daily run, but do it on the road where you can get knocked over....... or be hit by a car skidding on black ice (there was LOTS of that this morning).. But no....... his road was clear as it was probably covered in camera men! How very contrived and fake and not the least bit endearing.

Boris I would have preferred to see you with a shovel in your hand, talking to workers struggling to get to their offices....... Also the caption under his photo had the audacity to say "true grit" when the WHOLE problem with London is we have not seen one bit of grit...........

And how embarassing that it made International News, so that the whole world now knows we can't cope with 8 inches of snow........

There endeth my rant......... for now.......... Oh and in the photo, I am the one on the left.