Word: snow
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...cracked that image, much as a V-2 rocket hitting a house would damage neighboring properties. Londoners learned that the city's entire fleet of buses had been recalled to its depots, defeated not by bombs - the service had run quixotically but without interruption throughout the Blitz - but by snow. A mere six inches...
...Britain isn't good at coping with snow would be to exercise British understatement. Heavy snow is too rare to warrant serious investment in equipment, especially in London and the southeast, where this was, as excitable weather forecasters declared, the biggest "snow event" in 18 years. The heavy fall may cost some 3 billion pounds (about $4.3 billion), since a fifth of the workforce took a "duvet day" and businesses stayed shuttered. It also stopped Tube service, caused chaos at airports and closed schools. Thousands remained shut for 48 hours, suggesting that Londoners, even more than Washingtonians, lack the "flinty...
Nevertheless, few Brits in positions of power to boost the U.K.'s capacity to deal more efficiently with snow believe that further investment is warranted. A poll, to be published tomorrow on the website PoliticsHome.com, of 100 Westminster politicians and other influential figures will reveal a big majority against the proposition that "it is time for Britain to invest in snow preparedness." More than three quarters of respondents believe that snowfalls like this one are so rare - this week's fall was the biggest in 18 years - that buying additional equipment would be a waste of money. That doesn...
There's the rub: while snowplows may seem like an extravagance in a mostly temperate country, the "snow event," to use another weatherman catchphrase from yesterday, has cost Britain dearly, up to ?3 billion according to some estimates, with at least 20% of the workforce taking a day off and many retailers and restaurants failing to open. Economists predict that the disruption will hasten the demise of businesses already struggling in the inclement economic climate. Now the snow on the ground is turning to ice, creating fresh problems, and further snowfalls are predicted. Additionally, England could run out of gritting...
...teeth of what could prove a real crisis, many Britons are remarkably insouciant, including London's remarkably insouciant mayor, Boris Johnson. Echoing a spokesman from the national rail operator who in 1991 told an incredulous interviewer that trains were not running because of the wrong "type of snow," Johnson said yesterday, "This is the right kind of snow - it's just the wrong kind of quantities. My message to the heavens is, 'You've put on a fantastic display of snow power, but that is probably quite enough...