"Tom Bennett" wrote in message
...

The fact is that London brought to a standstill is big news. It's
quite pathetic that it should happen in the way it did on Monday but
no-one is prepared to spend the money to prepare for that once-in-two-
decades-event and no-one down here really believes that these sorts of
things can possibly happen - until they do - and then they're never
going to happen "in quite that way", ever again. That also leads to
incredibly ramshackle planning arrangements.

There was a measured article on the news the other day showing how
Moscow copes with winter weather. Proper metal sudded snow tyres
and contraptions to remove snow from the streets and presumably dump
it somewhere.
The point made was that it wouldn't be worth London making such
investement as the equipment would only be used every 20 years,
so the odd day where the headlines scream 'economy loes x billions' is
still less expensive than guading against any eventuality.
It's not that we can't cope, it's not *worth* us coping.

It's unfair to compare LOndon with Moscow or Stockholm, of
course they can cope, they have to.
You have to compare against cities with a similar liklihood of
such a snow event. There must be a swathe of the US where such
events, like London, are part of the climate, well how do they cope?
Though they did say that the buses ran in Paris and I can't imagine
such an event is all that more likely there than in London......

I was personally involved in official rescue operations in the east
London floods of late Oct 2000, that had last happened, I'm told, in
the 1920s. As I stood at 22.00 hrs and watched floodwater fill a
street by coming UP through the street gullies (as the tide came in on
the Thames and blocked the egress of floodwater coming DOWN the storm
drains), and then begin to inundate nearby houses, I rang the control
centre and asked for sandbags. There was a stunned silence on the
other end of the phone. Eventually, the Controller came on the line:
"Is anyone standing nearby who can overhear?" he asked. "No, I said.
Why do you ask?". "Well" he said, very quietly, "We've got lots of
sandbags .............. but no sand". I, and my colleagues, stood
with the Fire Brigade doing absolutely nothing as maybe 40 houses were
flooded that evening. Sandbags might not have prevented that but at
least we'd have felt we were trying to do something useful and the
residents (who never once remonstrated with us, by the way) might have
thought so, too.

Sandbags but no sand?
I'd laugh, but it isn't really very funny is it?
--
Col

Bolton, Lancashire
160m asl