Bringing out worst in people

LIFE AND OTHER BITS: THE excuse will be that we are not used to snow in November and that’s why the country ground to a pretty, Christmas cardy (and we all need a good cardie) hell on spinning wheels this week.

Unless it snows when we expect it to snow and when councils and bus and train managers say it should, it more or less cripples the nation, with all public transport on a go-slow that grinds to a dead halt, schools are closed and millions are unable (or in some cases happy to have the excuse not to) get to work.

It brings out the worst in people, too. How about the bus driver, pulling up at a stop in Manchester where passengers had been waiting in the freezing cold for an hour and half, refusing to let anyone board his bus until he had “sorted out his money” and then when, some 15 minutes later he was prepared to adopt the mantle of public servant by opening the doors, barring a chap from travelling because he was carrying a carton of coffee to keep his hands warm? Don’t minor irritations like that just make you glad to be British?

Certainly it has been cold these last few days but in Eastern Siberia the temperature touches minus 40 at this time of year and life goes on as what passes for normal in that God and sun forsaken corner.

Oldham Council did an excellent job keeping the main roads open but most of us don’t live on main roads and when it snows like it has this week, without help, we can’t get our cars on to the pristine main roads. Whatever did happen to grit bins?

If you are lucky enough to have one, the odds are that it has not been filled with grit and is full of snow, beer cans, fag ends and take-away cartons, none of which are any help when your car is on a snowed-in side road.

And of course pedestrians don’t count in any of these safety measures at all. What is done to make the pavements safe for anyone other than Torvill and Dean to navigate?

See you in casualty?




CRICKETERS in the Central Lancashire League are being ordered to speak English during matches. So will cries of “HOWZAT” be replaced with the Noel Coward tones of, “I say, old chap, how is that?”



And what about the googly or the bosie? And how about their second cousin twice-removed (bails that is) the doosra, which apparently means the second or the other one in Urdu and Hindi but that most likely means the ball that gets you out in English?




FINAL WORD: All this PC talk about women being allowed to breast feed at the office, has anyone actually asked women if that would make them happy? The women I have spoken to are horrified at the thought; they’d rather have more help with childcare.