I’m intrigued by the thought of a chaotic standstill. I would’ve thought that chaos requires movement. There is a troupe called Circus of Chaos, and I can’t imagine they’d attract much of an audience if they all just stood around ringing up the office to say “I can’t come in today”.

Anyway, that’s what the news media say we’ve got; Britain (they headline every day) has ground to a chaotic standstill. And they should know: every last one of them seems to have a correspondent planted against a white background telling us what the temperature is in Halifax or Oxfordshire, and talking to drivers daft enough to head off onto the Yorkshire Moors just as the biggest blizzard for forty years gets going.

This is turn makes me wonder why the media haven’t themselves come to a chaotic standstill. They can’t all have helicopters and snow-ploughs, so if they can career up and down the country announcing that nothing’s moving, why can’t all those other Britons get moving as well?

With this in mind, I’ve decided I rather like the cut of the School Examining Board’s jib. For it has decided that exams will go ahead come snow, thunderbolts or boils. Predictably, this has caused the media to talk about pupils facing ‘exam chaos’, but it seems to me that if they get off their backsides and turn up, there will be no chaos at all. Only if they stand still will there be chaos, and even then it won’t be a chaotic standstill in the true meaning of the phrase…whatever that is.

Still, as I say, the Board has stumbled upon a rich seam here. In future, we should have all exams positioned up mountains, attached to sharks, in deep caves surrounded by spiders and so forth: it will rebuild British grit, and serve to give them a GCSE in orienteering at the same time. We could rename GCSEs Raiders of the Lost Exam.

Talking of grit, here in the south west, we have ungritted roads causing chaos, and the gritters inside somewhere at a standstill. However, even our local rag has braved the chaos to get out there and report that we are down to our last supplies of grit.

This too strikes me as illogical: if the gritters are all standing around hot braziers unmoved by the plight of others, where’s all the grit gone? This is a question one could ask of the latest set of Brown plotters, and it has an interesting (if somewhat depressing) answer.

The Hoon/Hewitt axis of Evil apparently made the fatal mistake of assuming that senior Cabinet ministers might have some true grit, but forgot all about Gordon’s new grit-free colleague policy. So when (and here we name the guilty men) Straw, Miliband and Darling said “You hit him and we’ll hold your coat” they imagined this trio might be up to at least that much.

They weren’t, of course. Instead, they chose to get Gordon to hit his new best friend Mr Balls and promise to give him another shiner if there was any more bullying.

All of which has once more brought the Labour Party to a chaotic standstill. It’s obviously the wrong sort of snow.

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1
Tapestry January 9, 2010 at 09:15

Lolz..wrong sort of snow..

Mandelson’s running the show. Never mind about the formal titles.

2
Anna Raccoon January 9, 2010 at 09:26

The British grit their teeth in these situations – not their roads…..

3
QM January 9, 2010 at 13:29

Just blogged on this myself, we wont get any more grit till the end of the month, local councils who have grit (mostly Tory) have been told to hand over without compensation some of their stocks to councils that haven’t (mostly Labour) The government then announce that they want councils to use 25% less grit till we get some more.

Incompetence thy name id Labour!

4
Rog January 9, 2010 at 13:57

The cost in broken limbs and frozen pensioners all point to 10 Downing Street.
Last year was a record for the death of pensioners. This year the details will be quietly shredded.

5
Anna Raccoon January 9, 2010 at 15:52

Rog,

I believe there are now 24 deaths attributed to the weather, sadly bound to be more when it thaws and people get around to checking up on those who haven’t been seen for a week or two.

6
Blink January 9, 2010 at 14:41

There’s no chaotic standstill at my local Tesco’s today. It’s absolute madness. More people in the store than there’s room for. A car park that resembles some downhill racetrack. It’s mayhem.

I’ve not been able to get out all week so for me the trip was necessary. For others it seems that the end of the world is nigh. Still, my locality has not been gritted. The local town is absurdly blocked with cars that must have been there since before the snow storms. All roads are hazardous. People are losing their sense of the ordinary and driving insanely for the conditions. The weather forcast is for more snow.

Meat prices are going up. Food is in short supply. Petrol is 116p/litre. There’s no salt, even for eating, anywhere. Grit (rock salt) has been commandered by the government. There seems little end to the tyranny that is chaos in the UK. A great time for this government to make it all worse by intefering in just about every aspect of our lives now.

So who really cares about their internal problems. It should signal, more than ever, where the main responsibility for the state of the nation lies – the road gritters!

7
john ward January 9, 2010 at 15:39

Me too, blink….We just cadged a lift in the neighbour’s 4WD to get to Tescomania.
V short blog on why snow is a good thing at http://nbyslog.blogspot.com/2010/01/right-sort-of-snow.html

Anee’ow Blink like, izzi gonna be blind Scouse again ternite la’?

8
Margaret T Blink January 9, 2010 at 16:44

John

Your Scouse might be for turning

But my Scouse is not

It can see where it’s going – gobble gobble !!

9
Alan January 9, 2010 at 17:06

If you are after some salt for de-icing find somewhere that sells water softener tablets. 25kg bag of salt for less than a tenner. Bash it up with a hammer and it’s as good as any other salt or leave it in tablet form and it’ll sit there for a long time.

If going to a supermarket there might be salt in the washing up stuff isle – for softening water in dishwashers. Tint cheap but it’ll do the job.

10
bil January 9, 2010 at 20:33

Why do the BBC and the MSM continue with the chaos theory?

I’ve driven to work (thankfully offered a second 3 month contract), from Andover to Maidenhead every working day for the last month, 60 miles each way on the clearest route. Really can’t afford not to after 5 months unemployment. Worst journey was 6 hours, but that was the day the forecasters didn’t forecast it the Monday before Christmas. Mostly an hour and a half each way.

I’ve listened to a lot ‘traffic bulletins’ and what astounds me is the smugness. Every day, at least 5 times a day, I hear something along the lines: motorways are clear as most people seem to be heeding our advice not to venture into the chaos.

Every news bulletin repeats the traffic chaos mantra.

THERE IS NO CHAOS ON THE MOTORWAYS EVERYWHERE.

My wife drove from Andover to Lancaster and back delivering daughter no.1 back to uni on Thursday. Motorways clear of snow and empty.

Fair enough local roads are bad, but if I can do it…

Why does the MSM do it? What do they get from spreading the chaos theory?

Having said all this, if the cold does go on for another couple of weeks chaos will ensue: energy and food. I remember hearing somewhere civilisation is only ever 2 meals from chaos. Hmm, watch this space…

Brown’s Britain

11
Rog January 10, 2010 at 08:45

Congratulations Labour, we have finally reached total inertia.
Reported this morning by the BBC and Telegraph, ‘do not clear the snow/ice from the front of your house as you may well be sued’.
That message from the Health and Safety Executive just about clinches it. We now have no grit/salt from the Council, Lord Adonis! telling us to have the ‘blitz’ spirit but told not to do anything or else.
Plus its snowing again. Thanks Tony/Gordon.
PS. dishwasher salt is good.