The problem in Britain

Britain is a country used to mild weather. Anything other that that causes major problems be it an unexpected heat wave or a spell of freezing temperatures. It is a country that can only cope with average weather.

The current cold spell along with a huge dollop of snow has caused chaos for much of Britain. Councils rapidly ran out of grit and salt for the roads and blamed the Salt Union for not supplying their orders; schools closed and remained closed for much of last week. Now the Education Minister Ed Balls is panicking that lost time will effect examination results and has asked schools to re-open. It is not just schools though, businesses are counting the cost of workers not turning up and shoppers staying at home.

One thing that you knew would be inevitable in this weather crisis was panic buying. Supermarkets in parts of the country are now saying that they are low on essential supplies of bread and milk. The problem is blamed on the milk delivery lorries that have had a hard time getting to the farms to collect fresh supplies.

The first thing to run out was salt which apparently flew off the shelves as people stocked up ready to clear the pavements outside their houses. There was even a warning that supplies of gas to heat homes would be in short supply but that crisis was averted when the problems with the pipeline from Norway were resolved.

Panic buying is nothing new, I recall Pam’s grandmother stocking up with sugar sometime in the seventies. There had been a reported shortage in the shops so she laid in for a siege. Every time the old lady went out, which was most days, Violet would hunt out shops that had received supplies. She would go from Meols, where she lived, to New Brighton on the bus because she’d heard that Quick Save had stocks they were rationing to one bag per customer. Then she would go again the next day and the next just to make sure that she got her fair share. I don’t blame her, it was every man and old lady for themselves at the time.

In the end Pam’s gran had a spare wardrobe piled high with bags of sugar that then lasted her for years. Nobody in the family bought sugar for months as we tried to reduce the sugar bag mountain and save the wardrobe from collapsing.

Milk and bread are of course different to sugar but I dare say those panic buyers are clearing the shelves in supermarkets of a lot more than perishable goods. It would only take an off the cuff remark in a newspaper that breakfast cereals were in short supply for there to be a run on Corn Flakes and Weetabix – ooops I hope I haven’t started something there.

I dare say that Britain will recover once the cold snap is over and temperatures rise. By then the damage will have been done and more to the point, the lessons from the experience will not have been learnt. The next time the thermometer plunges below zero, it will be the same scenario again and so on and so on. The government will continue to say that these are exceptional circumstances that they could neither predict nor plan for; they seem to have developed a knack of getting caught with their pants down. Perhaps things will change at the next election but somehow I doubt it.