We have seen the pre budget report. We have all sat around criticising where the money has been spent and where the money is coming from. How would we feel if a large chunk was taken out of our NHS, the police or other front line public services in order to cope with a little bit of snow? We would not be happy. We would complain.

It would cost around £5m to grit all the roads once and £15m to grit them three times. Then theres the cost of stockpiling the grit, having the gritting machins to dispense the grit, hiring grit dispenser drivers. Then the trains need to be dealt with. The estimated cost for all of this would be £600m. £600m could pay for 69,930 home-care placements, 120,000 school places or 14,446 miles of road resurfacing. All of these imporvements would help us through out the year, surely this is not a sacrfice we should make for a bit of snow.^[1]

1. ^ anna bowden, 23rd December 2009, The Guardian

We are only disrupted by snow two or three days a year. The sheer costs of putting in place heaters or stockpiling snow grit and purchasing more grit dispensers is not worth the one or two days in which Britain suffers from travel delays. If these sorts of weather patterns continued more regularly, then yes the money should be invested, but until that day comes, Britain should just uddle through those 3 out of 365 days of the year.

In Germany where the travel system is thoguht to be one of the best in Europe, they have a different attitude to travel. They ahve more cars per head in their population but each car does less mileage. That is becuase Britain seems to like to travel. Whether it be shopping or working, it tends to be further away from home than what teh Germans would travel. This results in us placing too much reliance on the transport system. If we lived more like the Germans then we would find it easier to cope with when teh snow fell. The disruption would be minimised.