Snow & Freezing Weather back for Xmas week - Will we be ready?

I think we should use people on community service etc to help clear the roads. My boyfriend works from 5am to 2pm every day and then spent a couple of afternoons once he got home trying to sort out our street.
 
ajf said:
Apart from apathy, one problem I see about people clearing roads themselves is liability. These days there are too many instances of people getting sued for silly things no one wants to take the risk. If you try and clear it you are then responsible I believe. Hence why many carparks etc are left covered.
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There's always a lot of talk of that health and safety aspect, but I'm not sure how much of it has actually come to fruition. I can see how a business with a car park on their private property might be worried of the repercussions and what their insurance covers.

As for people clearing their own roads, I think you would have to try and prove some serious issue that led to somebody being injured from clearing an area of snow. I would imagine most judges would take a fairly dim view on this if it actually made it to court, but I honestly can't see that being the case.... unless somebody had done something deliberate, like pouring water to make ice or shoveling snow into the middle of a road or something.
 
Doubt it. Most of the councils just don't have the resources to deal with excessive amounts of snow, as was discussed at great lenghts on here last year..
 
Nexus said:
You can't just magic snow ploughs out of thin air, they have to bought and budgeted for... that's not going to happen.
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A snowplough attachment for a truck is pretty cheap, and we can then use rubbish trucks and what not with these attachments to clear the roads
 
Lopéz said:
Please tell me you're joking? 5 days is not sufficient time to develop and implement a new infrastructure across an entire nation capable of dealing efficiently with adverse weather.
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This

5 days is not enough to have a fleet of hundreds of extra snow ploughs, depots to stockpile grit, extra snow plain trains etc..

It will be years before any of that needed infrastructure will be in place, by which time the winters will probably be mild again. Just like they were 4-6 years ago.

rypt said:
A snowplough attachment for a truck is pretty cheap, and we can then use rubbish trucks and what not with these attachments to clear the roads
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and where the trucks and ploughs going to come from ? What money are they going to use ?

We all know the government is pushing council budgets in its austerity measures.
 
mjt said:
Doubt it. Most of the councils just don't have the resources to deal with excessive amounts of snow, as was discussed at great lenghts on here last year..
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They have plenty of resources, they are just busy spending them on pensions and other pointless things (like resurfacing the same god damn road 3 times within 12 months)


MrLOL said:
and where the trucks and ploughs going to come from ? What money are they going to use ?

We all know the government is pushing council budgets in its austerity measures.
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We already have trucks, they are the things going around collecting your rubbish every 2 weeks.

USA uses their dump trucks to clear snow for instance.

Denmark and other places partner with haulage firms to get them to keep motorways clear by having ploughs on their semis.
 
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Not so long ago farmers used to get paid to help out clearing snow from the roads close to their farms, they all ceased helping out when a couple of them got done by HMRC for using red diesel for 'non-agricultural activities' :mad:
 
ron3003 said:
Not so long ago farmers used to get paid to help out clearing snow from the roads close to their farms, they all ceased helping out when a couple of them got done by HMRC for using red diesel for 'non-agricultural activities' :mad:
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If that's true then it's quite pathetic and shows how idiotic HMRC can be at times, such as them recently spoiling the cycle to work scheme
 
Burnsy2023 said:
Sky don't know what the weather will be like, we can barely get it right 3 days in advance, let alone a few weeks. This is why I don't watch Sky news. It's a waste of space.
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The BBC 5-day forecast is equally dire. Don't they both get their data from the Met Office?

Seriously tho, the weather forecasts for the next DAY are often wrong down here in Cornwall.
 
Lopéz said:
Who's going to drive them, fuel them, convert them and pay for the increased running costs? The budget for such a change (at short notice) simply does not exist.
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Think you already answered this for me perfectly really.

You can't just outfit a bunch of Rubbish Trucks overnight, or even over the course of a number of weeks. For one councils simply don't have the money... everyday I read of further cuts in my local paper, we are not even getting Xmas lights next year!

Then you've got the issue of who drives the trucks.
Sure a Binman could drive it, but he still needs training on how to operate the plough, where to move snow, freeing the vehicle if it gets stuck etc...

As we have also discussed in the last thread, another issue we have in the UK is the size of our roads. It's not really possible to push mounds of snow to the side of them, especially in towns in and residential streets.

It's obviously fine for motorways, but from what I know this is the primary place that are existing dedicated snow ploughs already operate.
 
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