Snow prep was hardly a military operation

Maurice O'Brien • Published 24 Dec 2009 14:00 0 Comments

THROUGH the Stygian gloom of late Sunday afternoon a ghostly apparition appeared in the headlights, forcing me to take evasive action. Having narrowly survived the trauma of a two-hour Christmas shopping trip, hallucinations might have been excused, but the tall male figure steering a child in a pushchair towards me down the centre of Russell Street was very real.

Clearly, such a risk was still a safer bet than negotiating pavements which, from Tilehurst to the town centre and beyond, were icily polished to a deadly sheen where the uncleared snow and sludge had frozen.

So who mothballed the streetcleaners and snow ploughs? Was it penny pinching or dodgy forecasting? Rather like Britain's defences, really. Placing "urgent" orders now for Chinook helicopters which, even allowing for customary production and testing delays, won't be available for at least another three years is inexcusable but simple to comprehend.

Our armed forces operate, and are equipped, on the basis of a post-Glasnost 1998 Strategic Defence Review which did not contemplate any major conflicts in the forseeable future. Kosovo came almost immediately, preceding Iraq and Afghanistan, so we're still sending our lads and lasses into battle with the bare minimum of serviceable kit; still dispatching them on operations by road when helicopters which would render the Taliban's ditch bombing campaign ineffective haven't even been ordered.

Not, of course, that there's any comparison between heroics in Helmand and clearing Reading's pavements. But it's yet another example of tick box, one-size-fits-all government.

They know snow's coming but it's always a surprise. A visiting Martian wouldn't rate us even a fourth world country, on the evidence of Eurostar and the farcical chaos which brought this area to its knees on Monday.

What was the thinking when they opted to save a few bob on the snow clearing strategy? They didn't believe all that global warming guff did they?

- THE defining moment of the Copenhagen climate charade was surely when genocidal megalomaniac Robert Mugabe, face glistening with sweat, took to the dais.

The very idea that someone who has starved generations of his own people, and retained power with such brutal determination, should be lambasting western governments over climate change was only marginally less outrageous than his continuing freedom to travel the world and lambast anyone at all.

Clearly then it wasn't fear of his opponents, or nerves, that made the perspiration gush down Mugabe's face and neck. So what price any kind of deal on global warming when they couldn't even turn down the heating in the conference hall?

Happy Christmas!

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This blog appeared in Reading Chronicle 24 Dec 09

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