I have been singularly unimpressed at the reaction to a few inches of snow in our city.
I dug the car out on Friday morning and went for a drive as I couldn't get a bus – despite Lothian Buses having skilled staff perfectly capable of driving in these conditions.
All the major roads were black. Side roads were passable with care although no sign of any salting even on comparatively busy ones like my own. And Broughton Tesco – with empty shelves reminding one of the best of Soviet-era Russia and milkless like everywhere else in town – had closed their car park rather than paying someone who could use the money to dig out the access road.
Sadly, the skills of driving in snow and ice seem to have been lost by a modern generation – much skidding around at totally inappropriate speeds and don't start me on the incompetents in the latest-model cars with spinning wheels failing to do hill starts. I passed quite a few of them in my 1955 Austin A30 at a steady 10mph.
I know it's different out in the rural idylls that some people insist on inhabiting, but Edinburgh city centre is affected only by the inhibitions of those who insist on listening to government babytalk red warnings instead of making their own risk assessments – assessments which are not assisted by the manifest refusal of the Met Office and broadcasters to give snowfall in feet and inches!
What would happen if it was winter?
John Hein
(Montgomery Street)
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