Kaizero

no-one is denying we struggle in snowy conditions. the problems is in that you are struggling to understand why. i'll tell you (again) the last two years have given us our first significant snowfalls in years (ie my daughters sleage)and naturally you only prepare for what you think will happen given history etc. I'm not contesting that you don't have significant snowfalls often each year. I'm just saying that certain small changes could do your country a whole lot of good. Nothing major, just something as small as training people in other sections or road maintenance for gritting duty and potentially having a few more gritters in stock. It'd make a world of difference if the snowfall comes whilst being inexpensive. It's all I've been arguing for all night, I don't see what's wrong enough with the suggestion to keep up a counter argument tbh. :banghead: :banghead: I'm suggesting for the future, obviously not suggesting you should travel back in time two years and do this. and now you know our future weather, thank fuck for that. i've got my summer hols in june, can i take the family camping, will it be wet ? Again. My point is that taken into the account the money lost these two years compared to what it would cost (granted on assumption based on the Cumbria annual budget) to have preparation it would be better economically and infrastructure-wise to be better prepared for the unlikely should it happen again, which, looking to history, it eventually will even if the next few years are snow free.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_PWa6ZF6gbAc/TC3-Z1XS_xI/AAAAAAAAAAs/NxmpvipIAUM/s1600-R/the_tardis_whoohoo.jpg

no-one is denying we struggle in snowy conditions. the problems is in that you are struggling to understand why. i'll tell you (again) the last two years have given us our first significant snowfalls in years (ie my daughters sleage)and naturally you only prepare for what you think will happen given history etc. I'm not contesting that you don't have significant snowfalls often each year. I'm just saying that certain small changes could do your country a whole lot of good. Nothing major, just something as small as training people in other sections or road maintenance for gritting duty and potentially having a few more gritters in stock. It'd make a world of difference if the snowfall comes whilst being inexpensive. It's all I've been arguing for all night, I don't see what's wrong enough with the suggestion to keep up a counter argument tbh. :banghead: :banghead: I'm suggesting for the future, obviously not suggesting you should travel back in time two years and do this. As you said, you only plan for what you think will happen given history, and now it's happened the last two years. Will you prepare for a potential third year? I don't think you will even give it a thought and just go "wtf? snow? lol" next year as well (if it happens), which is what annoys me.

no-one is denying we struggle in snowy conditions. the problems is in that you are struggling to understand why. i'll tell you (again) the last two years have given us our first significant snowfalls in years (ie my daughters sleage)and naturally you only prepare for what you think will happen given history etc. I'm not contesting that you don't have significant snowfalls often each year. I'm just saying that certain small changes could do your country a whole lot of good. Nothing major, just something as small as training people in other sections or road maintenance for gritting duty and potentially having a few more gritters in stock. It'd make a world of difference if the snowfall comes whilst being inexpensive. It's all I've been arguing for all night, I don't see what's wrong enough with the suggestion to keep up a counter argument tbh.

I can find UK news articles as well no problem. You want me to go fetch? It's no use discussing something when what you are doing is nothing but trying to ridicule the opposition, it's an unfair tactic. I'm at least basing my side on incidents reported in news reports even outside the UK. We'd not bother about your weather if it wasn't big-ish/amusing, and we do see it pretty much once or twice a year. It's not at all an unfair assumption to say your country is unprepared for snowy or icy conditions based on this. Obviously incidents are localised, but they're still incidents all the same. Incidents that costs more money than it should for the UK economy.

Dave said I was basing my arguments on assumptions after I said I was basing it on news reported by Norwegian media, so I link to articles from Norwegian media supporting my argument. Simples. You all have access to google translate to verify, or you can just look at the dates and for the words "England" and "Snø". (Snø = Snow)

Let's keep going then. http://m.nrk.no/m/article.jsp?art_id=17400983 http://www.nrksport.no/fotball/premier_league/1.6937595 http://www.tv2nyhetene.no/utenriks/london-og-paris-lammet-av-snoevaer-2538656.html http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/artikkel.php?artid=111829 http://www.vg.no/sport/fotball/engelsk/artikkel.php?artid=6221951 I can't be arsed to dig more, not sure how much of what was news in early 2000s and late 1990s are still online on their sites.

It does not change the fact that you'd still be likely to save more on budgeting larger for better snow preparation. You're comparing the 'could cost' figure for the entire UK with the budget cost for a single highways agency, one that we don't even know will cope anyway. The point is this doesn't happen very often. That overrides all other considerations. If 500 UK cities (Isn't it for the entire Cumbria county, though? Might be wrong.) have the same budget you'd still only be at 2bn. And my point is that even if it doesn't happen very often, it's the wrong mindset to have. Yeah, and then multiply paying that extra money for the 20 years between occurances. What a farcial argument this is, with crappy economics done on the back of a fag packet. The fact is this doesn't normally happen, and the money is needed elsewhere for things that happen all the time. Otherwise we would fucking budget for it... It happens, though. Obviously not to the degree of the "snow crisis", but as mentioned only the winters between 91-93, 97-00, 06-08 (9 out of 20 years) have been without any occurences of snow over 5 inches. I'm saying you are generally unprepared for any amounts of snow/ice. As are the lower regions of France, just fyi. Justify that please. And where are you getting those figures on snowfall from? I'm willing to wager they include Scotland. Mainly news reports on TV over the years of snowy conditions in England accompanied by cars driving off the roads or being stuck. I don't have access to the news history of the Norwegian TV2 or NRK1 so I can't do it, sorry. This is where I got the winter statistic from: http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=other;type=winthist;sess= I'll admit to not have read the entire thing, mind. If you want we can settle for a truce and rather continue this discussion in the weather thread or something though.

I'm quite enjoying it.

It does not change the fact that you'd still be likely to save more on budgeting larger for better snow preparation. You're comparing the 'could cost' figure for the entire UK with the budget cost for a single highways agency, one that we don't even know will cope anyway. The point is this doesn't happen very often. That overrides all other considerations. If 500 UK cities (Isn't it for the entire Cumbria county, though? Might be wrong.) have the same budget you'd still only be at 2bn. And my point is that even if it doesn't happen very often, it's the wrong mindset to have. Yeah, and then multiply paying that extra money for the 20 years between occurances. What a farcial argument this is, with crappy economics done on the back of a fag packet. The fact is this doesn't normally happen, and the money is needed elsewhere for things that happen all the time. Otherwise we would fucking budget for it... It happens, though. Obviously not to the degree of the "snow crisis", but as mentioned only the winters between 91-93, 97-00, 06-08 (9 out of 20 years) have been without any occurences of snow over 5 inches. I'm saying you are generally unprepared for any amounts of snow/ice. As are the lower regions of France, just fyi.

I just like discussing shit at nighttime. I might be wrong, I might be right. It's all about the journey to eventually find out and reach an agreement with the one you're discussing with, or leave the computer enraged at someone in another country.

It does not change the fact that you'd still be likely to save more on budgeting larger for better snow preparation. You're comparing the 'could cost' figure for the entire UK with the budget cost for a single highways agency, one that we don't even know will cope anyway. The point is this doesn't happen very often. That overrides all other considerations. If 500 UK cities (Isn't it for the entire Cumbria county, though? Might be wrong.) have the same budget you'd still only be at 2bn. And my point is that even if it doesn't happen very often, it's the wrong mindset to have.

It does not change the fact that you'd still be likely to save more on budgeting larger for better snow preparation contra potential losses.

It wouldn't, though. That's what I'm saying. It really wouldn't. It's surprisingly inexpensive to be prepared contra not being prepared. Basically just adding a task to already exisiting jobs and maintaining a decent enough stock of grinders would see the cost of maintaining said grinders be less expensive than the cost of hell breaking loose every time it snows more than five centimetres. Got a link with those figures? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/4436257/Snow-Britain-disruption-could-cost-UK-economy-3bn.html http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/focus/cumbria-s-gritters-on-standby-to-combat-winter-weather-problems-1.782874?referrerPath=features "Cumbria Highways’ winter maintenance budget for 2010/11 is £4.179m,"

Once again, I'm not comparing anything to Norway or saying England should be able to deal with it because Norway is able to deal with it. I'm saying England should be able to deal with it better than they currently are. You're not a snowy country, you never will be. But this doesn't change the fact that you could deal with the times you do get snow a lot better and be more cost effective.

It's not the point. I'm not comparing England to Norway as it's an unfair comparison. I'm saying England aren't doing anything right when it's rather obvious how to do it if you look to the countries that have experience. Which is what you apparently did last year when your government sent a delegation out here to learn about how to be prepared for snow, but I don't think you've learnt anything. I'm not saying you need to be like Norway. I'm just saying anything is better than what is currently going on. Which is? Low budgets and in general a low focus from the government on the possibility of snowy conditions taking place, which when they do causes possible losses far exceeding the cost of increasing snow preparation budgets.

You seem to be missing the fundamental point here. As far as I can read only 91-93, 97-00, 06-08 were winters without any to very little snowfall in the UK. (Less than five inches)

It's not the point. I'm not comparing England to Norway as it's an unfair comparison. I'm saying England aren't doing anything right when it's rather obvious how to do it if you look to the countries that have experience. Which is what you apparently did last year when your government sent a delegation out here to learn about how to be prepared for snow, but I don't think you've learnt anything. I'm not saying you need to be like Norway. I'm just saying anything is better than what is currently going on.

I'm not poking fun. I'm just seriously amazed by how you year after year tend to never learn anything.

It wouldn't, though. That's what I'm saying. It really wouldn't. It's surprisingly inexpensive to be prepared contra not being prepared. Basically just adding a task to already exisiting jobs and maintaining a decent enough stock of grinders would see the cost of maintaining said grinders be less expensive than the cost of hell breaking loose every time it snows more than five centimetres. But that's the point, we don't normally get more than 5cm of snow. This our worst November for snow/bad weather since 1993, why be constantly prepared for something that happens once every 20 years? Inexpensive or not, it's pointless spending. Not when you consider the effects caused by the bad weather (when it happens) having a ripple effect on businesses and other institutions that probably amounts to million losses for the government and the private sector. If this money was invested in preparation... you catch my drift. It would not be pointless spending when it would in the long run save you money. I may not be good at math, but even I understand that. For all years you don't experience snowy winters it'd be "pointless spending", but it'd make up for it in abundance the winters you get snow.

We've apparently spent more money than you on war equipment over the last decade for some fucked up reason. I remember it being on the news when we bought some of those jet bombers or whatever it's called.

It wouldn't, though. That's what I'm saying. It really wouldn't. It's surprisingly inexpensive to be prepared contra not being prepared. Basically just adding a task to already exisiting jobs and maintaining a decent enough stock of grinders would see the cost of maintaining said grinders be less expensive than the cost of hell breaking loose every time it snows more than five centimetres.

More like you English need to man up and get on with it. It's not natural for your country to come to a complete stop with just a tiny bit of snow. If it was a lot of snow, sure, you're not used to it. But for things to go mental from the amount I've seen you have at the moment is just silly even if I'm a Norwegian and used to snow or not. I wasn't even joking! You were talking sense. It happens every year and it's never dealt with. I thought you were joking. It's really not something that's overly expensive. We, Norway, don't spend too much money on this shit. You'd imagine you'd not spend too much money on it with just training some people and having enough grinders on standby should it happen. It's fairly simple to assume that the cost would be less when being prepared than when not.

This is why: http://gfx.dagbladet.no/labrador/543/543254/5432549/jpg/active/320x.jpg (you will notice the match was still played)

More like you English need to man up and get on with it. It's not natural for your country to come to a complete stop with just a tiny bit of snow. If it was a lot of snow, sure, you're not used to it. But for things to go mental from the amount I've seen you have at the moment is just silly even if I'm a Norwegian and used to snow or not. What would you consider deep in Scandinavia? Theres 11 inches of snow on the grass at the moment and more to come overnight. That for me isn't a tiny bit of snow. 11 inch We are cooler though, don't you worry I like how he's saying it like it's a lot of snow.