OT Rant! - UK's useless in the snow!!

[lalitas charm]

Sorry that this is off topic but I need a rant.

My DH has been in england for work for the last 2 weeks. He was supposed to be home last night but his flight from Gatwick was cancelled due to the snow in London and according to the easyjet rep heavy snow in Belfast (I live beside the airport and there wasn't heavy snow here!). He was naughty and bunked the queue and got offered the next available flight to Belfast which was monday night. Obviously that was no good. SO, he and 3 other guys trying to get home to Northern Ireland are flying to Glasgow this evening and then going to try to make it to Stranraer to get the ferry home. If the Glasgow flight is cancelled then he is going to try to drive up to the ferry.

We are supposed to be moving house this weekend in order to be settled in the new place before Christmas!! I was so looking forward to him being home as it is a struggle doing all of this on your own and I just feel like our first Christmas with our little one is going to be ruined

In the UK at the first sign of snow everything seems to stop! Its useless!

 

[belladonna]

It is useless! I worked at an airport (for only one day, lol) and there was about an inch of snow and all the planes were delayed, a couple of the other trainees were polish I think and they could not believe all the fuss over such little snow when they are used to so much more and still carry on.

 

[beancounter]

it is ridiculous. I remember when I lived in Birmingham which to my mind is Midlands and should expect a bit of snow.. but the whole city ground to a halt. People were stuck in thier cars over night and they didnt have coats and things and got into trouble. My nieces school wouldn't provide locker space for a proper coat and told them off for bringing them! One wonder how places with proper snow cope. I hope you OH makes it home soon!

 

[aimee-lou]

The UK is entirely useless.....

Could he get to Holyhead instead? He would have a longer crossing and drive the other side from Dublin, but he wouldn't have to drive to Scotland, which is getting bad weather today, on icy roads and he wouls also get some sleep on the crossing.

Here's hoping his flights are ok.

My moan is people's inability to drive in these conditions. If you don't know what you're doing stay at home or get publuc transport and let a professional drive. My hubby works on the buses (used to be a driver for 3 years, is now a supervisor) and he has taught me a lot as I went off on blavk ice 3 years ago. I now feel ok about it but if it gets past 6pm or the grittershaven't been through I wont drive at the moment! (I live in the Yorkshire Wolds so the roads get pretty bad at times!).

Even so, I was popping to the shops and the main road was ok.....it's an NSL road and you can normally acheive 40-50 safely on the majority of it. I rounded a bend at about 35 and found a massive 4 x 4 doing 20 mph and slamming on his brakes at every bend and dip......It was driving me nuts! As the road was ok luckily I could brake too and keep a good distane behind. Yesterday hubby did the same run and ended up behind the same 4e x 4 doing the same speed. The road wasn't clear this time though and as our car doesn't have 4 wheel drive, when K**B in the 4 x 4 slammed all on at a bend, hubby had no choice but to pull the handbrake and hope that his momentum wasn;t enough to take him into the back of the other car. If he had touched the brakes hed's have been wrapped around a tree!! What's really annoying is tht he was only dpoing 20mph which is slow enough that he could have easily coasted the corner and not caused hubby an aneurism!

No-one knows how to drive in winter now and It does my head in. I've got about 100 other incidents which have happened the last couple if years....it's sodding ridiculous. Sorry to rant lol

 

[lalitas charm]

We are useless aren't we!

I work for an international company and had to apologise to customers a couple of years ago as we weren't able to ship any goods out due to snow, it was particularly embarassing when I was apologising to people in Norway, canada and north america where they were used to getting FEET of snow and we couldn't cope with a couple of inches!

I'm just hoping that my DH will get home tomorrow, its such a nightmare. I miss him so much

 

[JayleighAnn]

We are useless, we had about 1-2inches of snow, my mum got a phone call from her OH asking if she could drive to his work as the lads n him needed to put their cheques in the bank to have them cleared by tomorrow. They normally get one of the others wife to fo it but she didn't want to drive in the snow as she had a 1yr old in the car with her n the snow was really deep???? 1-2inches of snow is DEEP???