Keys Corner

The combination of Britain and snow is often good for a suprise – the Brits don’t believe in investing much in gritting lorries or snowploughs. So there is always chaos when it snows (which it does, surprisingly, every winter). Ten centimeters of snow constitutes an official emergency. You don’t believe me? Well, read this article in today’s Guardian. Here’s a quote:

If the snow gets deeper, Mr Carter [Kent council’s winter services duty officer – JK] and his colleagues can enlist the help of local farmers. “There are about 250 in a farmers’ snowplough agreement, which means that as soon as the snow reaches two inches they get their snowploughs out.”

Maybe there are other European countries which call out the farmers to man their snowploughs for 2” (5 cm) of snow, but I haven’t heard of them.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 28th, 2005 at 19:12:26 and is filed under In the UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.