AND NOW...

I suspect that in countries that are used to what we would call 'severe weather (i.e. anywhere in central Europe, further east and further to north), the Brits struggles with the snow have been relegated to the light item at the end of the news. Despite that, this is a prolonged period of severe / cold weather, which other countries that are more used to appear to handle reasonably well.

Certainly as a child I (and many people I have spoken to over the last few days) can recall walking to school in the snow and being miserable in school because A) we were cold and B) we were not allowed to go outside and play in the snow very much. I don't recall any prolonged period of school closure, save a for a few days in the winter of 1981 / 1982 when it was seriously cold. So what's different now?

One thing I suspect is that now many if not the vast majority of teachers don't live anywhere close to the school where they work, a combination of house prices (i.e. being able to afford to buy somewhere to live) and being able to find a school where you can get a permanent job. I am aware of teachers commuting from Newport and the heads of the valleys to Cardiff and to places as far west as Bridgend and of teachers commuting to schools in the valleys from the coastal belt.

A combination of local government reform in the early 1990's which broke up the old large and Labour dominated local authorities means that teachers, social workers, local government employees cannot simply go to the nearest school, or office to sign in for work. Also add into the mix that teachers have to have Child Protection Checks and these relate specifically to the relevant local authority and you begin to get a picture of why things are different.

We definitely don't handle bad weather particularly well in the southern portions of the UK, but, this is not necessarily the case everywhere, especially in the north and on the European mainland. A few years ago I was in Eastern Germany and Poland, when they had one of those late flurries of bad weather (some of the worst they had experienced for twenty years according to local TV) - the trains ran, buses ran, kids walked to and from school (at least in the urban areas) , planes flew and people went about their ordinary business - life went on and no one battered anyone senseless for the last pint of milk or packet of biscuits.