For the second time in less than a month, Britain has ground to a standstill as a result of snowy weather. Heathrow
airport has virtually ceased operating with over half a million
passengers affected during what is normally the most busy time of the
year with people trying to get home for the holidays.
For the second time in less than a month, Britain has ground to a standstill as a result of snowy weather.
Heathrow airport has virtually ceased operating with over half a million passengers affected during what is normally the most busy time of the year with people trying to get home for the holidays. Many have been stuck at the airport with no hotel accomodation, proper food or warm bedding. Complaints have been made about the total lack of information from the authorities. At one point it even looked possible that the airport buildings would be shut and those passengers without accomodation being forced outside to wait in the snow – some without warm clothing as their baggage had already been checked in. This didn’t happen after all but the end result of people trying to sleep on the floors with what they had has resembled a third-world refugee camp. The chaos seems set to continue for days yet.
Meanwhile Eurostar has also failed to keep going at anything like full capacity – for the second year running – with five hour waiting times being recorded to even stand a chance of getting a seat out of London. No further bookings are being accepted until the new year. The UK rail network has also been operating at a much reduced level with many cancelations.
Naturally the transport minister has had little to say of much use. After many interviews over the last four days as to why things are in such a mess, he finally snapped and said "look, we don’t own these companies… Heathrow is privately owned." Really? Have we not been told for years now that privately owned companies are more able to do things. Well it seems not. Our transport system has ground to a halt with the sort of snow levels that the rest of europe and the US would not even blink at.
In reality these firms have spent the last decade or so pumping up their profits for the shareholders and hoping nothing would go wrong. We have had bad weather for each of the last two years but only during January/February time. This time they were caught out and the bad weather hit early in the winter season. They were given due warning of this but still they failed to be ready. Now the media is talking of this chaos as a national humiliation.
This is a failure of capitalism. It is a failure of a system which cares only for profit and not for the well-being of their customers. To say that the snow was an act of god and "that is that" is a joke. Even the expected gritting of the roads has been much cut back with councils trying to save money by not going out even though there are grit supplies available. The government says they will look at things later and maybe commission a report to join all those other reports now piling up. One Tory suggested last week that we should all just clear the snow ourselves, no doubt expecting an army of people to head down the mainroads with their shovels to get stuck in. No wonder the government has looked clueless over the last few days.
Once again capitalism has been proved wanting. It should be swept away with the drifting snow.
