Discussion of Europe's cold winter in today's Washington Post. It gets into considerable detail:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/?hpid=weather-sidecar


"One of the fiercest beginnings to winter on record has slammed Europe...."

"The unusually wintry weather gripping Europe as well as the cold plaguing the eastern United States are linked by a historically strong weather system locked over Greenland."

And to add fuel to fire, looks like we are beginning to see an epidemic return of Swine Flu in the country, if that wasn't bad enough with all the ice casualties i.e. broken legs, hips, wrists and arm etc swamping the local Ninewells Hospital Casualty dept.

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/News/Dundee/...sy-weekend.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12052816

This will probably add to the 35,000 excess deaths in the UK during this winter quite considerably. (simply died from being cold)

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/216765/Weather-35-000-deaths-fear-in-new-Arctic-blizzards

The government austerity cuts and the toll booth economy within the UK are certainly beginning to take their toll.

The LHR airport fiasco (even the jet set turned into virtual refugees) is just the tip of this nations woes and embarrassment.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weathe...-fifth-day.html

BAA should have taken up the 'We are all in this together' and handed out the shovels to the passengers to get them to dig out their jets. Probably would not have been received well by all the johny foriegners

Even the garbage bins haven't been collected by the local Dundee city council now getting on for a month now and the Royal mail seem to lost the last 3 weeks of mail deliveries (probably destined for the black hole vortex of their TARDIS that they captured from a Time Lord)

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/News/Dundee/...ail-chiefs.html

Mail delivery isn't exactly rocket science yet they seem to have greater difficulty today that they did 150 years ago (in the days before electricity was widely available, i.e. you don't need an EMP for things to fall apart quickly, just poor strategic investment and a little cold weather)

From 1936;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WO7JxYlhOM

I'll spend some time looking at all those links, thanks. And continued best wishes in persevering through it all.

Interesting observation you make on the EMP analogy. It was a week-long series of ice storms, extreme temps (below 20 F) in the early 90s that pushed the NE power grid to its limits and caused periodic brown-outs that first caused me to appreciate the preparedness utility of camping gear (that I had only recently begun compiling as I was just beginning that dog-friendly mode of vacationing). After that I accelerated gear acquisition with an eye toward power outages.

A severe bout of flu the following year caused me to make a point from then on of having two weeks worth of soup on hand. Simply because I was single and did not want to have to trudge out to a grocery when sick or ask anyone else to.

The preps grew from there. And we're camping more than ever so most of the stuff gets used.

And once again the military are not asked to help. Not saying they are the answer to all the problems, but a few thousand extra hands with 4WD's wouldn't hurt.

The problem is local government would rather pay through the nose for piecemeal solutions, than look bad by asking for help from central government.

Probably didn't want some corporal issuing Dundee city council workers (they make 20% of the entire working population in the city) a shovel and telling them to follow him, forcing them to leave the warm comfy local tax payer paid for centrally heated office, was probably the fear.

The Royal mail post mystery seems to be getting solved,

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/News/Dundee/...rs-mystery.html

Apparently before this story came out one of my buddies from Broughty Ferry had threatened to make a Police complaint about the theft of mail by the Royal mail. His bundle of letters arrived the next day.

This is how ridiculous this world part of the world is getting, apparently if you post a letter in Newport-on-Tay to Broughty Ferry, it wings its way firstly to Dundee (to get collected, makes it about half way i.e. 1.5 miles), put on a train to Manchester (to get sorted, goes in the opposite direction by about 290 miles in another country), put on a train again back to Dundee (back in the right direction by about 290 miles), to get put on a post van to Broughty Ferry (the ramaining 1.5 miles) to be then dumped in the snow under a shrubbery (about 200 yards away), to be found by a neighbour to be hand delivery all wet and soggy. Royal Mail call it 'the way forward'. Third world here we come.

Same with the London Heathrow airport fiasco. The CEO of the company (BAA) that runs the airport gets paid $1.5 Million a year had spent half this amount on kit to keep the airport runways etc clear of snow.

Makes you wonder what the response would be to a true national emergency situation within the UK if the country cannot cope with a couple of inches of snow.

Even RAF Leuchars is under threat of closure due to the austerity cuts, i.e. no more QRA for northern UK and Iceland gap. No more airborne anti-submarine capability and airborne sea rescue coordination. We are being left defenseless. A national disgrace.



Thankfully we are still getting the benefit of a Nationalised National Electricity Grid system designed by Electrical Engineers in the 1970s, rather than by the bean counters and business graduates. So the electrical Grid system is still quite robust, although the bean counters now in charge are certainly screwing everyone for its use after it was given away to private business interests. Saying that though the bean counters haven't made any further investment since then and given another 10 years I can expect the Grid to begin to fall apart as the generating and transmission hardware comes to the enf of its useful lifetime.

More of that exceptionally rare thundersnow, this time in New York;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5EYH43ZlUw

The clear-up certainly seems to be having some difficulties, but hey at least they are having a go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LVypA4YzyQ

Just who is likely to attack the UK?

No amount of conventional military forces will stop terrorist attacks against easy targets, and there really are no military threats to the UK.

London -- a world financial center -- is at least as inviting a target as New York City. I'd be surprised if Russia didn't have London top tier in its nuclear targeting. London-NYC would be the one-two punch of the western economies.

Are any nations planning on a military invasion of the U.S.?

We have an enormous conventional warfare capacity but we aren't using it to secure our borders (in the conventional sense).

2 QRA Tornado F.3s were launched on the 23rd December.

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/News/Nationa...n-aircraft.html

Closing the airbase would also effect Mountain Rescue services

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/News/Nationa...s-scotland.html

Even coastguard services are being closed due to the government austerity measures required to pay for the Banksters Christmas bonuses. (mostly government owned )

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/News/Fife/article/8839/coastguard-is-intrinsic-to-firth-of-forth.html

Even emergency services have been struggling in the recent poor weather due to the fuel shortages (which some have claimed are being held back by private business interests in their attempt to price gouge to increase private profits.)

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/News/article...s-on-track.html

Hopefully we won't see the perfect storm within the next 2-3 months, i.e. Economic catastrophe (another 2008 Wall street Banking, derivative and USD collapse leading to martial law as threatened previously) + World Wide Swine flu Epidemic + Another cold snap and snow fall (similar to the US East Coast Snow storm but with -20C temperatures for 2-3 weeks at a time.

Things can change rapidly and political and economic instability can lead to the previous habit of bombing some folks when things get expedient to do so.

I suppose the same nutters that flew aircraft into the twin towers, might reckon that the UK would be a viable target.

Light aircraft into an oil rig would be messy, we've got a few of those in a little bit of water called the North Sea.

The point is to protect against what could happen.

RAF Leuchars QRA take off nearly every day to intercept or investigate intruders to UK airspace. Who knows what they'll meet on the next flight.