BETTER safe than sorry is a sound philosophy – one that should apply to all of us equally. With red weather warnings issued in parts of Scotland, many schools, some universities and various council offices were closed for the safety of travelling staff.
Spare a thought, then, for those not so lucky. Though employers in affected areas were urged by the Scottish Government to close, that decision was never going to be so easy for small businesses or sole traders, often operating on tight margins of profit and loss.
In less welfare-orientated concerns, too, staff might be enjoined to try and make it in. They will have been caught between a rock and a hard place: officially warned to stay at home, privately expected to make it in. Many, avoiding (we trust) dangerous roads but walking or taking any public transport available, will have struggled in, either out of a sense of duty or a fear of the sack. Alas, not everyone has the protection that public sector workers enjoy.
It’s the hierarchy of safety from the storm: public sector employees, private sector workers, rough sleepers. Outwith these, small businesses can be particularly badly hit at times like these, as customers stay away. Even so, many entrepreneurs will have struggled in doggedly and opened for business with Micawber-like optimism.
They might be forgiven for envying their more cosseted counterparts in the public sector without, we hope, conjuring clichéd images of the civil servant happily at home clutching a teacup in a storm.
That storm has been a long time coming and we were well warned about it. We looked for a reason and got a rhyme: The Beast from the East (actually, as the now inappropriately named Sun newspaper has pointed out, the name of a wrestling contest in Tokyo).
It might as well have been the Weather from Wherever for, as the dire cold descended, the gravity of the situation sank in. Four weather-related deaths on the roads had already occurred in England on Tuesday, and the red warning issued across the Central Belt, Tayside, Fife and Central Scotland was accompanied by grim words about a “risk to life”.
We were well warned, though mentally as a nation we still seemed unprepared. In Scotland, weather-wise, we think there’s nothing new under the clouds. We heard the warnings from our fair weather friends in Government, and thought it might just be ministers covering their backs. After all, they’ve been blamed for snow before.
For many people, a warning of snow in Scotland was on a par with a warning of sun in Africa, and a feeling was abroad that the situation was being over-egged (a perception not helped by mid-market tabloids previously stoking fears of meteorological horrors that came to nothing).
Even as roads were cut off, trains cancelled and schools closed, a feeling persisted that a time traveller from as recently as the late 1980s might arrive and think: “What’s all the fuss about?” Folk of a certain generation recalled trauchling in to school in the snow, and lamented that, nowadays, bairns aren’t allowed to trauchle in even when the weather is clement. Such sentiments are understandable, as long as they take into account the real gravity of the current situation, particularly on the roads.
Bad weather is something we should be ready for and something that always seems to surprise us. Scotland must know that there’s nothing exceptional in exceptional weather. We echo the warnings about the dangers of road travel, while saluting those who made it into work or their place of business safely by other means, including Shanks’s pony where feasible. And we join those not lucky enough to have public sector protection in looking forward to the calm after the storm.
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