The Great Snow of 2015
It looks like Bill de Blasio will go down in the history books?
Forever known as the Mayor of New York who shut down an entire city for a smattering of snow?
I'm still at a bit of a loss as to why he went to such extreme measures. If there had been a two hundred foot tsunami heading west across the Atlantic then maybe he would have been right. If there was a violent hurricane just coming inshore then he would have had a point, but a bit of snow? Even three feet of snow is hardly worthy of a title of "extreme danger", unless of course it was all going to fall at once with a loud FLOP!
I have mentioned before how there is a tendency to over dramatise everything these days, and the Americans are masters in the art. They no longer have storms – they have to be Superstorms. There is no such thing now as bad weather – it has to be Extreme Weather. De Blasio fell foul of that with his "one of the largest snowstorms in the history of New York" statement. "Crippling and potentially historic"? Jayzus but there's nothing like a bit of drama to whip the peasants into a frenzy?
But why shut down the entire transport system? Why close airports when they are more than likely to make that decision for themselves? And most baffling of all – why make it a fucking criminal offense to drive your car?
They have forecast snow here in Ireland. It won't be anything like three feet, but here, three millimeters of the white stuff is sufficient to bring our cities to a grinding halt for some reason.
There are no emergency measures in place so far as I know. There have been no dramatic announcements, no breathless over excited weather forecasters on the television. If the snow comes, it comes. People will carry on their normal lives and if they eventually get stuck, they'll get stuck. Drivers will drive the roads up until that magic three millimeter mark when the roads will grind to a natural standstill.
Over here, we carry on regardless until we can't carry on any further.
In New York they apparently need to be protected from themselves, even to the point of invoking laws that criminalise ordinary people from doing ordinary things. Big Brother knows better?
Maybe Bill de Blasio should come to Ireland for a holiday?
I'd say he needs it!
An exercise? To see how many people they could keep off the streets while they fill them with militarized police?Would stop initial panic if everyone was at home glued to the propaganda channels.
I accidentally saw a bit of an extract from CNN. I thought the weather bloke was going to have a heart attack with the excitement. It would nearly be worth while staying off the street just to see him have his final coronary?
if Bill de Blasio does go to Ireland, how much do we have to pay you keep him? On second thought never mind. I kind of like Ireland and I just could not do that to you.
There are loads of bogholes still vacant up in the mountains. For a small fee…… ?
Every night we get the weather warnings with different colours and differing levels of severity. It's all nonsense, they can't tell very much for a little time ahead and at times they even cant tell us what happened earlier in a different part of the country. You'd think they could maybe phone and ask what the weather had been like but that's behind their ken.
Tale their radar away and they would be lost.
Their forecast was presumably based on their computer models? If they can't forecast a day ahead…… well, you know the rest?
At least they don't have Al Gore as the mayor of anyplace, have you seen his latest shite : http://uk.businessinsider.com/plan-to-spend-90-trillion-redesigning-cities-without-cars-2015-1?r=US