Why are we so useless when it comes to dealing with snow? OK, this winter has been the worst for many a decade but we seem to fall apart at the first slurry.
I’ve got a particular beef about school closures in bad weather. I can understand the difficult of opening some secondary schools where pupils come from a wide catchment area and buses might find difficulty making it up and down the hills of the Valleys.
But why were primary schools in Cardiff, many of them along busy main roads, shut not just on the day of the snowfall last week but also last Thursday and Friday.
Sure, there is an issue about health and safety but that can be solved by keeping the pupils in school during break times. It just seems the easy option is taken every time to shut a school. If I, or indeed thousands of others, can manage to get from one end of Cardiff to another why can’t a teacher?
I noticed in the South Wales Echo that Maesteg Comprehensive was able to open so why not primaries in a relatively flat city like Cardiff?
These closures cause huge problems for parents who are forced to make emergency childcare arrangements, lose pay or a day off their annual holiday entitlement.
Wales, and in the UK, is not used to coping with this type of weather but perhaps the time is right to find out how our Scandinavian cousins manage to keep their schools open in far worse conditions. Or local authorities need to look at providing alternatives for pupils if schools are shut.
We really have to get much better at coping with a few falls of snow.
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