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W124 October 29, 2008 1:48 PM

I drove across the top of the Chilterns yesterday in the worst of it.  From Henley to Ibstone, Stokenchurch and onto the M40 which I then left as it was being hastily gritted.  Mayhem at Wycombe so had to double back up across by the old road to Missenden.  The motorway was truly dreadful.

I was very pleased to be in the Old Merc on good tires as automotive bedlam unfolded on all sides.   It amazes me how fast people were going on the M40 in proper, driving snow.  Insanity.  This morning my wife could not get into London as the Chiltern Line and Metroploitan were both out of action.  Honestly - a little bit of snow etc. etc.

What really struck me was how much I enjoyed the journey last night on the snowbound back roads.  Rarely do I have to concentrate that hard and, oddly, it was huge fun.

horseandcart October 29, 2008 3:01 PM

"first hint of inclement weather?"

- Is the intention here to underplay the current weather conditions? Are you "on-side" with the mass brainwashing MMGW/climate change orthodoxy?

Whatever about the Jaguar XF, your current ride, what stands out in your short article to me is not the hackneyed '1" of snow brings Britain to standstill' allusion but the undeplaying of severe weather conditions for the southern part of Britain in October and the mass unpreparedness of British drivers due precisely to the comprehensive brainwashing they have undergone in the last twenty years, which has psychologically prepared them for a mediterranean like climate in Britain due anytime now.

Heavy falls of snow that do not melt upon hitting the ground and turn to ice and black-ice due to a following sustained hard frost, in large parts of Britain, in autumnal October are not to be expected. I for one cannot recall such an early, and associated with, deep-cold fall of snow, onto piles of autumnal leaves or late-shedding trees with their leaves still on. I Have noticed that the media has set out to play down this weather of the last 48 hours or simply ignored it and for instance blamed the calling off of several football games last night on 'stupid referees' who 'in my day would have let the game go ahead and played on six inches of snow' etc.. These media people are suggesting players risk breaking their limbs on up to -5deg.C hard frosted pitches overlaid with snow. I detect a panic among the chatterati and the media types that we must at all costs not let the proles cop onto the fact that GW or climate change - the fallback position - is simply a got up hoax and scam to control people and take their earnings off them with more and more green/carbon taxes.

The plain facts are Mr Duff that this whole MMGW/climate change has already done massive damage to the industry you make a good living off, namely the auto industry by legislative interference in a free market by rigging taxes against some spurious notion of harmful emission or congestion. You may not have felt the pinch yet but the tens of thousands already on enforced lay-offs or short-time working across Europe are suffering the consequences of this fraudulent, diabolical scheme. And before you say, surely the auto industry's problems currently are wholly due to the finance crisis, please read deputy EC Commissioner Guenter Verheugen's remarks made in an interview with a German newspaper earlier this week.  He said "Kunden und Hersteller sind aber auch deshalb verunsichert, weil die Politik beim Thema CO2 keinen klaren Kurs fährt."(interview with Neue Presse, Hannover). Ah yes, carbon dioxide emission taxes. At precisely the time that the European auto industry upon which as many as one in seven of all jobs in some major EU member countries rely is in danger of imploding, the EU bureaucrats pile on the penalties for 'over' emitting of this natural gas. It's Kafkaesque insane. Who do these insulated from reality, feather-bedded bureaucrats think are going to pay the billions and billions of more euros/pounds taxes when millions across Europe are put out of work? A complete moratorium on all so-called green auto taxes has to be imposed now at EU level and individual governments, like the UK, would be well advised to scrap their retropective VED tax hike on older cars and reduce fuel duty tax. Let the market decide. Keep the bureancrats out.

2007 was the coldest year in the northern hemisphere for at least a hundred years. There has been no warming of the earth's atmosphere since 1998. Sunspot activity is at its lowest since god knows when, with many days now having passed without a single spot being observed. Such low sunspot activity was last recorded around the 1700s/early 1800s period, of Dickensian white Christmases renown.

It would be a good, wise and courageous thing for individuals in the media to break free from the orthodoxy of MMGW/climate change and at very least not condition pieces they write with the semi-consciously applied diktats of this quasi religion scam. At a time of crippling domestic fuel costs for heating and lighting and existing or planned further rises in motoring taxes on the back of greenness and carbon emission; at a time of freezing weather unprecedented this early and the likelihood of a global cooling period presaged by non-existent suspot activity, with all the attendant hardships that would entail for most ordinary people it would be a wise person with a platform in the media not to make light of 'hints of inclement weather' but rather address the facts without bias or conditioning, if only in the self-interests of preservation. You see, I think even the most stupid, dumbed-down, brainwashed TV watching addict will eventually get pissed off with being lectured to night and day, and made to pay for it, increasingly so, when he and his family are freezing their butts off in a house he can't heat and a car he can't afford to run. It's then that the scammed poor bast*rd might start looking for who lied to him, and may wish to extract recompense, close up and personal.

And lastly, as I said at the top, how can you expect people to take responsibility for their actions in a harsh real world condition when all they've been told runs contrary to this. For twenty years or more, children, young adults and basically now anyone under the age of forty-five in the UK has been bombarded with global warming programming, including extensive vineyard horticulture in Britain, continental style pavement cafe culture and rising sea levels due to higher atmospheric temperatures. The last thing the poor saps are ready for is sub-zero sustained temperatures and regular, lying snowfalls. No amount of traction control, ABS, and ESP generic systems will counteract a human mind that has a conception of a world that's only headed one way - hotter. This doesn't excuse individual responsibility but a  large part of the blame for irresponsible, stupid, and dangerous to other road-users and pedestrians driving behaviour will find its root in the this mental conception of 'increasingly mild winters and it never snows anymore and we can grow pineapples in our garden' etc. mental reinforcing bullsh1t that gets spewed out continuously by the media and compliant airheads.

Scottish Scrutineer October 29, 2008 4:39 PM

Sorry horseandcart, your Global Warming rant is wasted on me.

However Mike, you are right, too many drivers have the foolhardy blind faith and  belief that ESP, ABS, ETC, et al, will allow them to defy Newton's Laws and will generate grip where there is none. They need to slow down and drive to the conditions, not the speed limit numbers that too many have become fixated upon. If they don't, they will become a sad statistic.

Scottish Scrutineer October 29, 2008 4:40 PM

Sorry horseandcart, your Global Warming rant is wasted on me.

However Mike, you are right, too many drivers have the foolhardy blind faith and  belief that ESP, ABS, ETC, et al, will allow them to defy Newton's Laws and will generate grip where there is none. They need to slow down and drive to the conditions, not the speed limit numbers that too many have become fixated upon. If they don't, they will become a sad statistic.

phenergn October 29, 2008 9:47 PM

It's certainly true that people don't take account of conditions, be it rain, snow or fog. Although it's not surprising that people can't keep their cars out of ditches in the snow - we seem to average about 2 days of snow a year. I know I can't drive on snow covered roads because it's difficult and I've only done it a few times.

I remember last year I had my first experience of rear wheel drive in the snow. I managed to get to work on gritted roads, but the car park gave me some hilarous 5mph oversteer moments. It's lucky the car park was empty or I wouldn't have made it out in one piece.

keeforelli October 30, 2008 7:53 AM

horseandcart- to be able to get from a piece on the inability of our highways agency to prepare the roads for a cold snap..(which is all it is) to a massively in depth post on the great global warming conspiracy is quite amazing.

i thought it had been a long time since the last 100 odd post global warming arguments on here.  Could they be back?

incidentally how would you explain the fact up till this point in october i i had yet to need a coat (i live in oxfordshire)..and on october the 11th and 12th i was in london in shorts basking in temperatures of well over 70F?

weather events as freak as october snow are simply part of the bigger picture of climate.  Our weather has always thrown up bizarre anomalies, and no single event can be used to back up theories.

people drive too fast not because they have been conditioned into thinking winters are warmer, but because modern cars make you feel invincible and less likely to take responsibilty for your driving.

but im still intrigued by what exactly prompted your post- i dont think mike duff is part of any conspiracy.  Is it that the media are off elsewhere forecasting our financial demise rather than a climate one?

coolGav October 30, 2008 10:01 AM

If we regularly had such conditions then we'd all learn to drive in them. The Scandinavians do, although they all change to winter tyres first. Some drivers who never take a modern car anywhere near its limits find a small slide unsettles them into driving ultra cautiously. When really we need to read the road and understand where it might be slippery and where it's dangerous.

ESP deactivated October 30, 2008 10:17 AM

Great, another utterly tedious global warming rant. Horseandcart - or Horseandplum?