Let it snow let it snow...

 I do this post watching the snow fall onto the patio and our back garden whilst eating one of my homemade no added sugar penny buns, so called because they are small. I make them in batches enough to last 12-14 days, then freeze them. How I love snow and I see snow falling less frequently as one of the consequences of climate change. I can say this living close to the top of a hill, at no risk of flooding. 

Let me be clear, I know that as snow melts on higher ground it brings the risk of flooding to millions of people living in homes which have been built on floodplains without adequate defences in place, but I still love snow and will happily pay the taxes necessary to improve flood defences, even though I hold planners and developers responsible for the problem, with some historic exceptions. Preventing flooding up-river/stream often pushes the flooding down-river/stream. Climate change is likely to result in less snow in winter and more storms at other times of the year. It is a problem politicians, governments and business have known about since the late-1960s and chosen to ignore. I must type up and re-publish an article I wrote a long time ago whilst a Birmingham city councillor. I used two nom-de-plumes at the time (Orifice and Able Allchurch) because most of the time I was writing about the antics of the City Council's Labour Group at the behest of the then Council Leader, Stan Yapp. Here is the top of the back page of the Birmingham Trades Council Journal from December 1973:

Once I would have been out there in the snow and loving it, now, thanks my pulmonary fibrosis, I stay snug inside looking out, but my cup of tea and bun are good enough compensation. I also took a pic from our front door before the snow melts. I suspect what we are doing is being repeated all over Beeston. This really is life as it happens.

Click on pic to enlarge.

By way of a P.S. here is an earlier back page from the Trades Council Journal dated February 1972. This led to me being courted by the the then Eco Party. The Labour Party missed a trick at the time when it failed to embrace those who went on to form the Green Party.