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Buggerd if i know....wouldnt have botherd me if they hadnt done it....its winter and expect a bit of ice and slipping....Maybe you missed them when they was out gritting the paths round your way.

Whats that got to do with it?

Good point on community service though.

'Cos you're being a bah humbug instead of a sympathetic soul.

There is thousands of people out of work that could do with a bit extra cash this time of the year .. They could do the gritting like they did back in the 1940/50s ..There also had snow shoveller has well ..A bit of hard work wouldn't kill anybody ..I did it for nothing clearing the pitch before a Hull Game in the passed

.....HCC have no idea how to cope with snow and ice...in fact the whole of England has no idea.
Over here we start to prepare the roads in Oct....in fact the Town Councils Budget here in Cochrane (only 14000 people live here) is 10 times the one HCC set aside. The end of the day the HCC big boys would rather take their big bonuses then spend a little extra on sorting the roads and sidewalks......its such a shame.....but it will never change.
YES..it drops to -40degc and we ALL change our tyres to winter ones with studs in over here....but we prepare for the worst.....and if things are not done right by the people with the budgets...we tell them and they listen....

HCC and most other English councils have had to cope with snow & ice for the last two, out of the last ten years. Most Canandian authorities know they will have snow & ice for a certain number of days per year, each & every year.

It would be a bigger waste of resource if HCC budgeted for snow clearing and it was never used, money wasted in fact.

I agree to some extent Coddy but the frustration comes from the total lack of; interest/care and planning.
I went out around the city yesterday and there's still people walking on the roads (some with their dogs) because the paths are treacherous. This wasn't just 'my' area, this was Cottingham/Hessle/Anlaby.
They had the gritters out down Cottingham Rd at 5.o.clock last night and it was probably the warmest it's been for days.

Nice and clear down my street now....lovely

Road salt comes from Cheshire mines and is untreated mineral salt. The problem with salt is that it doesn't last unless it is stored correctly i.e. undercover, that's what those hulking great barns are that you see close to motorways. Unless it's stored undercover rainwater will leach it away into watersystems with the consequent pollution problems. A crust also forms (marle) that is virtually impenetrable, the big problem if kept in the open is, the salt only lasts for about one season before it becomes useless.

I remember christmas 1969 or 1970, when it started snowing on christmas night, by boxing night, the paths were knee deep in the stuff. Diesel taxis stopped working because their fuel froze, buses stopped running, the city was at a virtual standstill and do you know what? Nobody moaned about it, probably because many could still remember the winters of 1963 and 1947. Even the winter of 1979 didn't provoke as much moaning as now and all were far worse than anything currently experienced.

The problem we have today is a generation who expect everything to be available, instantly, all year round. The furore over airports and the Channel Tunnel closed because of snow & ice, just before christmas was laughable, again due to everyone expecting that the weather should just "go away" because they wanted to go on holiday.

Council vehicles are now operated at a close to 100% utilisation because they are audited and financially penalised if found to be inefficient. It costs £100s to keep a gritter, of course the councils could specify demountable bodies, so that they could be swapped and used for other duties but they'd then fall foul of accusations of wasting money. Most gritter trucks are 4x4 or 6x4 and some even 6x6 (I know because I have supplied many of them to numerous councils all over the UK), to use these on duties other than gritting would be viewed as overkill and the inefficiency argument again comes into play.

Seems like councils and public utilities cannot win: they'd be accused of waste if they had vehicles & salt available "just in case" and neglect if they don't.

Looking at most shopping trolleys on christmas eve, it's a wonder anyone would NEED to venture out until Lent.