The Guardian are providing really good coverage of weather- (and therefore winter-) related matters this year. The latest is a brief note on why the UK can’t cope with cold.
Here’s an interesting quote:
Too many people go outdoors in the cold without a thick hat, coat, gloves or boots. Even standing in queues waiting for buses and trains, the average Briton stands stock still instead of moving around. Homes are often poorly insulated and badly heated. In a survey of 14 European countries, Britain had one of the worst rates of cold-related deaths. Even the Netherlands, which has a similar climate to England, has around half our winter death rate. The difference is that these countries have better insulated homes, and people dress in much warmer clothes.
Now, you can lump Ireland in there. We’re possibly even worse, to be honest. I commute at pretty regular times, so I see a good few of the same people on the trains. Monday morning of this week, I saw a woman getting off the train in the city, and emerging onto the footpath, shivering. She was shivering because she was wearing a knee-length skirt and a light jacket, had no hat, scarf or gloves, and further, no tights above what looked like slippers. Fair enough, maybe she wasn’t expecting that kind of weather – I’ve some sympathy for that. However, when I saw her on Tuesday morning again, with different clothes in the same general shape, shivering again in temperatures around 3°C with some wind chill, I lost the sympathy.
But that’s an extreme. You do see plenty of people who have decent coats and footwear, for instance. But even then, they’re often lacking a scarf or gloves, and it seems like about three-quarters of the population just won’t wear a hat of any kind, until there’s actually snow on the ground. This boggles me. You can get a woolly hat, a fleece scarf and some cheap gloves for under ten euro, and it’ll make a vast amount of difference. There’s nothing undignified about it!
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on Thursday, December 8th, 2011 at 3:01 pm and is filed under Commentary, Links.
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Coping With Cold
The Guardian are providing really good coverage of weather- (and therefore winter-) related matters this year. The latest is a brief note on why the UK can’t cope with cold.
Here’s an interesting quote:
Now, you can lump Ireland in there. We’re possibly even worse, to be honest. I commute at pretty regular times, so I see a good few of the same people on the trains. Monday morning of this week, I saw a woman getting off the train in the city, and emerging onto the footpath, shivering. She was shivering because she was wearing a knee-length skirt and a light jacket, had no hat, scarf or gloves, and further, no tights above what looked like slippers. Fair enough, maybe she wasn’t expecting that kind of weather – I’ve some sympathy for that. However, when I saw her on Tuesday morning again, with different clothes in the same general shape, shivering again in temperatures around 3°C with some wind chill, I lost the sympathy.
But that’s an extreme. You do see plenty of people who have decent coats and footwear, for instance. But even then, they’re often lacking a scarf or gloves, and it seems like about three-quarters of the population just won’t wear a hat of any kind, until there’s actually snow on the ground. This boggles me. You can get a woolly hat, a fleece scarf and some cheap gloves for under ten euro, and it’ll make a vast amount of difference. There’s nothing undignified about it!
This entry was posted on Thursday, December 8th, 2011 at 3:01 pm and is filed under Commentary, Links. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.