Quintin Jardine's blog

I’ve been absent without leave for a while.  Blame it on the snow; I’ve been pretty much village-bound for the last ten days, and I’m beginning to take it personally. I’ve lived in Gullane for six months short of forty years, and I’ve never known a stretch of weather like this. Yet it isn’t the worst I’ve experienced, not even this year; it was worse in March in Spain, the day that a metre of snow fell in four hours, taking out the power supply in the process.

Still, it’s bad enough. It’s around freezing point outside, for all that the sun is shining through the icicles. I’ve just seen the faintest ripple of movement in a branch. Could that be the first sign of a breeze that will bring the promised thaw? Maybe, let’s hope so; but even if it is, things aren’t going to get back to normal in a hurry. The conditions have been so widespread that the local highways department has been able to do no more than clear the main roads. The pavements are lethal, but you’d better not fall over and break anything, for you’ll have to wait a while for an ambulance. It’s easy to feel neglected. I’ve succumbed myself once or twice. But reasonable consideration makes me acknowledge that councils can only make reasonable provision for potential adverse weather and that every so often, be it once in a lifetime, things are going to happen that will overwhelm us for a while. Shit happens.

However bad things get though, they won’t stop politicians behaving like politicians. I read today that opposition members in  the Scottish Parliament are attacking the Transport Minister’s response to the roads situation. What do they expect the guy to do? Overfly the M8 breathing  fire on the ice? Do a Boromir and clear snowdrifts with his arms? Do these clowns believe that Santa really does visit every child in the land in the early hours of December 25? (Not that I’m saying he doesn’t, kids.) Or is it simply that they are so venal and opportunistic that they will use what has been, let’s face it, a public disaster, to serve their own narrow, selfish interests?