The culture of over-reacting

I’ve just seen on the weather that it’s due to snow on Wednesday and Thursday this week, so I guess we can expect the country to grind to a complete halt by the end of the week.

No matter how much technical wizardry is employed, everything still seems to take everybody by suprise. This week we have opened the Diamond Light Source Synchrotron, a machine which covers the area of five football pitches and can probe matter down to a molecular and atomic scale. We have so many satellites in space monitoring weather and the thickness of the ozone layer that the area immediately around the planet must look like the M25 on a Monday morning. Yet on Thursday morning we will still have a man called Malcolm on BBC News 24 in a hi-visibility jacket saying there was no way the gritters could have been mobilised quickly enough to make sure we get to work on time, and that the Highways Agency did everything it could.

Rolling news channels across the country will be littered with superlatives about the weather. The snow will be ‘phenominal’. Disruption will be ‘severe’. Some poor weather reporter wil be dispatched to stand at a busy rural road junction so that we can see ‘intrepid commuters’ driving in ‘treacherous’ conditions. If they’re really lucky some burly chap in a rusty Ford Escort will slide across the road behind them as he tries to wave to the camera.

When did everything become newsworthy? It snows in this country, it always has and, if the climate change lobbies act swiftly, it always will. In the 1970’s people awoke to find their entire front doors were under snow. People got a shovel, did some digging, put on some wellies and a bobble hat and went off to work. Today we’re told to stay at home with all the curtains shut if the weather drops below freezing.

I’d love to say it’s because the HSE people have forced their paranoa on the public by some osmosis-like process, but I think it’s the media’s fault. 24hrs is a long time to fill with news. That’s why we have two presenters, and they have to walk around the studio every now and again. This isn’t to make the news more approachable and groovy, but because we may not notice it’s the same script from fifteen minutes ago if he says now sat nonchalantly by the weather-map. They can’t do in-depth analysis of things or debate the news like a broadsheet in case someone says something which may bring to lfe thousands of living-dead lawyers looking to earn a few bob in libel cases, so we have to make everything look an American action movie.
One day the world saw the 9/11 unfold on their screens, and now news agencies around the world want to recreate that hunger for news even when there’s nothing to be seen.

So by the end of the week we will be suffering ‘horrendous’ weather conditions. Last year one inch of snow meant we were alerted that Kent was ‘cut-off’. It must have been horrible. A whole county is cut-off and the only thing that seems able to get there is a convoy of news reporters and camera crews. And they’re not bringing blankets flasks of oxtail soup and Kendle-mint cake, just their unique brand of hyperbole.

In reality we will get a bit of snow. It will mean many people leaving a little earlier and travelling a little slower. Doubtless some trains will be cancelled because a small child’s snowball landed on one of the rails somewhere on the rail network. Some children may get the day off school because Health and Safety boffins will say that they are safer sledging down a large hill on a small greased baking tray than trying to walk across the playground to their heated classroom. Adults will throw snowballs in their lunch hours without wearing the prescribed goggles or bio-hazard suit, and as a result someone may get a nasty bruise get to knock-off early. Some old people may get to chat with a neighbour or relative who goes out of their way to check that they are okay and fed.

There will be no end to the world. Civilisation will not be brought down by a little snow. Politicians will still lie, the BBC will still show Diagnosis Murder, and global warming will still fill up half the Guardian. All that will happen is that we’ll all feel a bit embarassed because although we can build supercomputers and robots that can fly off across the galaxy, a man called Malcolm can’t watch the weather and send out the gritting lorries when it mentions snow.