Zeusblog

Julia and I are getting more and more annoyed with the news recently. It seems that every item has a ‘this has cost the economy blah blah million pounds’ angle. So the recent snow cost the British Economy £XXX million and will apparently be responsible for 6,000 small businesses going under. Then the snow melted and the damage to potholes will cost £250 million in London alone.

What a load of old nonsense. Who works these figures out? And how do they work them out?

I’ll tell you – lazy journalists work them out by sticking their finger in the air and thinking of a big number. And lazy viewers and newspaper readers don’t think things through and then get outraged by the huge sums bandied about. And Daily Mail readers get even more outraged by the effect it has on house prices too.

The snow didn’t cost whatever they said it did, because we’ll all work a bit harder to catch up – so it actually improves productivity. In fact, if you could put a value on the grins on everyone’s faces when they took a day off and went sledging, the recession would be over. 

And as for the cost of London potholes – well that would assume that the councils had any intention of filling them in in the first place. (That was a pleasing sentence with two ‘in’s together – it’s always fun to goad the spellcheck isn’t it?) And quite how lobbing in a bucketful of tarmac which will wear away in a month or so adds up to £1 million, let alone £250 million, is beyond us.

I could go on and on but now I’m getting worried about the cost to the economy of me writing this and you reading it – it could run into billions and affect our house prices too – so I’ll stop now.

Chalky

One of the best things about living in Britain is the weather. If we lived in Los Angeles we’d have 80 degrees sunshine for most of the year and we’d take no notice of the weather. A little bit of sunshine wouldn’t even be a talking point, let alone the cue for the whole country to start wearing inappropriate vests and shorts, and for every office worker in London to head for Soho Square and strip off to sunbathe.

Likewise, if we lived in mainland Europe or Scandinavia, one snowfall wouldn’t bring the country to a shuddering standstill. That’s what’s happened this morning. My trusty Brompton is no match for 6 inches of snow, the tube is mostly suspended, all buses have been removed from service and trying to drive is just asking for trouble. I live at the bottom of a hill and I remember last time it snowed watching a particularly stupid woman sliding all over the place as her wheels were whizzing round at about 50 mph while the car slid sideways. She gave up and we nearly crashed our car laughing when she gave up, climbed out, and stood – in her stilettos! – puzzled as to why her four wheel drive couldn’t get her up the hill. We sailed by in our front wheel drive car that we weren’t revving the nuts off.

View from my home office window

Which is a roundabout way of saying that our W1 office won’t be open today, and we’ll be working from our Pinner and Finchley branches i.e. from home. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, we will be able to pick up and respond to email, and the office phone will put you through to one of our mobiles. So if you’re working today, you’ll still be able to reach us, and if you can get away with it, have fun sledging!

Finchley Wonderland

Chalky