Chaos - but not here

Last night Chaos broke out in the House of Commons and got a lot worse today. Things are heating up there and not just from global warming.

Sky News discover today that May's government months ago awarded nine "brexit" contracts each of £5-10m  to six large UK multinational management consultants - eg Price Waterhouse, Ernst & Young, Deloitte and £25m to the three American companies Bain, McKinsey and Boston Consulting.

The contracts were kept secret and to a large extent still are in so far as the scope of work is not known. The House of Commons select committee on Public Spending had no idea about these contracts.

The UK government continues its path of corruption, bribery secrecy, lies, deception .............. Zimbabwe just moved a place up the ladder in the rankings of world governments.

Sadly the British disease has reached Bavaria. TV news is as dead as a Dodo here - always has been. Attempts to start 24-hour TV news stations have all failed. But today the news desks are making a very big deal about the snow and like our Bavarian TV station (equivalent to BBC Scotland) broadcast a Special Extra 30 minute news bit entitled:

"Snowed in - the winter has the South in its grips" and the presenter starts with the words "Snow Chaos in the Alps"

Now you need to know the main German national station (BBC1 like) has its News at 20:00 (8:00 pm)  which last a full 15 minutes including sections on weather and the day's action on the stock market. They do have a really long in-depth News sometime after 22:00 which stretches it out to 30 minutes and due to lack of any real stuff will also usually have a long section on some obscure cultural/art/film "happening".

30 minutes just on snow is quite something. The presenter soon tries to get really stuck in and after the first sentence blows her attempt at getting a Fox or Sky News job .... "It's snowing further, the position is getting precarious, almost cut off villages ...."

Note the ALMOST. Telling the truth is not a good thing if you want a job in the Anglo-American Super Networks. Need to lie.

The report goes on to show the almost cut off village which is having a wail of a time and thoroughly enjoying the attention. Jachenau a parish of around 870, less than 100km from Munich and well within commuting distance has one road that goes through it. On one side, the road goes through thick forest where trees have fallen and has been closed due to the risk. In the other direction it is open but recommended only for emergency services and of course TV crews, who loved the local fire brigade delivering a truck full of food to the village shop just in case there is a problem in the next few days, as it is due to keep on snowing.

What the village storekeeper said was great: the snow has slowed down the entire village and at last everyone has time to talk to one another!

Here it didn't snow much yesterday even though at midday it looked serious for 5 minutes. However, today it snowed most of the time. Very fine snow almost white rain that did little to add to the height as it simply packed down the stuff already lying.

Late afternoon I had no choice but to do a session with the blower. It wasn't more than about 5cm but some parts I hadn't been able to clear properly on Monday and it is due to continue snowing into next week. If you don't keep on top of it, eventually it gets too much. Even at the moment, Angie's "normal" car would have been locked in simply because it would have bottomed. So it isn't just a case of clearing two tracks. Also, need turning spaces.

From the road, it is 102m /112yds to our front door, 135m/150yds to the garage and 160m/175yds to the horse stable entrance. This all needs to be cleared to at least 2m width. I think that means if we have 10cm of snow, 32,000 litres of snow has to be moved. Add to that turning space and a walking path from the back door to chickens, garage and horse stables. That's a lot of snow to move for one old pensioner.

It was dark by the time I finished after 105 minutes and according to my walking App, 1.5km. Not sure how accurate it is given the GPS can't have worked that well tucked away as it was still snowing.

Blip collage: the top line is the entire route starting on the left at the road, then around the bend towards the house, garage (far point in centre photo) and finishing at the stables on the right.

On the bottom row, you can see an element of "Painting the Forth Bridge", the falling snow having covered the first run. In the centre, the amount of packed snow, I guess about 20-25cm and finally on the right the turning area which I had packed down by driving the jeep over it a few times the other day as the snow blower hadn't coped. Today managed to get much of it off.

So dear UK friends, don't believe everything you see on TV. These poor "journalists" need to further their careers. I would, however, say that if you look at the video you will see there are areas where the snow is man high on the roofs and the sight of people clearing it is frightening.

A nice story at 15:00 into the video of Austrian train workers during a control journey spotted a wild mountain goat trapped in the snow, stopped and dug it out.