Iron Angle: Snowshoe on the other foot for city council coalition
Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold and it has certainly been icy enough lately to appreciate the irony of Birmingham City Council’s latest spot of trouble with snowy conditions.
Almost seven years ago, the city ground to a halt following freak conditions, after a blizzard and plummeting temperatures followed heavy rain reduced gritting efforts to a waste of time. It took seven or eight hours for some people to make it home after much of the city ground to a halt.
Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, then in opposition on the council, sought to embarrass Labour by holding a scrutiny inquiry into Snowgate, with various “experts” of mixed quality explaining just how the local authority managed to get it so wrong.
The clear, unfair, implication was that Labour couldn’t even be trusted to keep the streets free of snow and ice.
In the end, the inquiry came to the only reasonable conclusion, that the council’s road clearing operation was beaten not through incompetence but by a combination of unusual weather conditions and a mad dash for home by thousands of commuters.
Gritting lorries couldn’t get onto the main roads, which become blocked by broken down vehicles with many angry motorists simply abandoning their cars and continuing their journey on foot.
While it is hardly on the scale of WikiLeaks, one can only be amused by the release of emails from members of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition now running Birmingham, who are seething about the latest snow horror which resulted in a certain amount of chaos last weekend.
Wild horses would not drag from me the identity of the person responsible for intercepting the emails and passing them to the media, but it is safe to assume that the culprit is no friend of the Tories or the Lib Dems.
The tone of the emails suggests scant regard for the power of the natural world to wreak havoc.
It doesn’t matter how many times councillors are told that grit and salt doesn’t work when temperatures get below about -4C, they simply seem not to understand.
Take Lib Dem councillor Tanveer Choudhry, moaning because he just had to go Cape Hill and found his journey very tricky because the roads were covered with snow.
Oh, dear. Perhaps he could have arranged for his own personal crew of council roadmen to clear a path in front of his car.
On the other hand he could, of course, have followed the example of many people and simply postponed his trip.
Then there is bullish cabinet housing member John Lines, bemoaning the absence of snow ploughs, adding that this under-investment makes Birmingham look foolish.
Get a grip, John. How do you think it would have played out with your fellow Tory councillors if the cabinet member for transportation had suggested spending a few million pounds on buying snow ploughs to deal with events that do not happen with great regularity?
Roger Harmer, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrat group, suggests that motorists in Birmingham may be required to fit snow chains to their vehicles, just as they do in Switzerland and Austria. I look forward to Coun Harmer promoting that particular piece of legislation.
My theory is that most members of the council’s Tory-Lib Dem coalition really do believe the mantra that Birmingham is a major global city and, of course, the world’s leading cities are not brought to a halt by snow storms.
