Fuck, it's cold.

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Just saying, like.

Is the UK the rich country with the worst insulation? If so, as I suspect, WHY? Obviously temperatures in eg the States and Canada are way lower than this, but they...have insulation, generally, within certain income brackets. In the UK, double glazing is about the limit of our insulating expertise, and my house and workplace don't have that.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Lots of houses in the UK are quite old (I mean at least a century, much older than most houses in America) which generally means you're not even ALLOWED double-glazing. Because you wouldn't want to ruin the architectural charms of, say, a late-Victorian terraced house, of which only a precious few million are left in London... :slanted:
 

zhao

there are no accidents
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value=""></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
 

craner

Beast of Burden
It keeps snowing. It's totally great. I've had redwings and fieldfares and long-tailed tits in my garden for days.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I got snid on quite heavily at about 2am on Friday walking with a couple of mates from one party to another in Hackney. It was quite magical. :)
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I go crazy during winter time up here, waiting for buses everyday freezing me tits off. I'm a total poof when it comes to tolerating low temperatures, i think I need to get some more meat on my bones.
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
on a less structural scale British councils have been caught out a bit wrt the salt needed to help clear roads, having used a lot more than they would expect to in some areas already.

we're just not used to it, is the simple (and i'm sure unsatisfactory) answer, a lot of people don't see the need, i guess.

i know plenty of British pensioners die from pneumonia each winter, but one can only imagine what would happen in, say, northern Finland or the Yukon if they didn't insulate. (i'm assuming they do and baboon's initial guess is correct. we need Vim on some international comparison home insulation graphs by country rate-tip!)

P.S.
i remember a small-town Michigan-based friend mischievously observing of the recent blizzard in DC (when the capital got a couple of feet dumped on it in no time at all) that he had shovelled his driveway/yard etc 9 times before Thanksgiving thus far, and whilst he felt sorry, they should suck it up.

someone in DC said to him the context of DC not getting the bad weather as much as, say, the inland midwest, meant they assumed gritters etc were a much more common feature of Michigan life and he should therefore have more concern, to which came the retort that in five years of living in MI, the local roads had never been sorted out by the council. (and that area of the midwest is on the lake effect snow tip, which doesn't skimp on its powder, i can tell you.)
 

sufi

lala
i know plenty of British pensioners die from pneumonia each winter...

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/807821-pensioners-burn-books-for-warmth
Workers at one charity shop in Swansea, in south Wales, described how the most vulnerable shoppers were seeking out thick books such as encyclopaedias for a few pence because they were cheaper than coal.

One assistant said: ‘Book burning seems terribly wrong but we have to get rid of unsold stock for pennies and some of the pensioners say the books make ideal slow-burning fuel for fires and stoves.

A lot of them buy up large hardback volumes so they can stick them in the fire to last all night.’

A 500g book can sell for as little as 5p, while a 20kg bag of coal costs £5.
 

sufi

lala
altho that said the media are making a terrible fuss about the weather this year, daily predictions of transport chaos and frozen apocalypse on bbc news which then disappointingly don't come true, total hysteria :)
 

mms

sometimes
my friend says it's -25 in norway where she lives.

my kittens are really really confused by the snow. they go to all the windows, look out and look at each other really bugged out.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
my kittens are really really confused by the snow. they go to all the windows, look out and look at each other really bugged out.

Bring in a bit of snow in a bowl for them - that'll fox 'em.

Film reaction -> upload -> instant youtube superstar -> ...profit!
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.

too cute.


but this is even better, made me smile for a whole minute. An achievement indeed!
 
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padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I was out in California for a week and people were complaining about a "cold snap" that gone down to the high 30s (Fahrenheit). I had to laugh; in Chicago we call that April. homeless people freezing to death in the winter here is not an uncommon occurrence. I also found myself much amused at seeing people walking around in scarves and jackets on balmy 60 (~15 Celsius) degree days when I was in a T-shirt & shorts; that's pretty much sunbathing weather. I imagine most of the UK being like California where people just have no conception of how to deal with legitimate cold.

it's like the Norwegians say; there is no such thing as cold weather, only insufficient clothing (& shelter, I guess).
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
and whilst he felt sorry, they should suck it up.

I was in a "therapeutic boarding school" in Maine during the Great Ice Storm of '98, which left something like 4 million people in Quebec and Maine without power for a month in the dead of winter and brought down a million trees. we're talking National Guard mobilization level emergency. we got power back after about two and a half weeks when the director of the school pulled some kind of shady deal to get three gas generators (there was all kinds of black market craziness going on I'm sure, people were desperate). it was a surreal time; we'd get up at dawn and huddle around all day in our parkas and thermals under the watchful eyes of the staff, then go to sleep at 4:30 when it got dark. I remember the sound of trees cracking under the weight of ice, like gunshots. even after we got power we had to stay inside because there were downed power lines everywhere. no one could shower or shave, no hot food, plus we were a bunch of surly teenagers stuck in this repressive shithole. there was some serious cabin fever going on by the time we were finally able to go outside again.

regular winter storms haven't really bothered me ever since.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
I know I shouldn't have laughed Padraig but that nearly made me fall off my chair, it's the best description of Hell I think I've ever read. That school sounds fucking hideous.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Holy crap, you're not wrong mistersloane!

...residential behavior modification program...

clockwork_orange.jpg


In fact the whole thing, snowstorms and all, sounds vaguely like an episode of South Park. Respect, once again, to Padraig.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I know I shouldn't have laughed

that's OK that's the way I tend to look back on it myself. I was really angry for a while after I got out but eventually I was like, what's the point? plus so much of it was hilarious in a surreal way; I'd liken it to a cross between a neverending journey to all the bad stereotypes of psychotherapy and a Stalinist hall of distorting mirrors (minus the bread queues). there was also an intense and very Catholic fixation on purging oneself of "guilt". everyone was indoctrinated, filled up with Animal Farm-style platitudes and required to inform on each other. we were split into different "crews", the most prestigious of which was essentially the secret police. it was also kind of a crash course for insertion into capitalist society; a rigid hierarchy with manual laborers at the bottom, then foremen and middle management, with the highest ranking students as senior VPs and the staff as I guess, a totalitarian corporate board.

there's loads of these "therapeutic" schools in the U.S., mostly in New England or out West. they're not very well-regulated and a lot of them are really dodgy. thankfully at the one I went to there was no sexual or serious physical abuse of students (at least that I was aware of), just brainwashing and well-intentioned cruelty. and, ironically, I have to credit them for doing more than any Crass record ever could have to spark my youthful rebellious streak.

did anyone go (semi) postal?

not during the Ice Storm, but yeah. it was called "acting out". if some kid got physical staff & all the higher-ranking students would run over & tackle him. then the kid would be held down and put in restraints and put into "the corner", which was literally sitting with your nose pressed against the corner of a room. it happened maybe 7 or 8 times in the 2+ years I was there.

what did happen during the storm - it was coed but there were all these ironclad rules about boys & girls (or boys & boys etc, it was equal opportunity celibacy) not being able to touch each other (kids were always getting into trouble for "accidentally" brushing into each other) or flirt, let alone make out or anything. so when the power was out there were all these dimly lit corners with horny, unwashed teenagers trying to feel each other up on the sly through endless layers of clothing. I recall the staff talking about a "general accounting" after the storm was over for that & various other offenses but I think the crimes, so to speak, had been so widespread that they would've looked ridiculous trying to publish literally everyone.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
oh I should also mention - the school was based on this other program, Syanon, on which Philip K. Dick based the New-Path rehab clinics from A Scanner Darkly. so, actually not too far removed from paranoid dystopian science fiction.
 
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