Road Closed

I live at the bottom of the Snake Pass in Glossop. Snake Pass is one of those roads you will have heard about on the news, mainly because it’s blocked on a regular basis. If there a smattering of snow anywhere in the UK the you can pretty much guess that on top of the Snake – it’s going to be much worse.

So, the road regularly gets closed. The signs are illuminated, the cones go out and the bright red ‘Road Closed’ sign gets dragged across the highway.

The road is shut.

But dear reader…is it actually impassable?

Well…without wanting to cause uproar or any sort of dissent. The truth is…it’s very rarely impassable.

Quite often in fact it says ‘closed’ at the Sheffield end – whilst remaining open from the Glossop side. For those of you that are not familiar with the road, there are no turn offs, no alternates and nowhere to go other than Glossop to Sheffield or Sheffield to Glossop. Ok you can turn off to Hathersage but only after 20 odd miles of no turning.

To get to my point. It’s not often impassable unless the weather really gets foul, and in the current global warming situation it just doesn’t happen.

I have driven over this road so many times when it’s said ‘closed’ that I don’t even stop to think or worry any more. I just drive past the sign and just take note that it might just be a bit slippery. I guess I do have a four-wheel drive car with snow tyres. But I’m pretty sure that the road is still passable by most people with a bit of care.

Yet… ‘they’… keep saying road closed. “

I have two schools of thought;

1. People are such poor drivers that the police take the option of closing the road to stop idiots getting stuck in what normal drivers would just consider ‘tricky’ conditions.
2. We’ve become a nation run by the health and safety committee.

I’m definitely leaning towards the latter thought …having had a weekend of being told about terrible life-threatening weather, that the world was going to end, the apocalypse is at hand etc etc.

I’m pretty damn sure twenty years ago they would have simply said – ‘it may be windy over the next few days, take your coat with you.’

Having been told that it was ‘dangerous’ to go out, and only travel if ‘absolutely necessary’ – I found myself travelling to a funeral in Kent (circa 290 miles each way). It was windy and it was a bit tricky at times…but…in no way was it as bad as the weather forecast had suggested.

What about Covid?

Was it really as bad as ‘they’ had us believe?

If…it WAS… as bad as they had us believe. How on earth can the government now say – ‘no restrictions’ …just get on with ‘living with Covid’. It doesn’t make any sense.

Much of the stuff I read about electric cars, air pollution, stop burning coal, stop drilling for oil ….etc etc …I am beginning to see a lot of exaggeration, scaremongering and just total bullshit in the press.

We are being guided and manipulated to conform like sheep.

I’m not quite sure what the ‘end game is’ but somebody somewhere is making money out of all this bollox.

The message appears to be… ‘stay in, do what we say, don’t argue, don’t think tooooo much about what we’re asking you to do…just do it’.

And I’ve got to be honest.

I don’t like being told what to do.

 

Mike C