I genuinely don’t know whether the UK’s infrastructure has quietly regressed, whether people have collectively gone soft, or whether Health & Safety has simply been allowed to run wild across the country.

As I write this, I’m looking out at a light dusting of snow, barely enough to justify calling it “weather,” let alone a national incident. Yet this week we’ve had YELLOW WEATHER WARNINGS on Monday and Tuesday (to be fair, we did get around seven inches), followed by a day of drizzle on Wednesday that melted most of it away… just in time for Thursday’s AMBER WEATHER WARNING. Even today we’re still under another YELLOW warning, as if the sky itself is issuing polite reminders to panic.

And panic people have. The moment a snowflake lands, the supermarkets are stripped bare like locusts have passed through. Ever since the lockdowns of the early ’20s, it seems the slightest disruption sends everyone into full‑scale apocalypse mode. Bread? Gone. Milk? Gone. Common sense? Long gone.

Meanwhile, schools, libraries, public transport, all closed “due to the bad weather.” The schools nearest me, less than a mile away, shut their doors because “no one can get there.” This, despite the fact that the snow is barely an inch deep at its worst and the roads are completely clear.

It’s made me reflect on winters past. I remember years where the snow was several feet deep and nobody batted an eyelid. Growing up, a foot or two of snow was normal. We often had to dig our way out of the house, and the schools still opened as if nothing unusual had happened.

One year in junior school, the snow was well past my knees. I walked a mile through it, and yes, it really was uphill both ways, thanks to my house and the school being on opposite hills. I arrived frozen, clinging to a radiator for dear life, only for the headteacher to tell me my mother had phoned to say it was still snowing heavily and I should come home in case it got worse. Several feet of snow, and the school was open, staffed, and functioning.

Now? Four snowflakes fall in a car park and the entire education system collapses because “no teacher can make it in.”

So I find myself wondering: Have we, as a nation, genuinely become this fragile? Or have we simply surrendered to an army of clipboard‑wielding jobsworths who see danger in every snowflake and liability in every footstep?

Either way, something has changed, and not for the better!