By Daniel Hordon
We all enjoy the odd day off work because of the snow, but the damage to the economy by business taking a day off isn’t worth it.
Over the last week Britain has been hit by the so-called ‘Beast from the East’, bringing heavy snowfall and causing the country to grind to a halt. While children may enjoy being off school and unhappy workers may enjoy having a day off work, the economic impact of this is massive. If we want to remain competitive in global trade amid climate change bringing more extreme weather patterns, we need to adapt and invest in infrastructure because taking a day off whenever the weather’s bad just doesn’t cut it.
Economists have predicted that the snowfall could cause a 0.2% drop in the UK’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in the first quarter. A chief economist for the EY ITEM Club, Howard Archer, this week said: “It is possible that the severe weather could lead to GDP growth being reduced by 0.1 percentage point in Q1 2018 and possibly 0.2 percentage points if the severe weather persists,” and blamed the decrease in growth on the inability of staff to get to work, reduced footfall in the shopping & leisure industries and difficulties in supply chains operating as usual.
We can not continue to allow business and the country to grind to a halt because of bad weather, something which other countries deal with in a much better way. No, we aren’t in Scandinavia and no, we aren’t going to be as well prepared for snow as the likes of Norway and Sweden but we need to be better prepared than simply preparing to close our schools.
The only way to counter the impact of severe weather is by investing in appropriate infrastructure to allow the country to run as normal. To give some context to the magnitude of a 0.2% drop in GDP (and please mind my shockingly rough figures and non-economic model), based on UK GDP in 2016 which stood at 2.619 trillion USD, a 0.2% drop would equate to a drop of over 5.2 billion USD in our GDP (the monetary value of goods produced in a given time period). This drop can be put down to the fact that 3 elements of the basic GDP equation relate to household spending, imports and exports - all of which are damaged by heavy snowfall bringing the country to a halt. The thought that we continue to do nothing to become better prepared for severe snowfall despite the quite shocking impact to GDP is ridiculous. So what can we do?
We need to end this ‘snowflake’ way of dealing with the white powder from the sky - and yes I do use the term ‘snowflake’ only for the ironic effect. We need proper government investment in infrastructure to deal with the snow whether that be more gritters or snow ploughs. Of course the suggestion that government borrowing is always bad would put the majority off the case for borrowing to invest in infrastructure which would be used for such a small time period each year, however this suggestion is ill-based and wrong. Government borrowing to invest in infrastructure projects would, in this case, assist economic growth by maintaining trading despite the bad weather. This seems a perfectly reasonable, realpolitik consideration for the executive. Post-Brexit, trading, imports and exports out of the EU will be even more important to our economy than at present leading to an increased reliance on air freight. If we don’t get our act together in time, essential trade could be restricted even further and mean for even more economic damage caused by this weather.
It is important that we act now, not only to ensure that our economy continues to grow amid difficult international circumstances but to ensure that we are braced for the inevitably harsher winters caused by climate change. While we still have a relatively normal climate we need to adapt and become prepared for the changes which will be brought about by climate change and that applies to all aspects of life, not just dealing with snow drifts.
There is one more thing which I feel I need to cover in an article with the word ‘snowflake’ as the second in its headline - why it is that I use that word. I don’t think any of us could come to an agreement on the exact definition of a ‘snowflake’ in the political sense however the Collins English Dictionary has given it a go, defining a ‘snowflake’ as: “the young adults of the 2010s, viewed as being less resilient and more prone to taking offence than previous generations”. It is the “less resilient” part of the definition which I feel is most appropriate when talking about our approach to heavy snow. We have lost all determination to get on through, to get to work, to get the kids to school, to get on with life as normal when it snows. Without wanting to sound like a devote patriot, what’s happened to our true British grit? To use an overly typical scenario - would we have won the war with this sort of attitude? Probably not and although the issue of how we deal with the snow is nowhere near the importance of defeating the Nazis was in the 1940s, I feel like it is a mind-awakening scenario to discuss.
Now it’s important to understand that I am not blaming individuals for giving in on their way to work, businesses for deciding it isn’t profitable to open for trading or schools for deciding that it would be safer to close (although that does hark back to the alternative definition of being a snowflake and being over protective). I am, however, blaming central and local government for failing to make it easy enough for us to get on with life as normal. The majority of the reasons I listed at the start of this paragraph are caused by an inability to get around and get to work or school.
You would expect that something would have changed with the ‘Beast from the East’ considering we knew about it for at least a week before the severe weather began so we should have been better prepared. However, this is far from the case; every year when there is even the smallest amount of snowfall our airports and infrastructure grind to a halt and we need to find some way of ensuring that happens less frequently.
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