My late father had a thing about moaning. More of an aversion to it, actually. In particular, the good people of Britain were directly in his firing line. I moaned about things far too much, his own father, dear Norwegian migrant Alfred Johansen, moaned about things, too. It was a British (and presumably, Norwegian) ‘thing’ which quite possibly influenced his decision to emigrate to Canada in the 1960s. My own moaning , in particular, he regularly picked up on during his frequent visits to his homeland. There were two things to bear in mind. First, it changed the way I thought about life forever, and particularly in his presence, and second he was right.
I did moan, complain, call it what you will, about nearly everything, not least my own miserable life. I didn’t know any different. My dad, Anthony Johansen, may have complained about various things, but he was driven to make his life better. He definitely succeeded in that. The working class boy, from a home with an outside toilet and no bathroom, ended up working in the private office of the Canadian prime minister, Pierre Trudeau. I guess I just carried on moaning and complaining.
Ever since then – and then would have been well over 50 years ago – I have tried and generally failed at being a doomster and gloomster. But having said that, I have done better, or less badly than some. The advent of the internet, a source of wonder still to me, has certainly played a role in increasing the whingeing. Take last night at Bristol Airport.
Bristol Airport, or Adge Cutler International as it should be known, just like Liverpool has John Lennon airport, suffered a couple of hours heavy snowfall last night, which caused the airport to be closed to incoming and outgoing flights for a few hours and as a result there were a handful of diversions to other airports. It must have been a pain for delayed and re-routed passengers, but frankly it’s very small beer.
The airport sits on an elevation of 190 metres and is prone to localised weather incidents, sometimes negative but sometimes positive. Last night it was negative when the ground staff working flat out were simply unable to fully clear the runway and apron due to the levels of falling snow, but a few years ago I remember landing at Bristol with no issues when the city below was almost gridlocked due to ice and snow. When the snow stopped, the runway was quickly cleared and operations restarted. There are a few residual delays today, mainly as a result of planes being in the wrong place, but the word being used by Bristol Live – CHAOS! – is wide of the mark. But if Bristol Live was losing its shit, you should have seen some of the comments by members of the public on the BBC replies page and on social media. Here are a few:
- Just highlights how useless this airport is ….
- Slush shuts Bristol airport
- Ridiculous! I flew into Minneapolis and you couldn’t see the ground outside as everything was white. Only knew we were going in to land as you heard the landing gear come out… the UK is embarrassing! And I know Bristol airport is awfully placed and struggles with weather conditions…
- Well we’re just not equipped to deal with it here are we
- Is that the same international airport that can handle anything….
And so on and so on. I can’t be bothered to even address all of these comments because, well, because, although if Bristol Airport is so useless, then how come 10 million people used it last year and expansion plans are well underway?
In a normal year, despite its location, there are very few occasions when the planes can’t land or take off. Snowstorms are rare, storms and strong winds more common, but generally you’ll be very unlucky to suffer a problem. Poor visibility, as described by the person who landed in Minneapolis, affects a small number of planes at Bristol. Most are equipped to carry out ‘automatic’ landings when visibility is poor. My son enjoyed one such landing in thick fog last autumn and it was faultless. People just like to have a moan.
We are used to the “half an inch of snow and the country grinds to a halt” argument and sometimes there is merit in it. But look at things from another perspective. For example, what if our local councils invested in expensive snow-clearing equipment, which sat in a garage for years on end because in the average year it wasn’t needed, what would the whingers be saying about the extra taxes they were forking out, effectively for nothing in a normal year? I think you know the answer. “Typical council, wasting our money.”
It’s winter, FFS. It’s cold, it’s wet, it’s windy and sometimes things grind to a halt. Winter weather causes disruption, not just here but everywhere around the world. Some countries do much better than we do, but then they usually get more extremes than we do. Why not just accept it and live with it?
Judging from some of the batshit comments about the issues at Bristol Airport last night, my dad was definitely right about our ability to moan. It’s also a sad reflection on the strange priorities of sections of the media and those that consume them. We know locally that our dumbed-down local media, such as it is, focuses mainly on middle class problems, like flight delays, celebrity bollocks and general clickbait, to raise people’s hackles and not tiresome, gloomy news about homelessness, food poverty and the like. And what about those hard working staff who spent last evening clearing airport runways and streets, to make things safe for us all? Not a word. Well, who likes a good news story, anyway?
Britain may not be world class at many things anymore, but when it comes to moaning and complaining, we’re up there with the best – or is it worst? – of them. And when it comes to moaning about the moaners, I’m right up there with them.
