I found this to be an interesting insight into the end result of nanny-state government: A nation incapable of thinking or planning for themselves. The most interesting bit is the last few paragraphs.
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Word to the wise: Liz Jones says the chaos caused by the snow storms means its time people took control of their own lives and stopped relying on other people to bail us out

Sitting in the snow on my Prada tote... one more Briton bleating for help

I woke on Friday morning to discover I was snowed in. A blanket a foot deep had fallen overnight and it continued to fall all day.

Here on Exmoor, the roads were not just impassable, you could no longer see where they were.

We knew the snow was coming on Thursday night, and so I put thick rugs on the horses.

By 10pm the snow was already too deep to push a wheelbarrow through, so I carried hay to the fields on my back, bale by tortuous bale.

At 2am I went out with a torch and my sheep dog to break the ice on the water in the butts.

I had shut the ten-month-old Shetland lambs in the hay barn overnight - they are so small, they might have disappeared - and left bananas, apples and organic granola on plates in the tack room for the rats and mice: even they are finding life tough.

A vixen who patrols my garden is being treated to dog food.

I have left heaps more food by the opening to the badgers’ den in the woods; I know some of them, lulled by decades of mild winters, have already had babies, and are suffering dreadfully.

The chickens are shut in, which they object to noisily.

I filled the numerous bird feeders dotted around my land to the brim, and had woodpeckers, linnets, tree creepers, nuthatches, wrens and numerous tits hanging upside down outside my windows, an impromptu Cirque du Soleil.

A barn owl was unable to go to bed in the morning; she was still up, frantically calling, looking for food.

Even the robins, fiercely territorial birds, downed arms for the day in order to get to the fat balls.

My nearest neighbour, a farmer, stopped by on his tractor; as well as taking feed to animals (sheep, cattle, ponies and goats) on the most remote parts of the moor, he had been knocking on doors of the most remote houses, seeing if everyone was OK.

I live only a few miles from the A38 in south Devon, where more than 200 people were stranded on Thursday night.

Most drivers had not thought to take a survival kit with them: a blanket, torch, wellies, a flask of coffee and a well-charged mobile.

But I can’t talk.

On Monday morning, when the first flakes had started to fall here, I ignored all the warnings and set off for London.

It’ll be fine, I’d thought stupidly.

I had virtually no control over my car, and after trying to inch my way down a hill (very difficult in an automatic BMW, where the only control you have is to touch your brakes), I was forced to stop at a crazy angle.

Three cars lined up behind me, and a crowd of more durable folk clustered round my window.

‘You are going to have to keep going,’ they told me. ‘We can’t go past you because we might crash into you.’

‘But why do I have to go first?’ I wailed. ‘It’s not fair.’

I had no choice but to keep going, sweat pouring from my forehead with fear, until I slid into the turning to a field.

I had to abandon my car, and tramp by the side of the road (I hadn’t even thought to put on gloves or a hat), until at last a passing 4x4 took pity on my form, slumped by the side of the road, seated on my giant Prada tote, and gave me a lift back to the bottom of my lane.

There has been lots of hot air in the past few days about how pathetic we Brits have been.

But this freak snowstorm has been a valuable lesson.

We have all grown up believing that everything will be OK. That someone, somewhere (the Government, the council, the NHS, our bosses, and on and on and on, nameless, faceless people usually) will look after us.

They will fix things when we haven’t bothered to exercise or watch what we eat and drink and smoke, haven’t bothered to save, or stock up on candles and food or grit and logs and even water (all my pipes have now frozen).

We have all become childlike, lulled into a false sense of security by endless signs telling us not to drink and drive, to remember not to give alcohol to children, to eat that all-important five a day.

The latest wheeze is that we will be provided with memory clinics, costing millions of pounds, to keep our minds active.

Whatever happened to reading books, thinking for ourselves, rather than being sent into a stupor, inactive, passive, in front of a TV?

We have spent the past few decades bleating like sheep that someone, somewhere should do something about the latest crisis, whatever it might be.

It’s time we all became capable adults and took control of our own lives, our own safety, our own future.

In the Britain of 2009, no one in officialdom can hear you scream.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1138686/LIZ-JONES-Sitting-snow...