Abandoned cars causing havoc in Livingston

Now that we've reached the balmy heights of 5 degrees, I finally got brave and ventured out to drive Anna to school this morning.

Regular readers will know how utterly rubbish I am as far as snow and ice are concerned and this morning's outing was the first time I'd been out in 2 weeks, apart from a brief trip out on Sunday when I pathetically teetered to the car, making more fuss than Gillian McKeith on I'm a Celebrity and then never got out of it until we were home again.

I still hold by my criticism of West Lothian Council's decision to open the schools on Wednesday with a caveat that it was up to parents to assess the risks and decide if it was safe.  If that's always the case, why emphasise it? Clearly the conditions are severe enough to warrant putting that out in the statement.  Anna's had the last two days off and I'm comfortable with that decision as I just couldn't get out of the street.

However, I felt that there was no justification to keeping her at home today because I could see more brown than white on the road. I had one little slide on my street, but that was ok. The biggest problem I found, though, was, like Sunday, having to negotiate abandoned cars. I have a little bit of sympathy with those from the estates round the school where parking is at a premium anyway, and where they have a fair proportion of elderly residents. There were huge mounds of snow everywhere, cutting the space available to park by at least half. I'm not sure how you quite get round that. So, I kind of get why there were so many cars on the main road. That doesn't make them any less of a hazard, though, and someone needs to find a solution to it.

On the main road near my house, I see absolutely no excuse for people parking on the road. Every house has its own drive and the flats have a car park which, if all the mainly young residents cleared together, it would take a lot less time. What really incensed me was to see parked cars on the roundabout. This is a major intersection of 4 main roads and a housing estate and I was shocked that nothing had been done about the cars which had been left in dangerous positions.

With the thaw set to be halted by colder weather and more snow next week, some action is needed to deal with this.