George’s yellow snow

“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
 
As shoppers fled Oxford St yesterday evening, one might assume that, somewhere, George Osborne was looking at a weather forecast and sighing relievedly, his soul swooning at the gentle sound of snow against his window, falling faintly against the dead economic growth.
 
“What a shame,” he can say, “that the only thing that my excellent plan for growth is not prepared for is snow! Well, snow and weddings.” And the British people will understand, because we are told to fear snow, and the “treacherous conditions” they bring, particularly to roads. Which reminds me, someone tell Chris Huhne not to go driving in this weather. Or in other types of weather.
 
For a flat city with a largely underground transport system, I always find it wonderful to see how little snow can bring London grinding, shuddering and skidding to a halt. Foolish Nazi bombers! Had they known that they needed only to coat the capital with a light sprinkling of snow in order to break the spirit of the inhabitants and ruin its economic infrastructure, we might all be speaking German now. Especially if, in retaliation, we had responded in kind over Dresden. Dresden, I am told, deals with snow fairly stoically. Angela Merkel would not dare blame poor economic figures on snow. She would be laughed at more than a German would laugh at someone falling over in snow, which is something a lot, as they invented it, I believe.
 
But Osborne will blame snow. He has to. He knows that snow is a justifiable excuse for anything in the UK and that, as much as people may complain about ungritted roads and dire public transport, if they were left to their own devices, they would just stay inside. So, albeit unhappily, the Government are forgiven for their icy incompetence. In fact, people are left to their own devices and they do stay inside, hence the virgin snow on the pavements of the West End’s shopping district last night. A Ghost town. City of the Dead.
 
It’s sad to think we’ve allowed Osborne this excuse. It’s sad to think of the smile on his face as he tells we must eat the yellow snow. The yellow snow that used to be a snowman. The snowman we made together and that he and his friends kicked over and made yellow. Sad to think that, as we share together the pissy remains of our deceased mutual friend and look down on two frosty lumps of coal on the ground, George Osborne smiles because he knows we’ll swallow it. He can tell us it’s for our own good. He knows more snow will come and cover the traces of what went before. That there’ll be more snowmen made and dismantled. And that he can make us eat the yellow snow again. His will smile as he hears the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead yellow snowmen, as they are forcefed to their loving creators.