DID YOU notice anything different when you woke up on Monday morning? According to the radio, there was a cataclysmic national disaster overnight. The country was brought to a standstill and the chances are society as we know it will never recover. Either

DID YOU notice anything different when you woke up on Monday morning?

According to the radio, there was a cataclysmic national disaster overnight. The country was brought to a standstill and the chances are society as we know it will never recover.

Either that or we've had a couple of inches of snow, and listening to some people talk, you wouldn't think there was any difference between the two.

It always amuses me the way that we massively over react in this country on the rare occasions when a bit of the white stuff settles for more than a couple of hours.

I can understand why the schools have to shut down, what with health and safety concerns being paramount these days.

And let's face it, how many children would be concentrating on school work when they could be out building snowmen or having snowball fights?

But does the rest of the world really need to grind to a shuddering halt?

It may be too dangerous for a few people who live in isolated areas to leave their houses, but most of us should be able to find a way round the inclement weather to get on with our lives as normal.

In other countries around the world it's not acceptable to drop everything at the sight of a bit of snow, so why is it ok here?

One in five people were apparently off work on Monday, at an estimated cost of �1.2billion to the economy. At a time when so many firms are struggling to make ends meat, it seems this cold spell could see more companies going to the wall because a few people fancied a day off.

It saddens me to see the "wild cat" strikes which are currently taking place across the country, regarding firms that employ foreign workers.

I can understand why the people are angry, but I think that what they are doing is totally wrong.

We are part of Europe, and as such anyone from across Europe is entitled to come and work here. Soundbites like "British jobs for British workers" are fairly redundant, and again I can see why wrath is being directed at Gordon Brown after he came out with such a rash statement which he had no way of backing up with action.

But maybe we need to look at why industry seemingly prefers to employ workers from other countries in the European Union in the first place.

Usually it's because they are happy to do the jobs that none of their British counterparts wants, working longer hours and earning a lower wage in the process.

While the economy has been buoyant and there have been plenty of jobs to go round, we've been happy to let other people do our dirty work, but now that money is getting a bit tight we want to take it away from them. That seems to me like a bit of a double standard.

We benefit in so many ways from being part of Europe, and already "cherry pick" plenty of aspects of the Union that suit us.

To do this further by introducing some kind of "protectionism" for British jobs would, in my opinion, be a step too far.