Unbelievable selfishness

This morning three of us in our road went out and with shovels and brushes and cleared snow from the whole of our road. We cleared the driveways of some of the more elderly in our road and did the good neighbourly thing. I am obliged to my neighbours apposite and adjacent to me for the sterling efforts they put in.

Despite all our hard work, the road that leads to ours, which is on something of a hill, had seen no efforts from locals to clear the road. So again, we did it and cleared a driveable route through the road, clearing most snow on at least one side of the road, and then put down some salt and grit grit.

We assumed because there is a grit bin at the bottom of the hill, leading on to the main road, that people down that end of the road would, at the very least, put some grit down and ensure the ice at the bottom would be melted.

An hour or so later, I walked to the shops. walking along this bit of road, and saw someone filling up a bucket of grit from the grit bin. Good, I thought to my self, he's going to clear the bit of road that is outside his house that was, by this time, sheet ice. However, upon my return from the shops I witnessed that he had in fact laid down all this grit, from the public grit bin, on his own driveway (and it was thick with grit and salt in piles) but not put one single bit on the path outside his home or the road.

Big society ? Some people don't even do the basics of helping their neighbours or showing common sense when it comes to helping out on a snowy day.