Snow Business this week

Not content with officially going into recession last week, the UK has gone one better this week and shut up shop altogether as a bit of snow has brought the UK to a grinding halt. Southern England had the worst snow it has seen for 18 years, causing all London buses to be pulled from service on Monday and repeatedly closing the runways at Heathrow Airport.

An estimated 20% of the UK workforce took Monday as a ‘snow day’ and in some parts of the country the whole week has been a complete write off. The Federation of Small Businesses has put the cost to the UK economy at £1.2bn a day which it can ill afford given the current state of the economy. The snow has however distracted the media from reporting the gloom and doom of the economy, with the news of another historic cut in interest rates reduced to a mere tag line at the end of the news bulletins.

As the snow begins to thaw, could this also coincide with the start of an economic recovery?