Britain stockpiling over 1 million tonnes of salt for return of ‘Beast from the East’

Or, alternatively, just enough to salt the giant slug Boris Johnson once and for all

Do you remember the Beast from the East? You do don't you? That period of a few weeks we had around February and March time last year that caused absolute unbridled chaos. What was the Beast from the East exactly? Well, a cold wave of air that brought with it unusually low temperatures and a bit of snow. People fell over a lot out in the icy slush. Every single train in the entire country was cancelled. That sort of thing. What are we going to do to ensure this mild inconvenience doesn't bring our lives grinding to a halt once again? Order loads of salt, basically. Order fucking tonnes of it. 1.4 million tonnes, to be exact. That means that roughly 94 per cent of councils have prepared themselves with at least as much or more salt than last year. Local Government Association's (LGA) transport spokesman Martin Tett explains: "‘Depots are filled with 1.4 million tonnes of salt and gritters are ready to be deployed instantly to make sure our local roads are clear and open to our residents where possible." Unfortunately, however, due to inadequate funding and limited resources, 55 per cent of councils will be forced to share their salt stocks and 30 per cent will share gritting machinery, according to the LGA annual Winter Readiness Survey. Even better, and please do try and keep your woolly socks on for this, but around 80 per cent of councils will be providing grit bins so we can get out there in the bitter, freezing conditions and salt the roads yourself! Hooray! Remember when it was hot? And England were in the semi-finals of the World Cup? That didn't happen. That was just a delirious fever dream. This is the true reality, this cold, harsh, snowy apocalypse. But hey, at least we have enough salt.