Er - Run That By Me Again, Please

It has been suggested on a website frequented by magistrates that unpaid work orders (a commonly-used sentencing disposal) might usefully include snow clearance.

Excuse me?

Do these people have any idea of the time that it takes the lumbering bureaucracy of probation to take even the simplest idea on board? Risk assessments, consultation, the whole panoply of govenment departments mean that the whole idea could not be brought to fulfilment in much under a year.

For the record, chaps, snow has a habit of melting after a few days, or even, where I live, a week or two. Hardly time to compose an email, is it?