Letter: It's winter, so stop whingeing.

Byline: P Whitcombe

HAVE we become a nation of wimps? The first icy breath of anything approaching winter and the news coverage goes into overload about freezing temperatures, road chaos, etc.

Isn't that what winter is all about?

And woe betide us if the weather turns nasty anywhere in the South East. If it's grim up north, it'll merit a 30-second slot near the end of the evening news. But if the snow and ice encroaches anywhere within the vicinity of London or the M25 then it gets the national top slot and 10 minutes of interminable live reporting from some freezing telly hack on a bridge over some snowed-over A road or other.

In the not-so-good old days, dealing with the winter and getting on with it was part of life and was hardly considered "news" at all. People didn't have double glazing or central heating and the only warmth would be provided by the living room fire which had to be stoked and lit every morning.

If you did have a car, it invariably wouldn't start but you still had to get into work. But people did - and did so without complaint.

We could do with a little more of this resilience nowadays. And it could start by our news guardians laying off treating the winter weather with a little less hysteria and a bit more reality.

P Whitcombe, Walton, Liverpool