Britain's paralysis as a result of the cold weather and snowfalls, is yet another fitting illustration of just how crippled this system has become.

It did not take more than a few days of snow to make roads and motorways unusable, turn streets into ice rinks and isolate whole areas.

Meanwhile many buses were stuck in their garages, trains went back to 19th century speeds and tens of thousands of households were left without electricity - often without heating - and thousands of schools had to close, regardless of the consequences for working parents.

From systemic negligence...

Contrary to what we are told, this was not just the result of "extreme conditions".

In fact, such conditions are not unprecedented. Comparable snowfalls, in February 2009, saw councils issued with guidelines requiring them to keep a 6-day supply of gritting salt.

However, once the bureaucratic paperwork was done, the matter was left there. Neither was the extent of the gritting specified, nor were the guidelines enforced. Worse, even, no-one bothered to oversee the delivery of adequate supplies of gritting material. So that when this latest spell of snowfalls came, local authorities were not ready to implement these guidelines, nor were the guidelines themselves even adequate to cope.

As to the breakdown in electricity supply, this is something normally associated with an impoverished country. Here, we are told that it is due to snow falling from tree branches, which overloads and damages cables. Except that most industrialised countries have long given up such an antiquated way of supplying electricity, for reasons of safety and reliability. Instead, they use high-voltage cables which are either hanging well-above tree tops or are buried deep into the ground.

Why is the British system so antiquated, one might ask? Well, ask the utility companies. For all their hot air about "necessary" price increases to fund their investment programmes, the fact is that they invest only just enough to keep the system going - that is, until the snow starts falling. Hence their enormous profits!

Likewise, the official admission that 100 factories were hit by gas outages is a telling symptom of how close to its limits the whole system is. Yet, the causes are well-known. For at least 8 years, reports after reports have warned against low gas storage capacity. But nothing was done about it, simply because none of the gas utilities is willing to dent the dividends of its shareholders to make the necessary investment!

Far from being only due to some sort of "natural catastrophe", the snow-related havoc reflects the negligence of this system and the on-going storm of profiteering which presides over its operation.

... To systemic failure

But at least we can be sure that the havoc of these winter days will come to an end soon. The same cannot be said of the havoc of the crisis.

Of course, there is no shortage of politicians who are cynical enough to congratulate themselves about the "falling rise" of unemployment - as if the fact that 2,000 workers were losing their jobs every day was not intolerable enough!

There are those who acclaim the "record sales" of the big retail chains as a return of "consumer confidence". But everyone knows that these sales only reflect the fact that people refrained from doing their shopping before the winter sales period, because they could not afford to do otherwise. Meanwhile, dozens of lesser chains are going belly up, precisely because the purchasing power of the working class is at its lowest.

While financial speculation is booming again, feeding on taxpayers' money, the bosses and their politicians, Labour and Tory, do not even bother to conceal their plans to squeeze even more out of the working population. Tens of thousands of job cuts on the cards in the civil service, Royal Mail, etc., will just add to the mass of the unemployed.

The austerity measures which both parties intend to force down workers' throats, in order to pay for the state bailout of the finance sharks, will only reduce our standard of living even more, once the general election is over. And since cutting the purchasing power of the majority can only result in yet more job cuts, this is a vicious cycle that can keep on going for the foreseeable future.

So, no, this crisis is very far from being over. It is the crisis of a system in which profiteering has come to paralyse the ability of society to cater for the needs of the majority - on a world scale, of course, but even in a rich economy like Britain's. Such a system offers no prospect to mankind - except the prospect of replacing it!