NO whingeing about the weather chaos – we’ve heard enough of that in the last few weeks.

Instead let’s hear it for the people who carry out all kinds of duties at this time of year without protest.

We all complain about how difficult it was to get to work through snow and ice but when we get there most of us are in the warm.

But the same doesn’t apply for example to the binmen who still manage to do their stuff. Their problems begin when they get to work rather than when they leave home to trek to the office.

Busmen too deserve a pat on the back for keeping going for hours on end in treacherous conditions and taking responsibility for the lives of many others as well as themselves.

The same applies to the delivery drivers who make sure essential food supplies are in the shops and the milkmen – and women – who get the bottles to our doorsteps.

They are all folk without whom the rest of us would suffer a lot more hardship in the depths of what is already set to be our second successive bad winter.

Some might argue that all the above are being paid to do their jobs and that we are entitled to expect them to pull out all the stops and not stay in bed at the first sign of snow.

It’s a matter of degree though and when you see binmen, for example, running around on extremely slippery surfaces I believe they deserve praise.

But there is another group of people who can’t be even be said to be braving the cold to earn a living and that’s the army of dedicated volunteers who provide all sorts of services with precious little recognition.

Scores of carers who look after elderly, disabled and vulnerable people do so for little or no financial reward as do those like the volunteer drivers who help take patients to and from hospitals.

There are legions of generous people giving up their time to help all manner of charitable enterprises involving humans and animals in need – simply because they believe it is what they should do.

I’d even like to praise the work of those councillors who are mayors for their tireless efforts at this time of year.

Cynics will say they are in it for the allowances and their own egos. But the small sums involved wouldn’t persuade me to sit through Nativity plays and carol services every day for at least a fortnight or stand in cold, draughty market halls and community buildings for hours on end and still continue smiling.

If everyone was like them this writer might be able to see how the government’s much-vaunted Big Society could work.

But the fact is that the public service ethic some (but not all) councillors possess isn’t shared by the vast majority of the population.