Further on, I find 75-year-old Yae Nomura and her husband shovelling snow off their roof.

BBC: Tackling northern Japan's record snow

Only the woman road sweeper shovelling the snow from the bus stop sounded a critical note.

BBC: Rosenberg's Russia: On the election trail

Suzie Young, 37, made the two gargoyles on Monday, after shovelling snow from her drive in Fulbourn.

BBC: Gargoyle snowmen

They had reportedly been arguing over late rent, shovelling snow and parking cars in the drive, police said.

BBC: Maine shootings: Tenants killed in snow-shovelling row

And recently, workmen can again be seen shovelling cement into mixers at a few brick factories in Gaza .

BBC: Smuggling fuels Gaza's stalled economy

FEMA, an agency not used to dealing with huge contracts, is shovelling out hundreds of millions of dollars a day.

ECONOMIST: Hurricane Katrina

Perhaps, if only because it can kick-start the flagging economy in a way that shovelling cash at inefficient SOEs cannot.

ECONOMIST: State-owned enterprises

In a village a little further down the mountain I come across 77-year-old Masanori Sato, standing on the roof of his house, shovelling snow.

BBC: Tackling northern Japan's record snow

Others will say that Downing Street is, rather, shovelling all its bad news out at once in the hope that the Jubilee Weekend will soon give voters something else to think about.

BBC: Quite a day for the government

He told CNN that "shovelling money" to small businesses in peripheral Europe is the most likely next step for the ECB, but says the German elections and legality of the ECB's current bond-purchasing program are obstacles to any extraordinary policy announcements in future.

CNN: Euro recession deepens: So what can the ECB do now?