50 words for snow

One of the favourite sayings when I was at BP was that Eskimos had fifty words for snow -- I can't personally verify for Eskimos but I do know that if you ask a Canadian whether they can make snowmen with their latest snowfall they will look at you as though you are stupid and say that it was not packing snow - in BR speak the wrong kind of snow.  But the more general point is if an issue matters to you a lot, you delve more deeply and see more differentiation in it. That's the theory behind our segmentation of environmental behaviour into seven key groups (yes I know I need a link here... but do a google search on Defra and Environmental behaviours and you get it)  -- my mother is a waste watcher and I like to think I am a positive green. But I assume that Tesco, with their loyalty data base and targeted marketing can divide their customer base into rather more segments than that (if I used my card enough I think they would have me down as intermittent internet customer with big muesli and pasta eating friend who exploits service to substitute for lift and buys all fresh food somewhere else - otherwise my four times a year supermarket shopping habit looks a bit weird).All this is a rather long preamble to the book Microtrends by Mark Penn -- aka HC's pollster - who claims to have identified soccer moms as a key constituency for BC and now has decided that we need to look at what the blurb describes as "small forces behind today's big changes".  Not the deepest book in the world -- and very US in focus... but some interesting food for thought.  First the personal -- what microtrends am I a member of? Certainly not aspiring snipers, young knitters or uptown tattoed.  Can claim an ancient experience as an office romancer - but hardly part of a new trend, suppose am a  bit of a wordy woman (woman taking over verbal professions, have elements of snowed-under-slob and maybe with new hip should have a go at either being a cougar (woman dating much younger man) or an "internet married" - couple who find each other on the internet.  Until this year I also counted as a DIY doctor (though not in quite the way he has it) - don't think recent experience quite makes me into a surgery lover....not sure getting broadband has yet converted me from a new Luddite into a tech fatale (women who love IT).So I can relate to some of these -- and know other people who fit into other categories.   But that is all a bit of a parlour game (not necessarily a bad one -- may use it to liven up a rather deadly dinner party -- would you rather be an Video game grown up or an archery mom).  But the more interesting policy question is do any of these trends have any relevance over here -- and are there other microtrends UK that might do and we need to start thinking about?
In some the UK already seems to be in advance of the US -- eg interracial families as a microtrend seems a rather strange one to single out as new.  In others the US seems different -- one of the interesting questions is why Muslims in the US seem as MP puts it to be much more moderate than their European counterparts - which has a lot to do with the way Muslim migration has occurred into the US - more Hasnat Khan than Abu Hamza. Second home owning doesn't seem worth singling out here -- though interestingly the one UK microtrend that makes it into the international section is "Living Apart Together" -- MP reckons there are 1m committed couples in the UK who won't move in together even though they live in the same town. An interesting additional housing pressure -- and very interesting if you look at potential additional barriers that could be created by giving cohabiting couples the same "rights" post break up as married couples. Some of the stuff about sons as carers, the working retired and extreme commuting or working from home have potential interest.But are there any specifically UK microtrends we might want to pick up on? I think my recent experiences have just illustrated one microtrend - the difficulty of single people finding proper after care near their homes (or as the doctor said -- you're going to be looked after by your 85 year old mother?) - and the erosion of options for in family care can have very serious policy implications. We have already seen the end of careers for life - but am not sure yet that people like headhunters have woken up to the desire for lateral moves (or if they have they don't understand it - cue business opportunity).  More generally it suggests that the move from monolithic to personalised services might be even more of a challenge than it appears -- and beyond the ability of bureaucratised service models to deliver. The second policy question seems to me to be whether there are existing microtrends that we want to use policy to support becoming macrotrends -- and create tipping point effects.  The number of car ads (there are a lot on Sky Sports and Eurosport -- though the latter also has the Defra climate change filler) suggest that the minority interest of environmental performance of cars has now gone mainstream.  But can we do the same for non-car ownership? Train travel (when will Trailfinders start booking rail fares to Europe?)? Changed attitudes to home ownership? Charitable giving? And how do we help people stand up to peer or community pressure - when they may not be part of anything that has yet fomented into a microtrend?Anyway, if you have spotted a UK or European microtrend, add it here....