giggitygiggity, where to start!! It wasn't a radar failure, it was "issues with the displays" which is something entirely different. Take the FMS, if the feed fails then they will both go, as in they are not fed by completely independant data, so they don't have completely separate feeds to databases and everything else it can do. Failures of the FMS are very rare, as are radar display failures, especially multiple radar display issues. It has already been said that NY heavily restricts traffic during bad weather, I can assure you that Paris do too, as do many other major European airports. As the London TMA is so compact there is little space to weather avoid, and as has been seen recently, significant avoidance has to force significant flow rates so that the controllers are still able to "control" the now very unpredictable dots on the screen. The cost of 33 cancelled flights a day several days a year is still vastly better than compensating families of loved ones that don't come home one day. NATS cannot just "put 20p on each ticket", their route charges are fixed and so they are tied and hence they say they have been "impossibly squeezed financially", especially with the further sanctions of complying with equipment upgrades, reducing CO2 emissions etc.
You say "we are just frankly an embarrassment here in the UK". I call it professional and exemplary, world leaders in safety. There is a very good reason for that.