Probably didn't want some corporal issuing Dundee city council workers (they make 20% of the entire working population in the city) a shovel and telling them to follow him, forcing them to leave the warm comfy local tax payer paid for centrally heated office, was probably the fear.
The Royal mail post mystery seems to be getting solved,
http://www.thecourier.co.uk/News/Dundee/...rs-mystery.htmlApparently before this story came out one of my buddies from Broughty Ferry had threatened to make a Police complaint about the theft of mail by the Royal mail. His bundle of letters arrived the next day.
This is how ridiculous this world part of the world is getting, apparently if you post a letter in Newport-on-Tay to Broughty Ferry, it wings its way firstly to Dundee (to get collected, makes it about half way i.e. 1.5 miles), put on a train to Manchester (to get sorted, goes in the opposite direction by about 290 miles in another country), put on a train again back to Dundee (back in the right direction by about 290 miles), to get put on a post van to Broughty Ferry (the ramaining 1.5 miles) to be then dumped in the snow under a shrubbery (about 200 yards away), to be found by a neighbour to be hand delivery all wet and soggy. Royal Mail call it 'the way forward'. Third world here we come.
Same with the London Heathrow airport fiasco. The CEO of the company (BAA) that runs the airport gets paid $1.5 Million a year had spent half this amount on kit to keep the airport runways etc clear of snow.
Makes you wonder what the response would be to a true national emergency situation within the UK if the country cannot cope with a couple of inches of snow.
Even RAF Leuchars is under threat of closure due to the austerity cuts, i.e. no more QRA for northern UK and Iceland gap. No more airborne anti-submarine capability and airborne sea rescue coordination. We are being left defenseless. A national disgrace.
Interesting observation you make on the EMP analogy. It was a week-long series of ice storms, extreme temps (below 20 F) in the early 90s that pushed the NE power grid to its limits and caused periodic brown-outs that first caused me to appreciate the preparedness utility of camping gear (that I had only recently begun compiling as I was just beginning that dog-friendly mode of vacationing).
Thankfully we are still getting the benefit of a Nationalised National Electricity Grid system designed by Electrical Engineers in the 1970s, rather than by the bean counters and business graduates. So the electrical Grid system is still quite robust, although the bean counters now in charge are certainly screwing everyone for its use after it was given away to private business interests. Saying that though the bean counters haven't made any further investment since then and given another 10 years I can expect the Grid to begin to fall apart as the generating and transmission hardware comes to the enf of its useful lifetime.