Severe Terror Warning

The government has conceded that it may have made a mistake when, last week, it raised the UK's terror alert to 'severe' despite admitting that there was no specific new threat. "It appears that someone might have confused the Met Office's latest severe weather warning with intelligence of an imminent terror attack," a spokesperson for Ten Downing Street admitted. "It's an easy mistake to make - the two are very similar, both full of exaggerated threats, dire, but completely unsubstantiated, warnings and lots of wild speculation." The last time such a mistake occurred was when a disclosure under 'Sarah's Law' of the whereabouts of released peadophiles in Somerset was confused with a terror alert, resulting in the notorious 2005 'Peado Alert'. "Obviously, in retrospect we realise that further checks should have been made before a county-wide warning that children in Somerset could be at increased risk of being felt up, molested or even buggered," says the spokesperson. "We did apologise at the time for the undue stress caused to parents, and to the dozen or so men attacked by lynch mobs on suspicion of being nonces."

The government maintain that the latest incident is completely different. "It's not as if there isn't any link between the weather and terrorism," claimed the spokesperson. "I mean, just look at the way that snow completely disrupted Britain. Al Qaeda couldn't have done better if they'd detonated a dirty bomb!" Indeed, some sources are claiming that recent intelligence has indicated that the cold weather could, in fact, be in cahoots with Osama bin Laden. "There are indications that they are planning further freezing assaults all across Britain," opines the spokesperson. "If they succeed in creating icy road conditions, then civilian casualties could soar into treble figures, at least!" He urged people to be on the look out for any signs of dangerous bad weather and not to be afraid to report any snowflakes they see to the proper authorities.