Yeah, but... The Local Authorities have a finite amount of money to spend, they can't afford to have a fleet of dedicated snowploughs laid up because, statistically, we get a couple of days of significant snow every 3 years or so. I'm not making excuses for them, they are generally incompetent idiots, but I can see where they're coming from, for most of the time everyone's screaming at them to spend the money elsewhere. Of course, with a bit of ingenuity and lateral thinking, and a fraction of the budget, I'm sure they could buy some plough attachments and winter tyres that would effectively convert existing council vehicles into ploughs. Then we'd be OK most of the time and everyone would forget, until we'd have a big fall every 10 years that would be too much for the makeshift ploughs and everyone would again call the council useless!!
The same goes for snow tyres, economically they just aren't worth it, I'd love to have a spare set of rims with winter tyres on and I appreciate that they work in cold temps as well as in snow and ice, but until last week it was just raining and 10deg most days. You just can't predict how long this weather will last, realistically they're "needed" for maybe 4 weeks a year?
Fook dat, I'll stick with the snow 
