A blogger called Katabasis turns out to be the first person to get his hands on the Met Office's correspondence with the Cabinet Office - this was where the Met Office is alleged to have warned the government of a cold winter ahead.
As readers here learned the other day, this alleged warning was hard to construe as, well, a warning, but the correspondence that Katabasis has obtained shows that the situation is actually even worse. The line agreed between the Met Office and the Cabinet Office was that there was nothing clear in the forecast:
Someone at the Cabinet Office wrote to the Met Office to tell them what the official position would be: "The Met Office seasonal outlook for the period November to January is showing no clear signals for the winter". The Met Office writes back - "That is fine." - also note the first mail sent my the Met Office, these are their "initial thoughts" (!)
It seems clear that the public were lied to over this issue. But this is, of course, the public sector, so expect nobody to be responsible, especially not Mr Napier, the environmentalist who is in charge at the Met Office, nor Mr Hirst the chief executive, and glad receipient of a 25% pay rise last year.