Within minutes of the first cloud looming into view over St Neots, cllr King Cooper of Priory Park ward was on to the Citizen to blame Tory Paul Marcel. “It’s just not on,” said Cooper, “it was lovely and sunny yesterday and now it’s all cloudy. Probably the Tories’ fault!”

Marcel, meanwhile, and colleague Larry Hackman, were quick to point the finger squarely at self-styled Eynesbury activists Steve van der Whitevanman and Terrence Dougall. “I thought summer had come,” said award-winning councillor Hackman, “and then it went cloudy and there was a little bit of rain. You don’t expect it, do you? Liberal wankers.”

A spokesman for the Met office said that he wasn’t sure why everyone was so taken aback. “Honestly, we have 24 hours of sunshine and everyone gets the SPF50 out. It’s still officially winter until the 23rd, and even then it’s only spring, so it’ll rain even more. Stop looking so shocked.”

The town’s location in a geographically distinct “bowl” or dip means that the temperature in St Neots is on average 1.5º higher than Huntingdon or Cambridge, but also means that locals are protected from the worst of the weather.

“You can really notice it if you visit one of the few streets which is up on the ‘rim’, so to speak,” said local Expert Scientist Jim James of CERN. “Have a wander through Bean Close next time it’s been icy, and the frost and snow stays on the ground that little bit longer because they’re not in the dip.”

However, St Neotians have refuted these claims, laying the blame squarely at the door of Pathfinder House. “It’s a disgrace,” said Eynesbury resident Peter Husbanick, 31. “Huntingdon always gets the better deal: more cinemas, more traffic lights, more chavs, and now more snow.”

Town councillor Terrence Dougall, 81, said “I’ll have to look into this. I’ll ask the District Council some questions without the use of any punctuation and see what they have to say about it.”

The Citizen contacted a local pensioner for a quote as well. Ethel Cotton, 79, ranted that “In my day we had ice on the inside of the windows, and the Thames used to freeze over, but we strapped wooden planks – with the nails still in them – to our feet and used them to ski the forty-two miles to school every day.”