Forget WikiLeaks - the big UK news story this winter is... it's cold, icy and we've had snow.

Yes, you read that right - we have had winter weather this winter. Whatever next?

Anyway, as always, the official advice from the police and motoring organisations is "only drive if your journey is essential".

Which means what, exactly? Don't drive at all, unless you're an ambulance driver or someone urgently in need of medical attention? What constitutes an "essential journey" (and I'm not talking about the Best Of album for an MOR band)? 

Either there's a specific category of journey that is deemed essential by officialdom, or the words "to you" are missing from the official travel advice, in which case Mrs Miggins may well deem it essential that she gets another packet of chocolate HobNobs before the vicar visits, Fred Perve might well think that his attendance at the hole in the wall next to the girl's changing rooms are St Busty's Academy for Overdeveloped Young Ladies is mandatory, etc.

We already know that the British public has a tenuous grasp of what constitutes an emergency, as the steady trickle of idiots dialling 999 to report a missing pizza delivery, request ambulance transport because of missed buses, etc. readily testifies. So what makes the police think that "essential" is any more clearly understood? 

Those are the kind of consequences of people deciding for themselves what is essential to them, and I have to assume that police know how quixotic the public can be, and that allowing them to decide how essential a journey is for themselves will have much the same result as not saying anything at all. 

So the other alternative is that there really is a definition of "essential" that police really mean when they say it, but for some reason they are unwilling or afraid to say. 

If I had to guess, I'd say they really mean to say "don't travel unless life depends on it" meaning only health workers, the very sick and/or their drivers should venture outdoors, but they know perfectly well that almost every employer in the country would be outraged to have offical confirmation that what they do is not essential, merely useful.

In most cases, bosses want their workers to think of their jobs as essential, while workers think of it only as an expedient means of securing wages.