Here in Montreal, only snow from a nuclear winter from nuke bombings will justify giving students a snow day.
I never had a snow day in this country. Hence I went to school whatever Mumma Nature throws at me... Be it -25C with -40C wind chill... Be it a blizzard with blowing snow... Be it an ice storm... Be it a 30cm snowstorm... Been there... Survived those...
You Brits could learn a lot from the Canadians. We still go to work, school, shopping, eating out, movies during snowstorms worse than what London just had.
And the busses and metro will work almost perfectly. As I said... A snowstorm may cripple the city to some degree due to the traffic slowing down, but it doesn't completely shut it down. A 5 mins bus delay doesn't bother me. Plus, we're very smart enough to put the metro trains completely underground because the railway tracks will be nothing but frozen for five months a year.
When I found out on the news about what happened in London. I couldn't help not laughing that a few centimetres would shut the whole freaking city down.
A Brit showed me this yesterday. So true.