I think you are all being a little harsh on the Met Office. I am no forcaster (I do have an observers ticket though) but I did much meteorl;ogy during the course of my degree studies.
One thing that is rarely understood is that we are dealing with mother nature. The forces invlolved are so unvbelievable complex as to not really be fathomable my either human or so called super-computer brains. You can have all the models you like and all the experience and forcast the weather to one thing and it may do something completyely different; there is no knowing why, it just does because we still don't really know what is going on that well. Personally I treat all forcasts as "best guess".
Incidentally, and not wishing to hijack the thread. How many of you who don't trust forcasts fly around using a regional pressure setting- that is only a forcast, so should that be trusted??