It’s political.

What exactly is the average person in the street going to do or change in response to such an escalation? There is no national plan or set of directions that each must undertake in reaction to such an announcement.

As somebody else has pointed out it is merely an **** covering exercise by the politicians in government so they can with cleanish conscience state they had issued a warning in the horrible event of an incident occuring.

Thus allowing their apologists (hi charlie! in this instance :-)) to claim that the govenrment did all they could.