THIS is Glasgow's latest weapon against the ice storms a polystyrene cup full of road salt.

Almost 2000 people were admitted to hospital following dangerous falls as maintenance crews across the city were forced to improvise with anything that came to hand to beat the effects of ice on pavements.

And today Glasgow City Council was under fire for failing to give frontline staff the tools for the job after workers had to improvise to tackle the icy paths.

At Glasgow Green, one council worker was reduced to recycling his coffee cup as a makeshift shovel to scatter grit on the pavement near the main entrance. Blizzards give rainy Glasgow a miss

GLASGOW today escaped the expected blizzards but forecasters warned that sleet showers are on the way.

Forecaster Gareth Harvey said unexpected high temperatures had helped the Glasgow area avoid heavy snow which had been predicted.

The city saw rain showers overnight but people elsewhere in Scotland woke to more wintry weather with the Grampian area expected to have snowfalls throughout the day.

Snow began falling overnight in the north and was expected to fall in many parts of Scotland today, with up to 6in predicted on high ground such as the Cairngorms.

The Met Office has issued severe weather warnings for Scotland with the threat of drifting snow.

It said the weather is likely to cause road disruption particularly on high-altitude roads.

Temperatures throughout the country are expected to stay above zero.

Meanwhile, in the Borders town of Kelso, hundreds of residents endured a third night in the cold after gas supplies in the area failed.

Engineers were today still working to reconnect the remaining 350 affected homes.

An office worker at the nearby High Court said: "I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The guy was filling his polystyrene cup from the back of the wagon, walking over to scatter it on the ground and then walking back to do it again."

In Victoria Road, in the South Side, two workers were using margarine or mayonnaise tubs to collect grit from a truck parked nearby, which was then scattered by hand in another painstakingly slow operation.

A council official said more than 1000 workers, including many drafted in from parks and cleansing duties, laid 6000 tonnes of grit on the roads and almost 600 tonnes on paths around the city.

The skating rink conditions were created just after midnight on Monday when rain hit city streets and immediately turned to ice.

It left hospital accident and emergency departments treating almost 2000 people who suffered falls in the conditions, as reported in yesterday's Evening Times.

Two people are in intensive care with serious head injuries.

Five A&E departments across NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde recorded their busiest day yesterday with one hospital, the Victoria Infirmary, seeing a 40% increase in patients.

Glasgow City Council today defended its performance over the chaos for pedestrians.

A spokeswoman said staff would have been issued with shovels to spread grit and that machines usually used for street sweeping had been switched over to laying salt on busy paths.

She added: "It was a case of all hands on deck and we had to draft in staff from other departments to get as many people as possible out on the street."

But Martin Doran, an organiser with the GMB union, which represents many council workers, said machines that could have been used to help speed up the emergency gritting work were still being used for litter duties well into the day.

He said: "One member I spoke to could not understand why some of the machines were still out sweeping leaves and litter when the ice was a much more pressing problem.

"All of our roads staff are issued with shovels to scatter salt and it beggars belief staff would have to resort to margarine tubs and the like to do the job."

Councillor James Dornan, who leads the SNP group on the council, called for hospitals and schools to get special priority after hospital patients were hit twice.

In one case, a woman went to the Victoria Infirmary with her husband after he slipped and was injured at home, only to be confronted by sheets of black ice as she left the South Side hospital.

Mr Dornan slated the lack of suitable equipment and said: "Anyone can be caught out by the freak weather, but for departments not to be prepared by having enough equipment is unacceptable."