That's very interesting snippet of information, and if that is accurate then it would infer that upon placing an order at, say, midnight on the 7th, your iPad was in stock and in a UK warehouse ready to be processed and commence the shipping process (as has been apparant with all South of the border orders).
However, sometime over the next 24 hours, your order (that was placed well ahead of many many English orders) has been re-allocated to someone else (not in Scotland), resulting in the iPad which was ordered and in stock and physically in the UK at the time of your order, now needing to be filled by stock not yet in the UK, hence the 5 day delay while stock is en route.
This would explain why a courier would need 5 extra days to deliver...it's because it isn't a courier issue, it was either an Apple system error, which reallocated Scottish orders to England/Wales, or someone made a conscious decision to segregate Scotland (and NI), and reallocate stock to remain in one "more manageble" area.
Either way, it has been an extremely poor example of logistics by Apple, and a very unfair way of allocating stock, and being as small as the UK is, you wonder how they ever get any sort of delivery co-ordination for somewhere as large as the US, without major foul ups.
