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Friday 24 August 2007

Dialing 999.

And so it ever has been and so it ever will be.

The police in the U.K. are once again moaning about 'inappropriate' usage of the 999 number.

For those outside the U.K. '999' is the emergency line which gets you the relevant service (police, fire service, ambulance service). Once dialed you give, in my opinion excessive irrelevant, details and then you are sent the relevant service dependent on 1) What you requested or 2) What they consider the relevant service dependent on what you told them.


People here ring this number for not just emergencies but sometimes for none emergencies like "There is a spider in my room" or "My mobile phone isn't working" and other none emergency things along the same lines.

Now, it does not take a genius to realise that for each none emergency call there is a serious possibility that a true emergency call could be missed. As since seemingly forever the police, as seriously undermanned as they are, are once again whining about this 'inappropriate use of' the 999 number.

Are they ever going to get it? I doubt it.

People will always ring this number for it is they who consider whatever it is to be an emergency. To them whatever it is IS and emergency at that point in time and quite possibly at that given time the only number they can think to ring is 999.

Plus, the only number one could ring to get the police at one time was 999. Police sub stations had a number, usually a local number with local charges. While the little police stations still have a local number to get the police on a none emergency line you have to remember and ring an expensively charged number.

Commonsense dictates that people, that is the general public, do not want to ring these expensively charged lines nor can they remember the local mini, often unmanned, police station so instead they ring 999.

Wake up you lot in charge of our police force and realise what is so brazenly obvious.

Will they ever get it? I seriously doubt it.

Next year the police will once again moan about 'inappropriate use' of the 999 number and so it will go on and on year after year.

That is, until such a time as this little island is a police state by which time no one will dare to ring the police ever.

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