Trust Tommy

Found this out today...



Of the 30.5 million calls to the emergency calls that were made in 2003, a staggering 52%, or 16.1 million were not proper calls, ones that needed immediate action.


BT teamed up with the Deputy Prime Minister to try and fix this in an attempt to stop unnecessary and potentially life threatening problems caused by false calls to 999. I'm not only talking about hoaxes, in fact, from what I understand, they're more talking about calls that people think are important. There are some funny links on the 'net to lists of those sorta calls.


* Call from one woman who demanded police come and lock up her husband as "he has the TV remote and won't let me watch EastEnders"

But wait! It gets worse...

* Picture the scene: Hysterical citizen does not have the £1 needed for her supermarket trolley! Shock horror! The only solution? Why, a call to 999 of course!

Oh wait...

* One unhappy chap contacted the emergency services about the horrifying fact that her mother-in-law had been there for 18 days!

How could the police refuse?

And finally...

* One knowledge-seeking female rang 999 inquiring "what year the internet started"

the burning question we all want answered!


There are probably hundreds of examples. As you can see, what they're trying to fix isn't so much the nuisance calls, as the ones that are plainly not actual calls.