999 calls

[Whickerman]

What kind of numpty...?????

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-1 303440,00.html?f=rss

Woman calls 999 because she didn't have a quid for a supermarket trolley. Are people really that bloody thick?

[naomi24]

Unbelieveable, but it seems they are that thick, and it's shameful! What is wrong with these people? They have to be either completely stupid, or completely self-obsessed. They have a problem, so someone has to sort it - and it doesn't matter who. I'm beginning to despair of society!! Grrrrr..

[jno]

could have been a wind-up by a drunk; I see the news item calls her 'cheeky'. I'd call her 'the defendant' myself.

[tiggerblue10]

The RNLI have the same problems. Sick people!

[tigerlily11]

Thats got to be the best one yet.
The mind is past boggling at the stupidity of the general public these days.

[Buenchico]

I should make it clear that I'm certainly not defending the actions of this stupid woman buy it does point out that one person's definition of an 'emergency' might be different to someone else's.

There was a case where a woman boarding a train lost her shoe as she stepped on board. (It fell onto the track). To prevent the train leaving (and so that her shoe could be retrieved), she pulled the communication cord. British Transport Police prosecuted her for pulling the communication cord 'other than in an emergency' but the court ruled that the situation was a genuine emergency to the woman, and acquitted her.

As a governor of the RNLI, I'm surprised that Tiggerblue10 thinks that the service encounters similar problems. Of course there are a few idiots who make completely fictitious/malicious calls but anything similar to the supermarket trolley scenario should never be referred to the RNLI because they don't take calls directly. (Emergency calls go through to H M Coastguard. If someone calls just because their beach ball is being blown out to sea, the call will be filtered out before it can reach the RNLI).

Sometimes genuine 999 calls can prove to be rather embarrassing for the caller. When I worked on the railways, a colleague reported to me that she thought she'd seen a light flickering, like a flame, in the cab of a loco in the sidings. (This was in the early hours of the morning). I took a look and thought that I could see smoke. So I placed an emergency call to the signaller (to stop all train movements in the area) and then called the fire brigade. When they put the location into their computer, it correctly flashed up a warning that the loco was adjacent to a major fuel store. Accordingly, every single fire engine from across half of the county was immediately dispatched to the site, together with the major incident unit. The train driver, who had just burnt his bacon on the Calor gas cooker in his

[Buenchico]

... cab, was definitely not amused ;-)

Chris

[tiggerblue10]

I saw a series about the Coastguard on BBC1 last year where they were talking about prank calls. If I have got the information wrong then sorry.

[Lonnie]

http://www.wakefieldexpress.co.uk/video-test/I t39s-your-call.3177547.jp

[jake-the-peg]

You're judging people by your own standards.

There are a lot of people out there ranging from what you might call a bit simple to completely psychotic.

It doesn't make them dangerous but it does make them more likely to do things like this.

The fact that it's a news story shows that it's not representative of the public at large otherwise everyone would say "so what"

Actually as stories go it's a bit ethically questionable - a bit like "entertainment tours" of mental assylums

[Twenty20]

"You're judging people by your own standards"

Err, yes! Unless you think it's standard or acceptable behavior to dial 999 when you don't have a pound for the supermarket trolley?

[madworld]

This woman should have been hauled before a court and jailed. I'm Sorry, there is no excuses for these people. It's time an example was made of someone like this.