The RANT thread (often contains fruity language)

[Jaded]

Select a single column and sort it 

Then run away!

[Kim]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-derbyshire-42788584/woman-calls-999-over-broken-eggs-in-fridge

You get one of these stories every couple of months.  I assume the idea being to use the clickbait to highlight the importance of not overloading critical services with spurious or hoax calls.  Fair enough.

Except the examples usually include several instances of people seeking help with genuine problems, but who seem uneducated/naive/frightened/desperate enough that they end up turning to 999 for something that they really shouldn't.  While clearly not an emergency, the woman with the eggs seemed to have a well-intentioned (if poorly structured) food hygiene question.  Toothache is a painful medical problem that can be hard to obtain treatment for, albeit not an ambulance-requiring one.  And I'll bet good money that the caller who wanted their breakfast making had been let down by some kind of carer.

I'm not sure that what is effectively taking the piss out of these people is ethical, or even particularly helpful.

The idea of having unified second-tier services like Police 101 and NHS Redirect to take up some of these cases was a good idea.  It's a shame the delivery is rather lacking.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Hang on, how are they unified? 101 for police, 111 for NHS. That's separate numbers for separate services (and in many countries there's no unified 999-style service, it's separate numbers for police, ambulance, fire, mountain rescue, coast guard, gas leak, etc etc).

But yes to the rest of that. And perhaps it's part of a long term plan to make a charge for A&E acceptable (or has too much time on this forum made me cynical?).

[ElyDave]

gas leaks, electrickery failures etc are not a government issue, unless they are large enough to need contingency plans for major incidents to be invoked.

That's why you call the company, not the police.

[Kim]

Unified in the sense that you're not ringing around your local police stations, or GPs surgeries/walk-in centres/A&E departments or whatever.  It's a start.

I suspect a single "I've got a problem, what do I do?" service (presumably staffed by a crack team of librarians with a healthy mixture of backgrounds) is unrealistic, at least until the likes of Google are able to provide it at negligible cost.

[ElyDave]

You want the QI elves on the other end of the phone?

[Kim]

gas leaks, electrickery failures etc are not a government issue, unless they are large enough to need contingency plans for major incidents to be invoked.

That's why you call the company, not the police.

To be fair, I bet a fire service emergency operator isn't going to be too upset to pass on some gas-related advice along with the number for the national grid sort-the-gas-leak-out hotline^[1].  In much the same way that paramedics don't mind sitting with you for a bit while you suck on their nebuliser, rather than talking you to hospital.

But generally, yes.


_{[1] 0800 111 999 for those playing along at home.  It's deliberately got an emergencyish ring to it and everything.}

[Kim]

You want the QI elves on the other end of the phone?

No.  I've watched enough QI that it eventually got around to a subject that I actually know quite a bit about.  The esteemed Mr Fry has never been so disappointing.

[fuzzy]

Having been on the recieving end of 999 calls (both in answering and responding) and on the issueing end, I can see a case for a unified call handling centre.

Call comes in and is answered with "What is your emergency?" With skilled questioning and LISTENING, the nature of the problem can be established and the right responders sent on their way. All this with one call.

 Many's the time I have arrived at a scene to find that paramedics or fire brigade are required and had to arrange for their notification. With a centralised location handling all emergency services, the delay can be reduced.

The call handling centre should be staffed by officers from all the servoces who can comunicate dorectly and also pick up on things as they develop.

Probaly too costly and would intrude on certain peoples empires.

[Cudzoziemiec]

gas leaks, electrickery failures etc are not a government issue, unless they are large enough to need contingency plans for major incidents to be invoked.

That's why you call the company, not the police.

Gas leaks are a public safety issue like fires. That's why some countries have a "gas emergency" number. France used to have (or still has?) 14 for police, 16 for ambulance and something longer for fire, I think. Poland has 999 for ambulance, 998 for fire, 997 for police, then I think it's 996 for gas, etc. Why not have one single number? Presumably the thinking is that specialised services will be better able to respond in the best way. And little empires, as Fuzzy says. Of course there's 112 now, but that often just diverts you to one or other of the pre-existing services, it doesn't necessarily imply a UK-style all-encompassing emergency operator.

Edit: This page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/112_(emergency_telephone_number)#E112 says in France it's 15 for ambulance, 17 for police, 18 for fire brigade.

Ed2: Apparently we have a "single non-emergency number" for power cuts in the UK: 105.

In the UK, the Single Non-Emergency Numbers are used by local councils, police forces and the National Health Service. 101 is for contacting local police forces in the UK and 111 for the NHS health care line in England. 105 is used to contact local electricity network companies for power cuts and updates to supply issues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_non-emergency_number I didn't know that!

[ian]

I'm totally with having one 999 and triaging on the receiving end. Don't ask people to do it themselves when you've got the experts on that on the other end of the phone.

I think trying to scare people off dialling 999 because people might laugh at them is both counter-productive and dickish. I'd rather people ring and be wrong than not ring and be right.

[ElyDave]

Ring 999 and you get asked which service you require, perhaps the question should be more open, i.e. what is the emergency.

On that basis, I smell gas, can be directed to National Grid, Northern Gas Networks, or the appropriate of the other local companies.

In response to cudzos post, yes gas leaks can be a public safety issue, but in my experience, a small local failure is dealt with entirely under the regulatory response times, and risk assessments, COBRA etc is only going to get invoked for major failures affecting thousands of people, and the companies themselves have mutual aid agreement. Risk factors for response to leaks include location, proximity to vulnerable persons, size and pressure of leak etc I know this because I designed the protocol.

[Beardy]

999 is answered by a telephone service operator who then pass you onto the control centre of the service you requested. That's where the clever questions come from. I think it's police and fire control rooms that have been merged in Suffolk (and with Norfolk I think) though why ambulance has been left out I don't know. Having been in at the beginning of call centres in the UK, I know that the drivers for creating them and then merging them some more are nearly always financial and the actual service advantages of them are often ill considered or not considered at all. The head long dash to outsource all call centres to India has shown that chasing the cost savings is not always the money saver it appears to be. ( I did say that back in 1984 but no one wanted to listen to a 23yo with no education to speak of an very little experience)

[citoyen]

You want the QI elves on the other end of the phone?

No.  I've watched enough QI that it eventually got around to a subject that I actually know quite a bit about.  The esteemed Mr Fry has never been so disappointing.

I subscribe to the No Such Thing As A Fish podcast. It's quite entertaining but frequently infuriating just how very wrong they are about stuff.

[Beardy]

Bloody fucking bloody bloody hell!
I've just found out that a MASSIVE assumption was made by the design team previously on my programme when deciding what work needed doing. It's not just that they assumed another programme would deliver on time, it's that they marked the stuff I'm working on AS IF IT WAS ALREADY DELIVERED! Because of the lack of continuity in the design team I was blissfully unaware of the risk to my programme posed by the problems the other programme is having.
Bastard bloody fucking fuck fuck.
And the reason the design team changed? Cost saving initiatives by seniors and the lead architect getting promoted.
BOLLOX

[Si S]

Sharepoint.

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH

[Mrs Pingu]

Sharepoint.

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH

Yes. We've got to fill in a timekeeping form which seems to be sharepoint based. Filling it in goes like this:

• Select month from drop down box. Several seconds pass while it sends photons to the States & back (I presume).
• Select year. Several seconds pass.
• Tell it to add an entry. Several seconds of photons ensue.
• What sort of project do you want to add? Choose. Time passes.
• What is the number of the project? Choose. Moar time passes.
• How many hours did you spend on it? Enter digits. Gimli's beard gets visibly longer before he gets bored, throws an axe at you and runs off.

Repeat all of the above for every activity you have to enter time against. Or until you lose the will to live.

[Wombat]

BT, you are a bunch of lying fumbling incompetent counts! Most of you probably already knew this, but as I've always been a Virgin customer,  I didn't.  Just what makes you think failing to install the phone and broadband on the contracted date, and now telling me you can't be arsed to do it till the 23rd,  well, just what makes you think that's OK?  I'm in the middle of nowhere with a dodgy variable mobile signal, I'm trying to do charities, I have to make arrangements to fly to Sierra Leone in a couple of weeks,  and I need to be in touch with my ancient mother, and you seriously think that's OK,  do you?

[sib]

BT, you are a bunch of lying fumbling incompetent counts! Most of you probably already knew this, but as I've always been a Virgin customer,  I didn't.  Just what makes you think failing to install the phone and broadband on the contracted date, and now telling me you can't be arsed to do it till the 23rd,  well, just what makes you think that's OK?  I'm in the middle of nowhere with a dodgy variable mobile signal, I'm trying to do charities, I have to make arrangements to fly to Sierra Leone in a couple of weeks,  and I need to be in touch with my ancient mother, and you seriously think that's OK,  do you?

Sharing your rant on twitter or fb might make it more high profile and get a response ?

[T42]

Sharepoint.

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH

Yes. We've got to fill in a timekeeping form which seems to be sharepoint based. Filling it in goes like this:

• Select month from drop down box. Several seconds pass while it sends photons to the States & back (I presume).
• Select year. Several seconds pass.
• Tell it to add an entry. Several seconds of photons ensue.
• What sort of project do you want to add? Choose. Time passes.
• What is the number of the project? Choose. Moar time passes.
• How many hours did you spend on it? Enter digits. Gimli's beard gets visibly longer before he gets bored, throws an axe at you and runs off.

Repeat all of the above for every activity you have to enter time against. Or until you lose the will to live.

Takes me back to when Philips Electrologica UK decided everyone had to fill in a timesheet, and made it retroactive for the last month or two.  Concocting anything that matched reality was impossible, but Activity Code 7, General Admin, was there as a catch-all to pad out the hours.  A couple of weeks later we all got them back to do over again, with a narky letter saying that Code 7 was not to be used, even though re-filling 8 or 9 weekly timesheets was nothing but and the only alternative was to put time against your projects.  There followed dire references to Catch-22, lots of projects suddenly running out of time, stentorian warnings on performance from management and a couple of coders from every branch getting shot in the head.

45 years on, I still remember Activity Code 7 and shudder.  Electrologica pretty well did a faceplant a year or so later, but I was in Paris by then.

[Jakob W]

Fucking bike thieves - OH's town bike disappeared from the front yard overnight. It was locked up and tatty, but someone must have lifted it and stuck it in the back of a van. May they end up under the wheels of a tipper truck.

[Beardy]

Leadership is NOT hitting people with a big stick.
You can't tell me to report an unrealistically rosy picture to the MD with all the risk removed and then tell me that I can't now deliver worse than that just because you told the MD everything was wonderful!

[mrcharly-YHT]

We've just been told that one company owned by our owner managed to deliver a product in record time, by working 12hours a day, 7 days a week. This improved their productivity so much, the owner recommends we all adopt this as a working practise.

[citoyen]

We've just been told that one company owned by our owner managed to deliver a product in record time, by working 12hours a day, 7 days a week. This improved their productivity so much, the owner recommends we all adopt this as a working practise.

This is the bright new future we can look forward to once we free ourselves of the shackles of the EU and its absurdly reasonable working time regulations.

[Pingu]

...Activity Code 7...

Should be a band name.