what if I really needed the police...?

At work today we had an incident which meant i had to send one of our drivers to a police station. I won't bore you with all the details that led up to that, but it ended up with a baby of under two years old, left in one of our cars by a passenger while he was out of the car doing something (probably) dubious.

The driver called me and explained this kid had been in the car for some 40 minutes, and he was unable to contact the parent/passenger. I tried the phone but came up blank. Another 10 minutes and i instructed the driver to drive to the nearest police station, explaining i would call the police so they were expecting him when he arrived.

I googled the police in Southwark, and got a number, thinking i would be able to talk with the police station. Surprise surprise! Call centre in East London! Explained to the operator what I needed, and why and she offered to put me through to the station concerned; then discovered she actually didnt know how to put a call through. I have to ask myself why on earth someone is operating a switchboard at all if they don't know how to transfer a call?

Anyway after several abortive attempts she offered me the direct line phone number, and i duly dialled the police station myself. No answer. The phone rang and rang, and eventually someone picked up and dropped receiver back in the cradle. This happened twice more, by which time the driver was at the station, and awaiting my confirmation that I had spoken with them.

I couldn't give that confirmation because the police didnt answer the phone!

Now, as it happens, we didnt need to escalate the situation: the passenger called the driver and that all got resolved.

But.. if i had had an urgent need to talk to the police at that station, then I may well have had a big problem. These are the people who are charged with upholding our laws, and they can't even answer the damn phone?

I ask you.....

A time to catch up...

So here we are, April 2009 and a decision to change some of the ways I use the net.

Hence this blog. I have blogged before but not for some time, and not for any great length of time. When i started blogging some years ago it was about very specific subjects but I want this to be all-encompassing, giving me the opportunity to say what i feel about anything and everything that catches my attention: whether it be my own life, something i see in the news, or anything else i feel moved to write about.

I have a lot of catching up to do in terms of where I am at present and i will do that in the next few weeks as i find suitable reasons to write; hopefully it wont all be too boring.

So, I will be jumping about from time to time with subjects that catch my attention; sometimes the posts will be longer, as some background explaining might be needed, other times there may just be a comment. i will add links in the posts if it makes sense.