There seems to be a rather popular motion laid down in Parliament which quite a few MPs have signed up to about blue light emergency services. It statesThat this House notes that there is no facility to allow people to use text messages to contact blue light emergency services and believes that such a service could assist people needing to contact the emergency services when unable to speak; and calls on Her Majesty's Government to encourage the mobile telephone industry to come up with a text message 999 number through which blue light emergency services can be contacted.This got me thinking about what such messages actually say given the prevalence of "txt speech" which removes vowels or replaces words with numbers, or simply has completely new language in it. For example,
I AV JST SEEN SMN SRVNG UP A ENRY 2 KDZ ON TE CRNR. SND TE RZZRS ROUND QCK!!!I ave to say I do love te bit about people needing to contact emergency service wen unable to speak. Picture the scene, you witness gang violence and hide. You can't call the Police for fear of being seen. You text the new service and they reply but your phone is not on silence.
I NEED A KBB BCAUS I AV NO MNY, BT HV NO STB VST OR PLC ESCRT. DSTRSSD OF PCKHM!?!
HLP FTHRS FR JSTC R ON MY ROOF MKNG A SCN. WTF?
Feel free to come up with your own using this handy translator.
15 comments:
The EDM happens to be slightly inaccurate as well (gasps of surprise from the audience).
Several police forces in the UK already allow people to send them SMS messages seeking assistance.
Hampshire for example has a very good system set up for the deaf to send them text messages - and it has quite a good short code (80999).
The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has already also asked the Hampshire force to develop the system so one number can be used nationally.
http://www.hampshire.police.uk/Internet/advice/plod.htm
MY CT IS STCK UP A TREE AND I NEED A FR ENGN 2 RSC IT RGHT NW.
SMS works on a "store and forward" with no prioritisation methods. Furthermore, it uses marginal network resources which aren't always available.
What does this gobbledegook mean? That there is no gurantee of the message getting throu and it may take days in busy periods ie when there is a major incident. New Year's Eve is a classic and it sometimes takes days to clear the backlog.
Typical MP's, come up with a PR stunt and fuck the consequences.
From you hear 999 calls are often very garbled and it can take some time to extract vital information like what has happened, where it is and which emergency service is required.
Text messaging is a one-way system so it is going to take time to get the full story.
Also when you dial 999 you get through to the emergency operator fairly fast, I believe the mobile operators give no guarantee of how long it will take to deliver a text message. It might be a minute, an hour, a day or a few days.
I can see that there is a need for a text service to be available for the deaf etc but not as an alternative to the 999 service.
There have been a number of occasions where people have sent text message to a friend when they have had an accident in the mountains and then their friend has dialled 999.
It sounds like some MP has just discovered the text message system and is trying to prove how "with it" he is. I suppose we will next have calls for a Myspace site for 999 calls?
Did you know Christopher Glamorganshire? What's the gossip?
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics-news/2008/07/09/sacked-blogger-s-taking-case-to-tribunal-91466-21308104/
I MST SY DZZY THT U HV A VVD IMGNTN. I JST LV TH SCN OF SMN BEING EXPSD BY A CHRPNG MBL. :-)
FREAKY SCT TRSPSSNG IN DWNNG STREET GT HM OUT QCK
Really, textspeak jokes? Didn't they go out of fashion with newspaper headline writers about 5 years ago?
Although the Harriet Harman one was quite funny.
Not quite related to this topic but why has there been so little coverage in the media about one of the UK emergency services having been on strike effectively every other week for a couple of months?
It is the Coastguard who are on strike from yesterday and will be until the end of next week. They will work normally for a week then be on strike again. They are taking emergency calls only during this time.
If the Metropolitan Police were only taking 999 calls for a week then it would be headline news.
As a non-user of mobile phones (even though I was the Executive responsible for preparing the licences to develop them, back in 1985!) I don't know this text-speak. I'm still learning LolCats language. However I can do upside-down calculator stuff (for those old enough to remember that)...
I R STLKNG TM IRLND BT DNYNG IT AS I R A SMG TRY CNT
EXPSD AS A GTLSS BSTRD
Notice you dont post any that aren't complimentary about you Phil. Then again ,I'd avoid phones if I were you!
Oops that buggered that accusation didn't it. You see the thing is Mr Anonymous I actually have a life and so am not constantly in front of my box. In past times I might have been but not now. In fact I'm not even of any of my machines now. I'm actually standing in the garden typing this on my phone now that it is charged.
Now on the matter of Tim exposing me, he did nothing of the sort. Tim loves to accuse me you see of all sort of things, I particularly enjoyed his claim that I had 'rewritten history' with his screenshots of my post. There are however, some severe errors of reasoning on his part. This is of course to be expected as he constantly and relentlessly draws inferred conclusions from false premises.
For example, in the case of the screenshot, he has failed to draw attention to the timestamp changes and the comment about editing the post and then leapt, as always, to the crazy conclusion that I edited something in order to make something appear to be done before he did something. He's made yet another of his mistakes about assuming motive with no evidence for it besides his own delusional self-importance.
Next up we have his crazy inference that I got his number off a database. This was inferred from comments I made that were statements of fact and not statements of where I got his number. I have told him more than once that I was given it.
As for his faux outrage about being called by me, I notice that he's not told his readers about the bloggers he has called up demanding why a comment has not been published. Of course that is not stalking or making nuisance calls, it's all about integrity and blogging ethics with him. Just like getting on a train from Guildford to London and going to court to watch sentencng of another of his blogger targets is not stalking and his about integrity.
The man's a complete hypocrite of the highest order who selectively quotes people and projects what he is doing on to others. His beef with me is not what I write but the fact I've actually engaged with his attention whoring and fought back using his own tactics but unlike him I am happy to stand up and tell people I have done it. You just won't find him linking to the instances on his blog because they blow a hole in his alleged exposes. Now, kindly sod off.
Sorry Phil, but having seen your activities elsewhere I don't really think I'd trust you to tell me the correct time, let alone anything else.
Lets face it matey, you're Guido Lite, you're the Diet Iain Dale.
You're a tedious stalking pillock who likes to accuse others of being stalkers.
You're a tit who thinks he's on a par with Dale & Staines, a blogger wannabe.
A blogger neverwas mate.
Hahahaha is that the best you can muster? I'm not on a par with Iain or Guido and never will be because I, unlike them, have not been involved in politics for eons. I quite like it that way as well. Clearly though I'm important enough for you to want to comment and ignore what has been said, makes me wonder though... If I am such a lightweight why you're bothering.
At the end of the day the bottom line is that Tim has called up other bloggers because his comments had not been published. He's a hypocrite that constantly accuses others of what he himself is engaged in. He's an attention whore that got owned. Maybe we should settle our differences in a Quake Arena and the he can get owned again.
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