Somebody (I wish I remembered who because they’d get my vote) was talking on the radio the other day and resonated with something that’s been at the back of my brain (an engineer’s brain) for some time. There was talk about legislating something better, like the NHS or the Police forces or somesuch. This person said we don’t need any more legislation, we need to better implement what we have. This is right on the button.
Some examples:
When I phoned in a statement, the officer read it back to me and I had some changes to make. At one point, the officer had to stop me because when I added a word, the last word on that line fell off the end or the line and he needed to type it in at the start of the next line, and a word fell off the end of that line and then … etc.
When I phoned in an abandoned car, they took a couple of hours to get back to me and ask me were the road was that I’d told them about. The answer was: opposite York police station. The trick here was that although I’d dialled the York number, the call had gone to Northallerton, and the switchboard had no idea that the call was made to the York number. When I later mentioned this to the staff at the front desk they said they have the same problem. They don’t know whether they are calling their own switchboard or someone else’s.
A friend had a bunch of stuff stolen which later showed up on ebay. When explaining this to the police, the police officer said he would have to look at home because they weren’t allowed to use the internet at work.
So here is my (software guy’s) sweeping manifesto for Plice reform
- Give them text editors with word wrap! Notepad is better than what they were forced to deal with!
- Give them and us phones that go to the places they say they’ll go, and give the person picking up the phone a clue about where the person is calling from!
- Allow them to police the internet!
It’s what I see right across the board. Education, health, and policing need some time to implement and refine their tools and processes - time spent with the government NOT putting its oar in and taking up resources in steering groups and fact-finding missions etc.
5 comments so far...
This is just part of a mind-numbing and far-reaching web of inefficiency and maladministration. A friend of mine was on the M3 in Hampshire and witnessed quite a serious accident not far in front of him. He immediately pulled over and called 999. When he got through and reported it, the guy at the other end asked why he was calling Surrey police! My friend said that he didn’t effing know, he just dialled effing 999. It’s the sort of thing that makes you want to throw your hands up. Or does it make you want to throttle someone? On reflection, I favour the latter.
And yet I was talking to a fellow the other month who had had a call from the police asking about stolen GPS’s that had been advertised on ebay (and that he had purchased)so sometimes they do internet
I was shocked to turn up to our local police station a couple of months back at about 5pm on a Sunday, and find the door locked and a little phone outside. I picked it up and went through to Leicester who told me that yes, there _are_ staff inside the station I was at, but I couldn’t see them.
This is not a small village police station I’m talking about.
We had a bomb threat at work. The police were called, we all stood around outside waiting for either the police to turn up or the building to explode (slightly preferring the latter). 45 minutes later we had to ring the police again - they had no record of the first call. It still took them another 10 minutes to get there. Then the police officer asked the security guard how seriously he wanted to take it - isn’t that their job to decide? Still, we got paid to stand around outside on bonfire night and watch the fireworks for an hour. Unfortunately the building never did explode, and we had to go back to work the next day.
Quite right: uber-management sticking the oar in is far too common in many fields these days. Management still knows sod-all about sod-all and should just stick to creaming off the big salaries, having big dinners and wearing bow-ties. If the rest of us were left alone to sort it out for ourselves it’d all run much better. Bring back Matrons and Dixon of Dock Green!
leave a reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.