On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 Steve Fitzgerald wrote:

In message , Graham J
writes
Nope, it's an 020 number.

Well done on generating about 30 responses from such a simple remark.

Thanks also for showing that it isn't just me that gets irritated by it.

Mayday University Hospital still sends out appointment letters with an 0181
number appearing on them so I suppose that is even worse than it would be if
they used 0208.

No doubt they will just change the 0181 to 0208 on the replacement batch
of letters they order, and perpetuate the confusion :s

I really can't understand why this has all become so confusing.

I can. It's because the London numbers changed from 071 and 081 to 0171
and 0181 at the time they introduced area codes starting 01. Had they
gone straight to 020 at that time, much of the confusion would never
have happened.

Everybody who rings numbers locally in London can just dial the last 8
digits of the 'full' number, so it should be obvious that the dialling
code is 020 from that. I suppose with the advent of mobile phones,
people are more and more used to dialling the full number wherever they
are - I know I frequently do.

And that is of course what you have to enter into a Caller ID phone
memory to get it to display the name.
--
Thoss