On Thu, 19 Jan 2006, Dr John Stockton wrote:

JRS: In article , dated Wed, 18
Jan 2006 22:42:15 remote, seen in news:uk.transport.london, Jack Taylor
posted :
Martin Underwood wrote:

I would have phoned 999

I've never understood why we don't have a 'serious but not emergency'
number to call in this country,

Indeed.

In fact, all the public services, in a fairly wide sense, should have
national numbering - a "STD code" meaning "I want the one that deals
with matters local to this phone (or exchange) (or here, if dialling
from a mobile) followed by a fixed number for each service (Council, MP,
Police, Coastguard, Zoo?, BBC, Press, etc.) with perhaps two more
digits, always 00 for general and others for major departments - maybe
always 99 for "urgent".

That's a rather good idea. It might not be completely workable for
everything you might want it to work for, but it would certainly cover
enough things to be extremely useful.

The definition of "local" would depend on the service; a call to
Coastguard from Wapping should get someone Thamesside, but one from
Birmingham would probably go to national HQ.

Or the fire brigade's canal rescue unit.

tom

--
Argumentative and pedantic, oh, yes. Although it's properly called
"correct" -- Huge