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No danger that they will be receiving any donations from me then!

I have just read on one of the Google Telecom Groups. That on BT Newsline today(I presume its an intl commununication line? unless you know different). That a second emergency response number was set up quickly by BT on thursday at the request of the Met.But wasnt needed.It didnt indicate if it was geo or ngn.

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This is apparently a telephone news service for BT employees only.

By the way Big John you do realise that there is currently no higher category of membership on this forum than Superior Member?

It was just that you looked as though you are desperately trying to head towards the 1,000 posts mark.  I am no shrinking violet on the posting front in this forum but even I cannot possibly keep up with your daily rate.

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Dorf,

We may disagree sometimes but you and I are as one on this matter.

My late father died from a sudden totally unexpected massive heart attack 8 years ago at the age of 64,  when he was at the peak of his career and in the midst of absolutely everything - no sign he was ill.

As a result of this enormous shock I broke the habit of a lifetime and subsequently made a donation for £30 in response to a charity mailshot (the only charity giving that I normally did was to buy poppies for armistice week and buy lifeboat stickers) from the British Heart Foundation.

As a result of this huge error of judgement on my part I was then subjected to a veritable orgy of begging letters, almost fortnightly, from their then funding director, Liz Mather, imploring me to sign up to monthly lifetime giving plans out of my salary and highlighting numerous schemes to make unhealthy fat people healthy because apparently having a heart attack was always entirely preventable and your own fault (I think not but that is how all their marketing of the time was pitched).

They then followed this up with one of the most tasteless tv ads I have ever seen where a gentleman was shown endlessly smoking, overeating and downing pints in the pub only to find himself in a busy station forecourt having a massive heart attack where he collapsed and probably died.  The message seemed to be that all heart attacks are self inflicted, a case which can only actually be made out for something like lung cancer.

I then wrote to all their board members (a considerable effort in 1998 as universal email did not exist) asking if their trendy young fund director, Liz Mather, actually knew what she was doing and citing my father's case.  I also cited that the BHF offered absolutely no counselling to those who had lost relatives through sudden heart attack death and also at the time was doing nothing to get more defibriolaters out there instead of berating people for smoking and eating and drinking too much.

I received a letter from their chief exex saying it was not their intention to upset me etc and also that they were in the process of reviewing this type of tv advertising campaign.

Interestingly since then they have never again carried out such an unpleasant television advertising campaign and they now extensively campaign for the provision of defibriolaters in public places.

I am sure that I was not the only one to write to them in these terms but it seems that sometimes some organisations do listen to criticism if there is enough of it.

It does seem a great shame that an organisation like the Red Cross, with such a good historical reputation, is now in the hands of such mindless and "polictically correct" people.

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BT Newsline is a telephone news service for employees only though.   It has nothing to do with the main bt.com news area of their website.

See http://www.btplc.com/Societyandenvironment/Socialandenvironmentreport/Employees/...

FOI response from MPA to my request of July 7. I will see what arises from my requests to PITO before deciding whether to request a review.

>>

Thank you for your email regarding the Casualty Bureau telephone number.

The 0870 telephone number used for Casualty Bureau was provided to the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) by the Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO).

The contract that dictates how the number is operated and the call charges was negotiated directly between PITO and Cable and Wireless.

By using this service, which allowed us to use the resources of all UK police forces by distributing calls, we were able to have five times as many people answering calls from concerned members of the public than we would otherwise.

If we did not use this system we would have had to rely on the Met's Casualty Bureau facilities at Hendon where 40 people can take calls at a time. The system PITO provided allowed 200 people to take calls.

The MPS does not profit from this number and is one of many forces that rely on this system to provide an emergency high-volume telephone number.

Naturally we would have preferred a number that did not impose a charge on the caller. However, there was no immediate alternative available to the MPS that would have allowed such a volume of calls to be taken in the hours after Thursday's incidents.

Once the issue was identified, the MPS arranged with PITO for a local London number to be activated. This gives callers an alternative means of contacting the Casualty Bureau.  This number is 0044 207 158 0010

I hope this information is helpful.  However, if you require further information on this matter you should contact PITO.  The contact details are provided below.


Corporate Communication Team
PITO
New Kings Beam House
22 Upper Ground
Blackfriars
London SE1 9QY

+44 (0)20 8358 5555

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My specific questions were:

1 - What is the underlying geographic number to 0870 1566 344?
2 - Why was a non-geographic number used for the casualty bureau?
3 - Does the Metropolitan Police recognize the difficulty in calling the
0870 number from overseas and if so, why wasn't an alternative number
provided?
4 - Which party receives the revenue generated from the 0870 number and how
much has been generated?
5 - Is the Metropolitan Police aware of the government's own advice
regarding call centers and 0870 numbers? This information is provided by the
COI and can be found at http://www.coi.gov.uk/ccg/download.php 'cost to
citizen' update.

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This was my first initial thought, however looking at what I specifically sent, this *was* my FOI request to the MPA. The response seems to, perhaps quite correctly, want to deflect any further enquiries to PITO. The response was from the MPA Information Officer. She is wrong about a number of assertions however I am mainly interested in the FOI responses to two requests I have made to PITO and one (or is it two) that I have made to Ofcom.

Just about sums things up:

Source: http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2005/07/12/210830/Pitofacestwoyearsofunce...

The Police IT Organisation could have to wait another two years before its future becomes clear. 

The organisation, which is charged with steering national police IT systems and strategy, was slammed in an independent Home Office report last month.

The Report of the Review of Pito said the organisation should be scrapped. "The present structure and organisation of police ICT lacks clear definition or purpose, results in confused lines of responsibility and is almost certainly poor value for money," it said. [...]