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We all know that in case of an emergency, you dial 999 and emergency services will come rushing to your aid. Apparently though, there seems to be some confusion on what exactly constitutes an "emergency".
Examples of things you should not call 999 for include:
An argument over the rightful owner of a DVD
Needing assistance in turning on your water supply
A spider in your living room
A mobile phone not working properly
Running out of beer
These are all examples of the thousands of non-emergency calls fielded by 999 operators in the last year. Most calls to 999 are genuine emergencies of course, but calls made either as a joke or because people are genuinely unaware of what counts as an emergency put unneeded strain on the emergency lines.
There were around 19000 non-emergency calls made to 999 last year, but the majority of those were dropped calls, likely caused by mobiles being accidentally dialled or children playing with the telephone. It's the prank and joke calls that are causing the real problems. We're sure the guys who ran out of beer would feel pretty bad if someone with a medical emergency couldn't get through because beer delivery requests were tying up the time of an operator.
Just in case there's still confusion, this is when you should be calling 999:
An emergency call should be made when someone is in danger, a crime is in progress or if a serious crime such as rape or assault occasioning bodily harm has occurred
If it's not an emergency, but you still need police assistance, call 0845 125 2222 to speak to the police.
That's not so hard, is it?
Image courtesy of AlbinoFlea's Flickr photostream 
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Members of three transport unions are downing tools in September. And it's a packed diary of inaction.
September 3: a 72-hour RMT/Unite strike begins at 6pm.
September 4: a 48-hour TSSA strike begins (time not disclosed).
September 5: TSSA strike concludes.
September 6: RMT strike concludes at 6pm.
September 10: a second RMT/Unite strike begins at 6pm.
September 13: RMT/Unite strike concludes.
The strikes are the latest fallout from the collapse of Metronet - the company who service two-thirds of the Tube. The workers are revolting at administrator?s failure ?to provide guarantees that there will be no job losses or forced transfers?.
Hands up if you ever worked for a company that provided guarantees against job cuts.
Chairman of the London Assembly Transport Committee Roger Evans told the BBC:
"This is typically inflammatory action from the RMT leadership, designed to make a bad situation on the London Underground worse. They care nothing for the welfare of the travelling public. Their only concern is promoting their own narrow interests while the rest of London can go hang."
What does this mean for us (apart from having to go hang)? The strikes will directly affect all Tube lines, except the Piccadilly, Northern and Jubilee. The severity is not yet clear - the RMT describes a ?massive cumulative impact? across the network. The trains could theoretically run, but health and safety fears over a prolonged period of no maintenance might lead to station or line closures. 
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As half the music biz is spread out in muddy fields across the country, expect few new on-sales this week. However the best of them are outlined below?
UNKLE is back after a three-year absence from music for a show at London's Roundhouse on Friday 16 November in support of new album 'War Stories'. Tickets go on sale at 9am tomorrow.
Prefer things a bit heavier? Then Avenged Sevenfold play an intimate gig at the 100 club on 16th October. Tickets apparently go on sale at midday tomorrow.
Swedish electro diva Robyn has announced a short UK tour in November, stopping off at Scala on Thursday 1st November. Tickets are on sale now at £11 each.
Finally, if you?re missing out on Reading and Leeds don?t fret ? tickets for next year?s events will probably go on sale on Tuesday morning.
Photo of Robyn is taken from her myspace.
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New figures released yesterday show, well, they show that London is pretty much doing what it always does: changing. Quite how is not entirely apparent.
The newspapers managed to get some headline footage out of the statistics ? the Daily Mail even ran a story about the UK population across the whole of the front page. And of course, there is some stuff to report.
Most significantly, shedsful of Londoners are upping camp and shipping out because of rising house prices (cashing in on or being scared off by). A total of 243,700 left our fair city last year. The overall population of London still managed to rise by 56,000 to a sizeable 7,512,370, which is largely due to the fact that more of us are living longer, and lots of people still flock to London believing the streets to be paved with gold.
It is this ?flocking to London? which is the real reason why the press are buzzing round this story: the immigration factor. Always guaranteed to generate reader interest. Whitehall panjandrums have termed this population shift (city dwellers out, immigrants in) the ?churn? effect, which, although appropriate, makes us feel like so much curdled milk: it is being compared with the same trend as that which redefined American cities 40-50 years ago.
But this is nothing new for London. It has been settled and re-settled back through the centuries, over-run by wave after wave of immigrants, travellers, invaders, the wealthy and the needy, and it is this very fact which defines the town and makes it such a dynamic, multi-cultural organism, like a great big fluffy urban shape-shifter.
The statisticians themselves admit that they can no longer keep track of us all:
"We have seen a very active housing market and some people are moving out to take advantage of the rising prices. London has always been a huge magnet for people and jobs but people are moving about." (subtext: 'they really should just stand still for a while so we can count them?)
and this from an ONS bod:
"This once again highlights that the Government has no real grip of immigration or any meaningful idea of the true number coming to and leaving the UK which makes planning for these large population increases extremely difficult."
Plus ça change?.
So Londonist reckons this is a lot of fuss over not very much.
Image courtesy of victoriapeckham?s flickr stream.
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Wonderful, wizard wifi. It keeps the Crackberry addicts happy, the laptop lovers mobile and coffee shops full of latte-quaffing surfers. We've marked out where to find free wifi around town and want to see more little flags on the map so even more of you can enjoy internet access wherever you may end up. However, there seems to be a gossamer-thin line between free and stolen which was crossed just this week - and it was a bit of surprise to us as that line doesn't always exist...
An unnamed man was arrested for using an unsecured wifi connection outside a house in Stamford Brook, West London, on Tuesday. Police Community Support Officers had spotted him with laptop on the residential street and arrested him after he admitted he was there to use free, unsecured wifi. This is an offence under the Communications Act 2003 and the man has been bailed while the case is with the Metropolitan Police's computer crime unit.
The arrest of the illegal wifi user seems a bit heavy-handed when there must be hundreds of similar cases across the city every day. If you're using something that is wifi-capable while there is an unsecured wifi connection nearby, it will be detected and it will try to connect to it. You can choose to acces the internet through the unsecured wifi connection or not, which is where the aspect of crime / illegal behaviour enters the situation because you have to actively, consciously choose to use something that you know you're not permitted to use...
But... but... but if there's no password protection, then the issue of permission is completely removed, isn't it? All that lovely, fast, wireless internet access is just hanging there in the air, for anyone and anything to help themselves. It's like leaving a fancy car unlocked with the keys in the ignition on a quiet street near a crime hotspot. It will inevitably be nicked. While the arrest of the unnamed man sets a precedent for all those considering a happy afternoon of surfing on a street corner, free of charge, courtesy of an unprotected broadband wireless router nearby, this case needs also to be a precedent for all those who haven't set a password for their internet connection. Accessing wireless broadband without permission or paying for it is a crime; setting up a wireless broadband connection with no password or protection is criminally stupid. Get to your routers and set that code, and let's not hear any more about this unlikely thievery. 
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Despite telling you that Fopp was returning to London very soon thanks to the purchase of several closed stores by the HMV group, we're afraid there is bad news.
Five of the six stores that were planned for reopening do so on Friday, but the landlords looking after the London, Earlham Street site have refused permission for that store to reopen.
A spokesperson for HMV said:
?Regrettably, and despite our very best efforts, we have not been able to persuade the landlords of the former Fopp site in Earlham Street, Covent Garden, to allow us to take on its lease and to re-open it, as we had hoped. The landlords appear to have very definite plans of their own for the site, which we understand are fashion-based. We have no immediate plans to acquire or open any other Fopp sites, but we will, obviously, consider any viable opportunities that are presented in future."
Boo, hoo!
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When Westminster City Council took on the free newspapers London Lite and The London Paper, Londonist was fully supportive. Tired of the masses of papers scattered around the city at the end of each day, the Council asked that Associated Newspapers (owners of London Lite) and Rupert Murdoch's News International (owners of The London Paper) take responsibility for the amount of rubbish they were creating and install 150 newspaper recycling bins around Westminster and arrange for recycling collection.
The Council didn't get quite what they were hoping for, but the two papers have agreed to a scheme that will see them place 40 bins in four key areas ? Oxford Circus, Charing Cross and Embankment, Leicester Square and Charing Cross Road and Victoria station. This should help with reducing the rubbish created by the almost 1 million papers handed out on the street each day.
Currently, there are 20 tonnes of newspapers thrown away each week. That's roughly the equivalent of 17 Mini Coopers each week, or 884 cars each year. That's an awful lot of rubbish.
Of course, it's not as simple as just installing the recycling bins. Ultimately it's down to the commuters reading the papers to decide whether they recycle them or leave them scattered on bus and tube seats. We applaud the Council's effort though, and hope that the scheme is successfull and spreads across London.
The scheme will be in place before the end of the year for a three month trial, and we hope it goes well.
Image courtesy of Tleilaxus's Flickr photostream 
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