Linda Lusardi late for work 999 call

What a fucking moron. I'd like to see some meaningful punishment for people who do this.

Speechless!

"She was given suitable words of advice" ?

What a dimwit.

I caught a bit on the radio yesterday where they were talking about this sort of thing. Bizarrely there was a call from someone who couldn't vote for SCD.

I saw that on the BBC News website - it makes me so angry. These people should be punished! I've only rung 999 once, when there was a car on fire in the alley at the end of our garden.

You have GOT to be bleepin' kidding me.

What is wrong with these people.

GRRRRRR this kind of thing really really p!sses me off.

I used to work as a 999 operator and im now in ambulance control - its the emergency services busiest time of year. I'd like to see people being punished for abusing the service - tying up a 999 line can cost lives.

Avon and Somerset police actually upload recordings and transcripts of inappropriate 999 calls, just to ram the point home.

Here's a sample:

Although I saw one in the paper where a man had phoned up to say the trains running past his house were making a different noise to the usual ("click clunk click clunk" instead of "click click click click") - if this had actually been due to a problem with the rails or the points surely this could have been a genuine emergency and therefore worthy of a 999 call? We don't want to put people off calling for things that could be major problems.

Just read through them all - they would be funny if they weren't diverting resources from genuine emergencies.

Surely there aren't that many severely intellectually challenged people in the UK?

I'm preparing to be shot down in flames for this and I grant you that Linda Lusardi probably isn't the brightest button on the jacket but I can *almost* forgive her for making that call to ask permission to use the hard shoulder rather than just pulling onto it which I think a lot of people might have done in that situation. <dons flameproof jacket>

I have to admit though, back in my acting days, I was stuck in traffic and I rang the theatre to warn them (rather than 999!). The Stage Manager had to delay the start of the show because I had the first line! I was mortified with embarrassment and the atmosphere in the dressing room as I was getting ready was awful. If looks could have killed ....

I once had an argument with someone (online, thankfully) who genuinely couldn't get his head around why "telling porkies in court" (his phrase; mine was "perjury") was considered a serious offence with stiff penalties.

The notion that the whole point of a court hearing was to get at the truth of a particular incident, and that for this reason it might be a good idea to incentivise people to tell the truth from the outset lest the case collapse at vast expense and the risk of guilty parties going free seemed quite beyond him.

Either that or he was pretending to be thick in order to wind me up, which is the more charitable explanation.

Isn't that what understudies are for though?

Why should her being late for work be any more important than anyone else?

I do wonder sometimes.

The thing is, I have an intellectually impaired sibling (ASD and complex brain damage) and even he knows what an emergency is. It must be selfishness and a total lack of common sense rather than actual stupidity.

R-A - we didn't have any understudies!! The audience had to just sit tight while everybody flew around backstage getting me into my costume and my hair/make-up done. Suffice it to say, I was never late again EVER. I've never felt so unprofessional in my life.

I read something by Simon Callow about the first time he missed a cue - and said something like all actors do this once, but they very rarely do it again if they can help it, because they're so utterly despised by their colleagues if they do.

Surely LL does though!

(Quoted wrong bit of your post, sorry)

I'm such a biatch - I'm wondering which Z-lister they'd have to get to understudy Linda Lusardi who has to be D-list if she's anything! ? I mean, you can't imagine the audience charging the box office because they paid to see her and nobody else can you?

Missing cues are OK if they're script cues because generally somebody will feed you the line but missing an entrance cue is punishable by death. It happened to me once but thankfully it was during Panto so I was happy enough to ad-lib to the audience but when it's in a straight play, it's a lot harder to do it and stay in character.

The funniest mistakes are when props are missing! Try ad-libbing your way out of a situation when you hear the sound of a phone ringing but they've forgotten to set the phone!! ?

The third act of Michael Frayn's Noises Off is full of stuff like that - essentially, it's the third time that we're seeing the same crappy one-act farce on which the play is based, so by now we know exactly where the various props should be... but in this case aren't.

I have very fond memories of Patricia Routledge frantically trying to answer the phone and then find it after going through the French windows (and presumably backstage to give the prop person a bollocking), entering again to express her amazement that the telephone should have ended up in the garden.

I love Noises Off. We saw Sylvester McCoy play Selsdon a couple of years ago and he was fantastic. The only play I've seen that's had me roaring with laughter as much as a stand up gig would.

I LOVE Noises Off! When our theatre company did it, we let the audience in on the bit when the set is rotated and the backstage crew all came on "in character" - it was the best bit of the whole show! ?

I've not seen anyone drive along the hard shoulder on this bit of motorway. It's often blocked and you have to sit it out. Most people who'd be stuck on it with her would also be late for work. Her journey to work is no more important than anyone else's. If you need to do that journey, you need to leave plenty of time. It took me 2hrs 30 mins to get to Wycombe recently - it's a one hour journey on a good day! I had new staff coming for an induction. You just have to sit and wait in the traffic.

quite. maybe if she was on the way to fo a life saving heart transplant or something, then it may be justified.

i have a zillion 999 stories. but you wouldn't believe 90% of them. ?

We'd still love to hear them Keef! ?

I'm probably the other way. When the whale came to London I was quite surprised people called 999 to report it. It wouldn't have occured to me to call 999.

Mind you I got told off once for not calling 999 when some drunk was trying to have a poo in my under the stairs cupboard (outside the hosue I might add) it did take me 20 minutes to get through to the useless station/ community support whatever they're called, so I suppose I should have.

I think that with some people it isn't just being a moron, there is deep rooted selfishness there.....'I pay my taxes, they should take my complaint seriously!'

Its not just the 999 services that have to put up with time wasters, it is constant in the NHS. I have witnessed a lady coming into AE with a painful verucca, a man whose finger hurt when he bent it - he had had the problem for 8 months and attended at 3am (because he thought it would be quiet and he would be seen quicker). I would say at least 60% of the people I xray should not have attended the AE and would have been better seeing their GP.

My favourite story is recently there was a patient on the ward who needed a CT head scan. We managed to squeeze him in so that he got it that very day instead of having to wait.....his response. I was subjected to a 15 min tirade of abuse because he had visitors on the ward and he was being taken away from them.... what could I do/say in response? I had to put him in touch with PALS so that he could complain about me. ?

I used to love people saying "I want to see the manager!" when I was 100% certain that the manager would not only back me to the hilt but be much ruder than I'd have dared.

My all-time favourite was a guy who tried to pay with a credit card that had been cut in half and sellotaped back together - he was gobsmacked when I refused to accept it and demanded to see the manager. So I gave him a quick buzz on the internal intercom and explained what the situation was, he laughed uproariously and said "I'll come down, but I'll be taking my time" - in the end, I think he made him wait for about 15 minutes before appearing and telling the customer to piss off. (Possibly not quite so bluntly, but that was the general gist).