EMERGENCY! Paging Dr Beat!

So by now you've all heard about the coming test of the new emergency alerts through mobile phones. I was just thinking if you might be able to set a celebrity voice, or your own tone, like on Sat-Navs. A bit of Gloria Estefan as the world comes to an end, might just make the whole thing a bit more bearable

You know, I once had one of those Sat-navs with a celebrity voice. It was Fleetwood Mac. Problem was, the damn thing kept telling me to go my own way

Anyhoo, back to the topic at hand. The Government is going to test an early warning system that will send a loud and annoying alert over eveyones smart phones. A few people are Twittering and Blogging about it

Leg Iron thinks you may not be able to opt out of the system

Longrider says you can

I don't know for sure, I've not checked my phone yet

Everyone seems in universal agreement that the system is pointless and the type of emergencies we get in England, in no way warrant it. We get no earthquakes, volcaonos or Tsunamis and our extreme weather events, although described in armageddon-like terms by the Daily Express and GB News, are usually just a flurry of snow or some heavy rain

Reading AK Haarts take on it this morning, I was reminded of the time when I had first hand experiece with these alerts. It happened in Corfu and must have been introduced fairly recently, as I've never known about it before

Unfortunately, it was during the first few days of the Ukraine war. Both mine and the Mrs phones went off at the same time and it made an incredible racket. I looked at the screen and it was flashing, "EMERGENCY ALERT!" and big red letters with a warning triangle underneath

You know when you have a split second where a million thoughts fly through your head at once? Well I was convinced a nuclear attack had started and I was up and looking for somewhere for us to shelter. We were on the apartment balcony, but I knew the second floor apartment was too small and had too much glass to offer any protection, so I was looking at the derelict building over the road, for a possibility of hunkering down and riding out the attack..

...Then Mrs Bucko said, "All that for a fucking thunderstaorm? We usually see two or three of those every time we come. WTF?"

So I rechecked the alert and in smaller letters underneath, it said, Extreme weather event. Thunderstorm coming. I wish I had read the whole bloody thing first

Most people seem to be talking about turning this alert thing off with immediate effect. If the Government was sane, they would test it the once and then leave it for a real emergency situation, like an actual nuclear attack. If that were the case, I would leave it turned on, but I don't trust our Government not to use it every time a bit of snow falls or the rain gets a bit wet, just to keep people scared

Actually having experienced it, albeit in another country, it was used to warn of a thunderstorm that turned out to be no worse than all the other thunderstorms they have in Corfu at that time of year, so if the Greeks can be dicks about it, I've no reason to think our Government won't be too

I think I'll leave it on for now, to give them one chance, but if it goes off for something less than a biblical scale incident, I'll do another blog post about the time the Government used the emergency broadcast system to say, 'Everyone inside, it's spitting', then turn it off