Emergency Alerts: The Government’s new warning service goes live.

[discobob]

For once I agree with someone from the EU

Wasn’t Bill Gates in the UK the other week? If I recall he was also at Brussels as well and now this. 

[manthing]

CBDC wots that then?

[Sweet11-87]

5 hours ago, Scully said:

Oh please! I despise the ‘if it saves one life ‘ mantra. 
If we lived by the ‘if it saves one life it’ll be worth it’ mindset, we wouldn’t be owning firearms, driving vehicles, flying or anything else that could save one life if we avoided doing it! 
Does the emergency alert inform you what the emergency is? If not then it’s meaningless. 
We don’t get tsunamis in the UK, but an old WW2 air raid siren is sounded when rivers are due to burst their banks locally, but locals will have been aware of the likelihood long before then that is heard. 
What sort of national emergency is going to strike so suddenly that the first we know of it is by phone? 
Folk need to get a grip. 

 

i agree with you for the most part but to play devils advocate,ICBMs from russia need to be in the air 20 mins. probably not enough if youre the target but alot of people who are just on the edges of areas may get safe. 

was 15 mins between planes on 9/11  and an hour before they came down and allot of people on the ground in the immediate area and people waiting inside the towers died becasue of the confusion. an evacuate immediatly text might have saved a good few lives.

allot of gov buildings and places graded high on the potentential for terror activity have NBC detection capabilites. a text  to inform to keep clear if they activate could be  very useful in containment.  the honest answer is idk but these are potential benefits to this.  if you carry a mobile youre basically tracked in a 1000 diffrent ways for a 1000 diffrent reasons and have been for a good while. the ability to let me know im potentialy in danger im good with i dont see the harm. id rather have some info and heads up then decide what to do than be totally caught off guard

[39TDS]

1 hour ago, enfieldspares said:

But now this scheme...have no doubt... they WILL be someone in IT or computing or communications who has got a "nice little earner" out of this contract arranged, no doubt, via some or other "consultancy" headed by an ex-MP, Peer or other crony of the Tories. 

Fujitsu is the company that has been given £5.7 million for this warning and it is said to cost £10k/day from now on.

You may recognise the name, they are the ones that caused that scandal in the Post Office when the post masters were wrongly accused of fraud and locked up.

Michael Keegan was or is the CEO for the European section, husband to conservative MP Gillian Keegan, Secretary of State for Education.

I said the same as you and found this out after. (subject to my info being correct)

11 minutes ago, Sweet11-87 said:

was 15 mins between planes on 9/11  and an hour before they came down and allot of people on the ground in the immediate area and people waiting inside the towers died becasue of the confusion. an evacuate immediatly text might have saved a good few lives.

and the chances of sending a text warning of that were zero even if such a system was in place. Scully is right, it is just to scare people.

I have 3 phones for various purposes, none got the alert. Missus got the alert at 8.30 this morning, presumably she would have heard the ICBM, tsunami, terrorist attack well before that.

[TIGHTCHOKE]

6 minutes ago, 39TDS said:

I have 3 phones for various purposes, none got the alert. Missus got the alert at 8.30 this morning, presumably she would have heard the ICBM, tsunami, terrorist attack well before that.

So potentially we will have further tests?

[Sweet11-87]

1 minute ago, TIGHTCHOKE said:

So potentially we will have further tests?

id imagine so after all it was just a test. things that have been brought up about how usless it was will be fixed it was the point of it to find this stuff out

[1Ab]

Oh the big bad government at it again coming after us with text messages how outrages. Switch off your phone revert back to a short wave radio and morse code.

The next pandemic has already started it's all this anti government brain rot that seems to be making the rounds.

[Wymondley]

27 minutes ago, 1Ab said:

The next pandemic has already started it's all this anti government brain rot that seems to be making the rounds.

It's OK, it takes people's minds off the real issues.

[udderlyoffroad]

1 hour ago, 1Ab said:

The next pandemic has already started it's all this anti government brain rot that seems to be making the rounds.

If by that you mean questioning the government's actions, instead of unthinkingly following the latest insane diktats to come out of...I dunno...SAGE, I say bring on the rot.

Though I will say this seems like, at best, the wrong target for tin-foil-hat-ism.  As others have pointed out, this is useful and well-established tech for places that suffer from extremes of weather, such as Tornado Alley in the US, or areas prone to wildland fires.  This should be less needed in the mild climate that is the UK.

By the way, @enfieldspares there are still sirens at various locations in the UK to warn of impending danger.  Just ask the people of Barrow in Furness (Nuclear oopsie at the sub factory). A quick google reveals Broadmoor has decommissioned its 'escaped mental patient' siren.  Probably triggering or some such 😂

[ShootingEgg]

This is just the modern day air raid siren, I'd imagine when they had the side s first people had similar views of why the hell have we got these.

My main issue is that if it was something very serious like a Putin button press, what's a text alert doing for us... We have no shelters to speak of and with the modern tech in warfare we have no time to react.

The only thing it could be good for is to alert people to not go outside as there is alive terror incident and stay indoors to be safe from it, so in city centre etc knife attacks stay in your office. But then as people have said some phones didn't go off when they should have some were upto 18 hours late etc..

 

[Scully]

22 hours ago, Minky said:

Don't agree, Those poor householders that got burnt out last year would disagree with you.  It   might have given people half an hour  to get stuff like important paperwork out that was burn't to ashes.  It doesn't matter what the emergency is or when the last mammoth went on the rampage but if you're out and about and a lion has escaped a warning alert might be useful to you.  if you think that the government holds you as such a high threat level that you need monitoring as to whether you are at home or gone to Tesco or whether you shop at Morisons or Waitrose or the corner shop then you are elevating your importance.   It isn't some great government conspiracy to find out whose cornflakes you buy. They don't give a monkeys  ..  unless you start publishing documents with certain words such as Bo*b or communicating with individuals that are known.

Nonsense. Without specifics ANY alert is simply an alert and totally useless. 
Whether it’s a rampaging lion, a raging fire, a flood whatever, what’s the point of being told to flee if you don’t know in which direction? Ridiculous! 
For me personally this has nothing to do with ‘big brother’ or conspiracy theorists, I turned the alerts off my phone when I first got it. I don’t get ANY alerts whatsoever of any kind from my mobile. 
The only noise it makes is when it rings or the alarm to wake me goes off. People are so obsessed with their phones nowadays; makes me wonder how we ever survived. 
 

17 hours ago, discobob said:

For once I agree with someone from the EU

Wasn’t Bill Gates in the UK the other week? If I recall he was also at Brussels as well and now this. 

Enjoyed that! It’s nice to hear a rational and sane voice now and then. 
 

[Bigbob]

We had a similar system at work but the students where asked to sign into it , Then the ones signed in we could send them a message get off the street get into a building , get out your building there's a fire alarm They could press a help button and call threw to you (by pressing one button and not your phone number ) great if they where needing urgent help , First aid . And like a panic button where they showed there position on a screen in the control room and on your phone and you had to start making your way to them the minute it went off while  the control room tried to phone them to find out what was up . Most of the times it was a false alarm and you would be called off . i gave up on it and waited till i was told contact had been made or they weren't answering till i started walking as our vehicle would nearly be there anyway but when the screen went live  showing there  location it showed our locations and a selling point was as you asked for help you could see all our guys start moving to your location so you couldn't say you needed help and nobody came . I felt like i was playing adult hide and seek at the end . And often got a row for going in to classes in a seminar room and calling a name out looking for them then and a lecturer would complain but i said there calling for help maybe don't understand your lecture . Most time they had there phone on silent playing in a lecture and accidently hit the safeguard button . It cost thousands every year to buy into then if you won a award a ticket for prize giving was £295 each a table for 12 was £1295  i said are we winning awards or buying them ?But my big boss was high up on the safeguarding and he went all round the  british university's trying to sell it to them , then round the world it was embarrassing when they did a exchange visit with a texas sheriff but then covid came  and now i don't think university's will have the money to buy into it