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If you want to know the time, don’t bother asking a policeman any more. Figures released by London’s Met Police show that officers built up £35,000 in phone bills simply from calling the speaking clock service to find out if it’s dinner time yet.
In total, 110,000 individual calls were made to the speaking clock service by officers over the last two years, and that’s not the end of it, as a further £200,000 in calling fees were accumulated from calls to directory enquiry services from officers out and about with no internet access.
The numbers are at least going down slightly year-on-year, with £16,879 spent on calling the speaking clock in 2010/11 — down from £18,402 in 2009/10. Directory enquiry calls also dropped in 2011, down to a total cost of £95,313 from £121,501 during 2010.
So if you see a policeman looking around and appearing a little unsure of himself, go and tell him what the time is. [PA via BBC]
Image credit: Policeman from Shutterstock
What’s wrong with a watch?
Surely if they’re using a mobile phone to call the speaking clock then there is a clock on the screen already.
The article is a little miss-leading. We don’t use “mobile phones” as such. We use Police radio’s to make phone calls. They use the “Airwave” system: https://www.airwavesolutions.co.uk/ – It’s mobile network owned by O2 I believe. And they charge the Police over the odd’s for the service!
Must say though; I’ve never once heard of or seen and officer on the borough I work EVER phoning the speaking clock.
Correction: Used to be O2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airwave_%28communications_network%29
We shall have to as Mr Delito about this tomorrow.
whoops “ask” not “as”. #wherethehellstheeditbutton
Ass maybe?
You can ass him if you like, I’m not going to judge you.
I will judge you.
Indeed. If he’s reading this he may even add his 10pence worth ahead of schedule (fingers crossed!).
Sounds like they use the speaking clock to pretend to make a call to someone else – you know, in order to obtain some information from a naughty person, as in, an idle threat or something. Can’t really see how it would work though? Then again, like it was pointed out, all phones have the time on them. Either way this is a huge amount of cash.
Not really. It’s about £1 per officer per year, assuming none of the civilian or support staff ever call the speaking clock.
It’s always good to look at numbers in context, as James Ball does a good job of explaining here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jan/19/police-speaking-clock-35000
Granted – but tax payer pounds always seem to be more valuable!
Arguably a tax payer pound is worth an extra 20p as it is not taxed when spent, or is it?
I may have discovered a paradox
Its because when they are filling out an incident report, they have to have the exact time.
Using a watch or phone, if the time is not spot on , it could lead to errors in the times. even just a minute out could mean the difference between a successful or failed prosecution.
By calling the talking clock they have the exact time and there are no quarrels about whether their clock was reading correct.
Are you stating this as fact or it it just a surmise as Catsby8582 (above) says he has “never once heard of or seen and officer on the borough I work EVER phoning the speaking clock.”
But someone must be calling the Clock. As the article points out? I wonder what the hell is going on. Could they be doing by accident?
There was a policeman speaking about it on Radio 2 today.
And…?
And…
“Its because when they are filling out an incident report, they have to have the exact time.
Using a watch or phone, if the time is not spot on , it could lead to errors in the times. even just a minute out could mean the difference between a successful or failed prosecution.
By calling the talking clock they have the exact time and there are no quarrels about whether their clock was reading correct.”
See my previous post.
As the saying goes, if you want to know the time ask a police man, but who do the police ask?
Working in an IT department years ago, there were a deal of systems that HAD to have the correct time on them (To within a second or two) but didn’t have internet access in order to sync to them.
We used to check the time against the clock at least twice a day (These were shitty old machines that drifted). So there is an easy 700+ calls right off the bat without even trying.
I think they just found it comforting having someone to talk to…. especially when they weren’t paying for it
At the third stroke it will be holy fucking shit.
shouldn’t all cops wear a watch? I mean if they need to write up a report for a crime, or whatever, don’t they have to be able to give accurate time the events took place, etc?
Watches are consistent, but not accurate.
Want proof? Next time you are in a room with 10 people, ask all of them what time it is, down to the nearest minute.
Time to buy the police radio-controlled watches; will save money in the long run.