News Round Up

by Patrick O'Connor

IT always makes staggering reading to see what sort of crazy reasons people come up with for dialling the emergency services 999 number.

A story in The Guardian quoted examples such as a caller who rang police 23 times asking for a lift from Hartlepool to Stockton and a 17-year-old girl whose hoax call about a bomb in Middlesbrough town centre caused chaos as the whole area was evacuated.