Alexander Chancellor: Can one be addicted to making emergency calls?

The police have been complaining a lot lately about frivolous calls to the emergency services. All over the country people in their thousands are calling 999 for the weirdest or silliest reasons. In Gloucestershire one man called to say that his wife was a werewolf, and another that he was being poisoned by a satellite controlled by witches. In Scotland someone rang to complain about the service he had received at a hamburger joint; another to ask where he could buy some milk. The police have been publicising such incidents in the hope that we will stop wasting their time in this way, but it seems most unlikely that we will; for to call 999 is a spreading addiction. Not all the calls of which the police complain can be described as frivolous. Sometimes they refer to genuine emergencies, but ones that the police consider to have been avoidable. Why, they ask, should so many people need releasing from handcuffs? And why do so many get their hands stuck in letterboxes?

Given that it’s no fun ringing up a switchboard to face a series of questions about one’s name, address, postcode, purpose of call, etc., I wonder why so many people do it for no good reason. Maybe many of them are just lonely and call the one number that they expect to be answered promptly by somebody who won’t put them on hold and who will show some concern for their welfare. Others could be victims of the dependency culture who believe that the state has a duty to solve whatever problem they may have and who hold in their heads only one number to ring, which is 999. A few may also be among those who feel they have to draw the state’s attention to any misbehaviour by anybody else, such as the woman in Scotland who called 999 to report her mother for the use of drugs.