Lunacy of the week

I have decided to resurrect this dear old column. Readers will recall that the original idea was to publish a 'lunacy story' every Friday. Only two articles were published, and the column has been resting for a while now. I have decided to resurrect it because there is only so much lunacy one can observe in this country without comment.

This week's award goes to West Mercia Police Force. Ideally, I should wait until the end of the week before announcing a winner, but I very much doubt that anyone can top the West Mercia police this week.

The award goes to that police force for spending £200,000 on hiring a certain American 'motivator' to give 'politeness training' to its 999 operators. Apparently, part of the course taught by Mary Gober involved teaching the 999 operators to say 'welcome' instead of 'hello'. Yeah right, like when you call 999, you particularly care what opening words of greeting the operator uses. She also taught the operators to avoid using the word 'can't'. Quite right. What more do you expect from our police? 'I called 999, but they were unable to send an ambulance right away. It doesn't really matter as the operators were very nice'.

The award is in the post.