Britain’s £25 million ‘nanny state’ emergency alert to millions of phones has dramatically flopped, with alarms arriving late or not at all and BBC presenters left awkwardly filling airtime. The Mailhas the details.
Devices connected to 4G and 5G networks throughout Britain blared a siren-like alarm, vibrated and displayed a warning message for ten seconds at around 3pm – even if they were on silent.
It was the first test of its kind since 2023 and has been criticised over ‘big brother’ concerns over intrusion of the state into private life. …
But in a flop for the emergency system, which will cost up to £25.3 million to fund during its first three years, presenters live on BBC News were forced to fill air time as the siren failed to come through when expected.
Titled “Severe Alert,” the notification which eventually came through read: “This is a test of Emergency Alerts, a UK government service that will warn you if there’s a real life-threatening emergency nearby.” …
However, scores of unimpressed Britons rushed to social media to mock the system after receiving the alert late – calling into question what would happen in a real emergency.
One person jibed on X at 3.09pm: “Well that emergency alert was six minutes late!! If it had been a nuclear alert I’d have had no time to hide under the table.”
Another added at 3.19pm: “My emergency alert was 18 minutes late I’m gonna be f****d if there’s a real one.” …
In other cases, some reported online that they were entirely missed by the alert.
A poster wrote at 4.06pm: ‘Didn’t get the alert again. It’s never gone off on my phone. Was in a very busy supermarket at the time, very few phones went off.’ …
The largest public safety exercise of its kind, it will have been sent to around 87 million phones in the UK, with the Government saying around 95% of the population has 4G or 5G access.
The alarm, first introduced in 2023, is designed to deliver “life-saving information” in times of crisis, such as during a wildfire or storm.
This is due to research showing that emergency alarms can cause participants’ heart rates to spike from an average of 74 to 111 beats per minute or higher.
The joke at the time was, everyone watched the ads, then went…
JXB
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44 Comments
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Gezza England
1 year ago
I was at Shoreham Heavy Horse Show and the commentator interrupted the sheep dog display to warn it was coming and then there were beeps coming at different times all around the arena. Not from me though as I turned it off last time. Although if they do get permission for a battery storage centre nearby it might be wise to put it back on for when the toxic gas cloud is coming from the burning batteries.
JXB
1 year ago
I have alerts switched off so as not to be part of this charade.
brachiopod
1 year ago
The real question is “what f**cking good can it possibly be?” Perhaps the smartarse who thought this up can come online and explain. If it is nationwide then it is a matter for the ‘authorities’ who have the tools – should they exist- to do something about it, if it isn’t then just tell those who are in the line of fire. Telling everyone is just another scare scam to cajole idiots into following any plan HMG wants to
push that they are scared to tell us the truth about in case justifiably we turn on them…. Cf COVID19 gene therapy jabs to reduce population, net zero lies to destroy the economy that sustains everyone but the very rich.
clivelittle
1 year ago
25 million??? Why, how?
RW
1 year ago
I found it by accident when I looked at my mobile for the first time on this day around 4:30pm.
JeremyP99
1 year ago
The only6 real life threat we are under is that of this government.
mike r
1 year ago
No doubt getting ready to send Climate Emergency messages from Ed the Mad.
RTSC
1 year ago
Perhaps it’s an indication that millions have blocked the Government’s fear-mongering propaganda alert?
Lockdown Sceptic
1 year ago
It’s good news that they are so incompetent.
Covid-1984
1 year ago
“SEVERE ALERT”…..we have a Labour Party…….we know Keir 🙄
AnneCW
1 year ago
We have a similar system in the Netherlands. It’s gone off a few times over the years, usually for something local – one was a fire at a local garage; the message told us to keep windows closed.
The one that scared the proverbial out of me in my first week in the country, in early February 2013, was (what I now know to be) the monthly siren test at 12 noon on the first Monday of the month. There were three or four sirens in that area and they all went off simultaneously and lasted for a minute or so. I nearly had a heart attack, then I thought ‘Bloody typical. The week I move to the Netherlands is the very week the Germans choose to invade again’, but I couldn’t think of anything useful to do in such a situation so I stayed put and got on with my day. How my (native Dutch) husband laughed when he got home from work and I asked him what the emergency was 🙄
Thinking about it, I wonder if it’s a relevant difference that our system actually works. Things actually working is a feature of the Netherlands, though the natives refuse to believe it. They scoff and say things like ‘What are you talking about? Everything’s broken here! Do you know, I had to wait TWO WHOLE WEEKS between my last GP appointment and seeing a specialist at the hospital.’ They also refuse to believe how long I had to wait for a UK hospital appointment before I emigrated, or how much worse it’s got in the intervening 12 years.
Richard
1 year ago
In fairness mine went off on time. It went off, I looked at the time on the phone and it said 3pm. So it did what it says on the tin.
Wait, what, it was today? I’ve had my Nokia 3310 with me pretty much all day, except when I went to church. Crickets, tumbleweed
For a fist full of roubles
1 year ago
I am trying to work out how one of these emergencies can creep up on me. You can usually see the smoke of an approaching wild fire, see the rain if you are in a flood risk area, and if it is a nuclear attacked there is duck all we can do to avoid it anyway. In the latter case the network would be destroyed before most messages arrive.
Exactly, grab your favourite tipple and a deckchair, and enjoy the show (until the arrival of the pyroclastic supersonic wind). You won’t know much about it.
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
All I heard at 3 was the birds twittering in the garden. We don’t do “emergency alerts” in our household.
huxleypiggles
1 year ago
“The largest public safety exercise of its kind, it will have been sent to around 87 million phones in the UK, with the Government saying around 95% of the population has 4G or 5G access.”
87 million mobile ‘phones. Not 67 million but 87 million. Interesting.
Given it was such a bloody flop presumably HMG will be in line for a refund from the “service provider.”
Nuclear annihilation in our present circumstances might be considered a happy release.
Sparrowhawk
1 year ago
I’ve lived through the Cold War (landlines could have done it), financial & economic crises, Iraq, Afghanistan, the London bombings, Islamist terrorism, for DECADES and nobody even thought of such a government policy.
Project Fear has subsided, & “Planetary emergency” or “Unprovoked Russian Attack” have not raised it up again, so here’s a novel way to fill the people with ALARM again.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
As I recall, there was a system of deep, protected landlines to be used in an emergency. They carried the Speaking Clock, as a way of keeping them under continuous test.
‘Was’ being the operative world – much of sensible Cold War planning for communications resilience has slowly been ‘value engineered’ out by bean counters…
DiscoveredJoys
1 year ago
Didn’t go off when Labour won the last General Election.
So not much use, really.
Marque1
1 year ago
I have just changed phones and forgot to make sure emergency crap was off. I also knew nothing about it and I was driving in traffic when it went off. Scared the proverbial out of me. I have what the therapist called an “exaggerated startle response’ courtesy of the IRA and I very nearly avoided the alarm straight into oncoming traffic. Twunts!
mickie
1 year ago
They can’t even manage to keep people scared at the right time.
Good. Didn’t affect me, as I’ve switched such things off on my phone, even thought it’s been active all day. This affair reminded me of the old cold war methods, well before the invention of GSM.
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I was at Shoreham Heavy Horse Show and the commentator interrupted the sheep dog display to warn it was coming and then there were beeps coming at different times all around the arena. Not from me though as I turned it off last time. Although if they do get permission for a battery storage centre nearby it might be wise to put it back on for when the toxic gas cloud is coming from the burning batteries.
I have alerts switched off so as not to be part of this charade.
The real question is “what f**cking good can it possibly be?” Perhaps the smartarse who thought this up can come online and explain. If it is nationwide then it is a matter for the ‘authorities’ who have the tools – should they exist- to do something about it, if it isn’t then just tell those who are in the line of fire. Telling everyone is just another scare scam to cajole idiots into following any plan HMG wants to
push that they are scared to tell us the truth about in case justifiably we turn on them…. Cf COVID19 gene therapy jabs to reduce population, net zero lies to destroy the economy that sustains everyone but the very rich.
25 million??? Why, how?
I found it by accident when I looked at my mobile for the first time on this day around 4:30pm.
The only6 real life threat we are under is that of this government.
No doubt getting ready to send Climate Emergency messages from Ed the Mad.
Perhaps it’s an indication that millions have blocked the Government’s fear-mongering propaganda alert?
It’s good news that they are so incompetent.
“SEVERE ALERT”…..we have a Labour Party…….we know Keir 🙄
We have a similar system in the Netherlands. It’s gone off a few times over the years, usually for something local – one was a fire at a local garage; the message told us to keep windows closed.
The one that scared the proverbial out of me in my first week in the country, in early February 2013, was (what I now know to be) the monthly siren test at 12 noon on the first Monday of the month. There were three or four sirens in that area and they all went off simultaneously and lasted for a minute or so. I nearly had a heart attack, then I thought ‘Bloody typical. The week I move to the Netherlands is the very week the Germans choose to invade again’, but I couldn’t think of anything useful to do in such a situation so I stayed put and got on with my day. How my (native Dutch) husband laughed when he got home from work and I asked him what the emergency was 🙄
No doubt then that any future German blitzkrieg would roll into the Netherlands at noon on the first Monday of the month! 🙂
They’re sneaky like that, and it’d work too – it’d be hours before the Dutch did more than grumble about the monthly noise nuisance.
Thinking about it, I wonder if it’s a relevant difference that our system actually works. Things actually working is a feature of the Netherlands, though the natives refuse to believe it. They scoff and say things like ‘What are you talking about? Everything’s broken here! Do you know, I had to wait TWO WHOLE WEEKS between my last GP appointment and seeing a specialist at the hospital.’ They also refuse to believe how long I had to wait for a UK hospital appointment before I emigrated, or how much worse it’s got in the intervening 12 years.
In fairness mine went off on time. It went off, I looked at the time on the phone and it said 3pm. So it did what it says on the tin.
Theres been an alert..?
Yes it was nuclear war… we all died! 😉
Apparently 😀
And lo this day was henceforth named Gaslighting Sunday.
The next stage will be ’emergency alerts’ every time we get a bit of wind called Storm Kevin.
Blaming anything but vaccine harms again
Wait, what, it was today? I’ve had my Nokia 3310 with me pretty much all day, except when I went to church. Crickets, tumbleweed
I am trying to work out how one of these emergencies can creep up on me. You can usually see the smoke of an approaching wild fire, see the rain if you are in a flood risk area, and if it is a nuclear attacked there is duck all we can do to avoid it anyway. In the latter case the network would be destroyed before most messages arrive.
Exactly, grab your favourite tipple and a deckchair, and enjoy the show (until the arrival of the pyroclastic supersonic wind). You won’t know much about it.
All I heard at 3 was the birds twittering in the garden. We don’t do “emergency alerts” in our household.
“The largest public safety exercise of its kind, it will have been sent to around 87 million phones in the UK, with the Government saying around 95% of the population has 4G or 5G access.”
87 million mobile ‘phones. Not 67 million but 87 million. Interesting.
Given it was such a bloody flop presumably HMG will be in line for a refund from the “service provider.”
Yes that is interesting. Some people must have a lot of phones….
I was surprised the number wasn’t much larger – what with people having a personal and work phone perhaps, or a burner phone or 10…
Seems to agree with supermarket estimates of the real population of the UK…
If its late we will have less time to put a brown paper bag over our heads, so as to avoid the effect of a nuclear attack!
And no time to seek sanctuary under the kitchen table. What a to do.
Be sure to turn off the gas, or there may be an explosion…
Nuclear annihilation in our present circumstances might be considered a happy release.
I’ve lived through the Cold War (landlines could have done it), financial & economic crises, Iraq, Afghanistan, the London bombings, Islamist terrorism, for DECADES and nobody even thought of such a government policy.
Project Fear has subsided, & “Planetary emergency” or “Unprovoked Russian Attack” have not raised it up again, so here’s a novel way to fill the people with ALARM again.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
– H.L Mencken
https://fee.org/articles/12-hl-mencken-quotes-on-government-democracy-and-politicians/
Yes I remember hearing the John Lewis bomb go off in Cavendish Square, we looked up and said “did someone drop a skip?”
As I recall, there was a system of deep, protected landlines to be used in an emergency. They carried the Speaking Clock, as a way of keeping them under continuous test.
‘Was’ being the operative world – much of sensible Cold War planning for communications resilience has slowly been ‘value engineered’ out by bean counters…
Didn’t go off when Labour won the last General Election.
So not much use, really.
I have just changed phones and forgot to make sure emergency crap was off. I also knew nothing about it and I was driving in traffic when it went off. Scared the proverbial out of me. I have what the therapist called an “exaggerated startle response’ courtesy of the IRA and I very nearly avoided the alarm straight into oncoming traffic. Twunts!
They can’t even manage to keep people scared at the right time.
😀😀😀
Good. Didn’t affect me, as I’ve switched such things off on my phone, even thought it’s been active all day. This affair reminded me of the old cold war methods, well before the invention of GSM.
In any case, what is the point of a totally incompetent government sending out emergency alerts?
Same here. F. ’em.
Yup, me too. The biggest danger is the government itself.