t00l4

My biggest issue with what UK did is that it wasn’t an instant emergency. The severity doesn’t matter really - it’s just something that should easily have a prior warning in the media. Just set a threshold of alerts to allow for extra time to notify outside of that channel, it’s not like UK got suddenly dry in 1 minute being lasered by aliens.

I was horse riding. That was quite a gallop we had.

That horse riding was in New Forest. To get to my stables I passed on foot under the railway bridge full of wild horses taking refuge in its shadow. If alarm had fired there, it’s possible I could have been stomped.

All above is a fair risk to take if you want to notify me of a nuclear missile or whatever, and thus I don’t feel like turning those alerts off, but BBQ? Really?

Was it really such an emergency that you couldn’t release information to the media about it and give 24h notice? At least offer some chance to take this information on my own terms and figure if I want to disable alarms temporarily according to my own schedule?

Not that I needed it, I very much know how hazardous fire is - the ground is so hard that my horse really shouldn’t be cantering at all or it may get lame, yet we did because of your message. It’s kinda not easy to stop your horse when there are dozens of wild horses around you scared by your alert.

Nah, it was IMO done without a warning because it was decided randomly rather then triggered by some workflow, a purely performative political gag of PM letting everyone know how he is on top of things and just had a cool COBRA meeting. Messaging media first wouldn’t make people feel important.

Edit: Or just make it a normal text message. Sure, I’m going to read it 15 minutes to an hour later than an instant horn-blasting alert but I don’t think it would really change much.