you've pretty much echoed the thoughts of every ambulanceman but how do we target these appeals at specific groups of time wasters? I've lost count of the number of elderly patients at eight in the morning who've had chest pain for hours, or who have sat on their bedroom floor, unable to get up in a cold bedroom. and what do they always say when you ask them why on earth they didn't call us sooner? "You're very busy and I didn't want to waste your time." How many of the DOAs we go out to in the daytime had exactly the same thought during the night, right before they died? The elderly and disabled who so often need us so urgently falsely assume that "one of these is a taxi" and "call an ambulance for the wrong reason and someone could die" is aimed at them. If i had the answer to this i'd be on band seven ;-)