My point is that ORCON is clinically pointless - if you want to count targets then count the survival rate of cardiac arrests. Count the asthmatics that don't need to go to ITU. Count overall survival rates. The 'Be there now' is for your cardiac arrests, by eight minutes you have suffered so much hypoxic damage (especially without bystander CPR) that your chances of recovery are next to nil. You agree with my point that ORCON is clinically useless - even though it was part of a clinical paper over twenty years ago. So why are we changing the service to serve this made-up number at the detriment of patient care? We take people off of ambulances to man FRUs, only to leave the FRU sitting at scene for 45 minutes because there are no proper ambulances to take the patient to hospital. It's the reason why I came off the FRU - I came too close to watching people die in front of me to be happy doing it anymore. I agree completely that the telephone triage that we use is awful (but that it has to be) and that call takers should be clinically trained - but it would cost too much money not only in training, but also in AfC wages. I've been shouting that first aid should be part of the national curriculum ever since it came in (I was training to be a teacher at the time...) So should education - but unfortunately I think that it would be countered by the 'me first' culture that seems to have taken over in the UK. The vast majority of crews on the road will tell you that ORCON is a pointless target. One that the government uses so that it can 'tick box' ambulance trusts as failing, or not failing (and therefore cut the budget of failing trusts).