Education, Education, Education. Thats what we need to do. Along with all the adverts for safer driving/drinking/stop smoking and other sundry public information films we should have 30 second adverts showing what happens when we are tied up with a nonsense call and someone elsewhere needs an ambulance in a life threatening situation. The fire brigade bang on about hoax and inappropriate calls and get lots of airtime to inform us of the consequences...us?...we just turn up for work and do the same crap jobs day in, day out, night in, night out. And the more serious jobs struggle to get the appropriate response. Which brings me onto 'Call Connect'!....Who the hell thought up this ridiculous scheme? So now when someone dials 999 they are not even asked at the start why they want an ambulance, just 'Where to?' And so if an ambulance is available they are dispatched on 'Blues & Twos' regardless of the severity of the callers injury/illness. Just to shave a few seconds of the great god 'ORCON'!!! What happened to 'Right response to the right patient at the right time'? We have operated a 'Foxtrot Oscar' unit comprising a Paramedic and a Police officer to attend all drink related or public order jobs for the past few years and it saves a hell of a lot of unneccessary ambulance journies to A/E. Over the years we have made sure that both ambulance and police controls work in conjunction with each other so everybody knows what everybody else is doing. A national TV/radio campaign to educate the public on the proper use of ambulances and a discretionary charging system by the receiving A/E to deter the regular punters! (I would have liked to gone into depth on equipping all ambulance crews with 'bolt guns' or 'Tasers' for regular callers but I dont think management would wear it?)