Social is hard

When you see a headline such as Police force tells residents to stop reporting crimes on Facebook then you know you're going to enjoy the story. Apparently the ease of posting on Northants Police's Facebook "Wall" has led to a huge wave of real but vague, dubious and odd, and outright fake crime reporting there. Who'd have thought?

I particularly enjoyed:

Earlier this year Strathclyde Police announced the arrest of Andy Coulson, the former Downing Street communications chief and News of the World editor, on its Facebook page.
But because of the design of the site, it was unable to stop members of the public clicking on a button to say they "liked" the development and adding comments about it.

When they say "the design of the site", of course, they actually mean "a fundamental property of Facebook". Oopsie.

I've long wondered whether 999 should charge a standard £1 for calls from private and mobile phones (with the proviso for mobiles that if you're under £1 of credit then you can make the call but the charge is made when you next top up). If something bad enough to make you call the police has happened, you really won't mind spending that money.