THIS is what I want you to use my personal data for, O2

Give me a good detective story or thriller and I'm happy. Tell me it was based on real events and I'm already halfway through googling it before you have time to shake your head in disgust. What?? I'm a product of the 20th Century media, blah blah. (I'm not inviting a debate on the influence of the media/computer games/scary films on young minds. I don't care what you think.)

Anyhoo - this means that I can happily watch the terrible, terrible people wheeled out for my entertainment on the ID channel all day. Terrible, terrible, awful people with serious mental issues who slash their way to an inheritance or poison their way into someone elses pants. As long as there is a narrative I am able to distance myself from the horrifying and emotional reality.

And thats how we absorb this stuff in the UK. You can watch the news and tut at the terrible 'goings-on'. Not so here in the US.

I nearly crapped my pants this month when, right in the middle of a graphic retelling of a crime of passion, all my fruity devices started blaring out a noise that I didn't even know they could make. And the same message popped up on all the screens, and the TV. It was a proper siren, like the aliens were coming or the government had been overthrown. In actuality it was a kidnapping alert, asking me to be vigilant for a red SUV that was suspected of being involved in the incident. And I can tell you - it certainly got my attention.

So it turns out that the local Police (and presumably any other local authority) can send out blanket public announcements to anyone watching tv/owning a phone in a particular area. This is fucking GENIUS. They did it again when we had a threat of localised flooding. Why in the heck don't we do this in the UK?? This is exactly what I want my personal data to be used for.

I don't know how the incident panned out (and frankly, I'm too scared to look - the horrifying and emotional reality is somewhat pressed upon you when you are asked to be vigilant in the moment), but I would imagine that this system has saved lives, which makes you wonder why its not be implemented everywhere.