If you were in the UK this afternoon and near a mobile phone, you may have heard it sounding an alarm. This was a planned test of the UK’s emergency alert system and I think it went a bit better than the one they tried about 2.5 years ago. At least this time, both my phone and Jane’s went off, although I’ll be interested to chat with colleagues tomorrow morning and find out if anyone got missed.

Even if it did work reliably this time round, I expect there will be further tests in future. Better to find out that a system like this has problems when you don’t need it rather than when you do!