Communication breakdown

This made me laugh:

"A HI-TECH bid to stop trouble in a Scots town's pubs had to be scrapped because English call centre workers couldn't understand the bar staff.

Publicans in Elgin, Moray, tried to beat the brawlers by reporting fights to a pager company in Middlesex, who then sent electronic alerts back to the local police.

But by the time the bar staff had managed to make themselves understood, many of the yobs were long gone.

The landlady of Elgin's Ionic Bar, Karen McPhee, said yesterday: "The call centre people often couldn't make out what staff were saying, and the police couldn't make out the messages sent on to them."

And you thought trying to talk to your ISP provider in India was hard work. There's a lesson about technology, globalisation and the limits thereof, somewhere.

[Thanks Will]