In reply to fmck:
> It was a failure of the person to bother to learn his bit of kit resulted in a lot of people being put out and costing a lot of money.
> Paint it what colours you want but that's the facts.
Erm, no.
Until pretty much this exact point in time, getting one of the Services choppers out hasn't really been an additional burden to the taxpayer: central to the provision of rescue cover are the training it provides and the flight hours logged towards mandatory requirements. In other words, two hours in the air spent on rescue are two extremely useful hours that would otherwise be spent going up and down the valleys. Whilst it's undoubtedly expensive to put a helicopter in the air, it's not necessarily an *additional* cost.
With the privatisation, who knows how it's going to be totted up by the bean counters? You may even become right, one day.
As to land-based rescue teams, these famously don't cost the taxpayer anything. Which is how they would like to keep it - as someone who spent a good few years in government-funded SAR (Coastguard CRT), I can tell you that it's a poisoned chalice, as the management seems to be dominated by people who think like you.
As to your inference that the OP is a numpty for not being able to drive his phone, well, he got that one in a while ago - and since he took it on the chin extremely well, nobody thinks the worse of him for it. But your linking of that to presumed disadvantages to rescuers and tax payers, that just doesn't hold water.
I think the Daily Mail allow readers to comment on its website. You might before comfortable there.