WAITING PATIENTLY FOR CRIME IN BRIGG TOT-UP

Brigg Blog generally thinks highly of the national website police.uk through which the powers-that-be now make public the monthly crime statistics for various areas of the UK.
You can see the crime locations and any "hotspots" in well-presented fashion.
However, we have to point out this high-tech system has fallen down at present.
It is now the 9th of the month and the "stats" for February have still not been uploaded onto www.police.uk (we accept it is always a month behind).
Sadly for those in charge, Brigg Blog is like the proverbial elephant and does not forget. We have been back through our old e-mail alerts from police.uk and found that the information each month is normally uploaded from the 1st of the month to the 7th. Until now!
Tomorrow being a Sunday, perhaps it will be Monday, April 11th before February's crimes are made public.
February, of course, is shorter than any other month, so you'd think there would be fewer crimes to tot up.
By way of a balanced report, here's what police.uk has to say about its information deadline:
"We endeavour to update this website on or before the last working day of each month. 
"This update will map incidents reported to the police in the preceding month. 
"For example, an incident of crime or anti-social behaviour reported to the police on 10th January will be published on the website on or before the last working day of February.
"The total cost of the Police.uk contract since the website was launched in January 2011 is £842,128. This is an average of £35,089 per month."
Sadly, Brigg Blog is old enough to remember when a journalist wanting crime information just went to the police station in Barnard Avenue and asked the chief inspector - in person.
This was before "improvements" like voicebanks, where, rather than being interviewed by reporters, an officer recorded a message about the crime and the press then rang a number to listen to it.
Good for the police, as it saved them having to deal with many reporters from different media outlets - TV, radio, newspapers, etc.
The trouble was, of course, that if we felt there was missing information, or anything you needed to check, such as place names, it was impossible to ask the recorded message.
There we go again, banging on about the "good old days". You judge for yourself!
Hopefully, whatever is holding up February's figures will be resolved  and they will be made public.
We then hope normal service will be resumed in future months. As we said, police.uk has a lot going for it.  But if they're experiencing technical gremlins, why not send out a message explaining this to those of us across the UK who subscribe to the monthly e-mail alerts which let us know when the site has been updated?