In what has become an annual feature, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has published a sampling of the most ridiculous requests and questions that its Contact Centres received from British nationals in 2014.
Some of the priceless requests, among the 365,000 calls that Foreign Office contact centres received last year from Britons around the world, included: a) a British woman asking the Consulate in Albania how to find out if her son’s fiancée was already married; b) a caller asking for advice on how to treat a cat’s infected paw; a woman in Italy calling to enquire how she could synchronise her TV antenna to receive English channels
Foreign & Commonwealth Office Minister, David Lidington politely informed potential seekers-of-information what missions overseas can and cannot do. “We can issue an emergency travel document if your passport is lost or stolen, offer support if you become a victim of crime or visit you in hospital or prison, but we aren’t able to pay medical bills, give legal advice or get you out of jail, or indeed act as veterinary surgeons.”
The head of the FCO’s Global Contact Centres, Meg Williams, added that the number of people who have knowledge of what embassies and consulates do has dropped to the lowest in three years among young people (aged 16-24), from 62 per cent in 2011 to 55 per cent in 2014. Little wonder then that 38 percent of all calls in 2014 were not related to consular duties at all.