So I can send anonymous text messages dobbing in anyone I feel like. So if I plant the evidence while they're at the pub and then I wait until closing time to tip off the filth I can clear up that annoying neighbour problem once and for all.

Strange to think the Bill is actually becoming reality, it wasn't too long ago that grassing was a dangerous hobby.

Couldn't agree more AC

Why not give them another stupid thing to do "because they are bored and got nothing to do"

Suppose they can add it to their hobbies of binge drinking/stabbing innocent people/mugging OAPs.

I bet the Police are chuffed at this innovation </sarcasm>

some examples then:

hlp plz me saw a gangsta wiv blade on Oxford Sreet, he blk, about 5/9, cum quk

cum quik plz, me blood niced my gf, dat is surely nt allowed, cum get em plz.

(not sure whether those abbrevations are correct as I've not been 'down with the kids' for a few years and mobiiles were just becoming mass market when I got my first and have alwayes used proper English anyway and my standard reply to friends that did use text speak was WTF?)

I think thanks to T9 and iTap, the dictionary will look very different in 10 years and thanks to this, we'll have no police left because they'll all have left because they are fed up of being given the run around.

omg sum dood gt pwned bi a gi wiv a nif on da bus frm prtsmouth help omgwtfbbq

I reckon there could be some hilarious consequences of 'pint', 'shot' and 'riot' belonging to the same 4-key sequence...

guy with trnsfrmrs tshrt. snd da shooters.

... so is crimestoppers going to over-ride the policy enforced in many schools that mobile phones are not allowed to be used during school hours by pupils.

Was that yoof speak? I couldn't understand any of it.

I must be getting old. Sigh...

So if the messages are encrypted and randomly routed....how do you peice 2 texts together at the receiving end when you go over 160 chars?

"...he's downstairs with a gun, my address is" "my neighbour isn't paying for his tv license..."

Stop this madness put more bobbys on the beat. Better still put the army on the beat with wolves to sort out all these chavs with dogs. And pets.

er.. you can already do this by calling crime stoppers from a payphone, nothing new.

on a general note, I assume I've just misunderstood but:

'The trial will launch at three schools in Tower Hamlets,'

'In the UK messages can just be sent to 88551, and will be routed to CrimeStoppers'

How will they know the messages are from the trial, and not just any old person texting that number now that you've advertised it?

How many times did you try to write 'smirnoff' before you noticed it comes out wrong?

@ Andrew:

Thank God some of today's youth are still sane!

txt speak will be converted to English after you've sent the message and before Crimestoppers get the message.

They can do marvellous things with computers these days - apparently ...