Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed

Even the Prime Minister came under fire regarding the total lack of support during the aftermath of the storms

Yet again, as our cottage was plunged into darkness at 21.52 on Monday 23rd December, we were reminded of the pitiful response from the major power companies.

Our own network made almost £1bn profit in its most recent accounts, its Chief Executive was paid £1.7m and its Asian owners were paid a dividend of £135m.

Last week a Director admitted that the company were culpable by allowing too many staff to take annual leave over the Christmas break despite forecasters warning of damaging storms days before the event. A parliamentary Inquiry is now likely to be held at MPs insistance and the Directors will be asked to explain why 150,000 homes were without power for so long over Christmas.

When will we realise that all these companies are only concerned with profits and not with our welfare? Whether it's Tesco selling us cheap horse meat instead of beef, BT spending millions on Sport and nothing on infrastructure, British Gas and other companies hiking the cost of fuel so high that 30,000 died of cold last year or UK Power Networks making profits for shareholders at the expense of those of us left in the dark for far too long - we must insist that our elderly and vulnerable are taken care of BEFORE company directors or shareholders. We must ensure that our food is safe and our rights to fair treatment maintained.

We were completely without electricity for a total of 70 hours - right up until 20.30 on Boxing Day night. We were cold, dark and damp, but we had an open fire and a gas stove or two - yet being in the Cottage was miserable. 

But we had a lovely Christmas Eve at my Brothers house with my parents too and we had a wonderful Christmas day with the Grandchildren and my daughter and son in law looked after us so well.

Our power is back on, our cottage warm and light - our troubles over for now. Many, who were flooded over Christmas will not be trouble free for many months - the clearing up has only just started - my prayers go out to them, I hope you can all manage to have a Happy 2014 despite the mess and the damage and I hope that we will see an end to the cynical treatment we all receive from these companies. I leave you with a Band we discovered for the first time in 2013 - even though they've been around for 20 years or so - Show of Hands. This song has been in my head for a while now - I hope you like it and can see why.

Happy New Year

Happy Christmas Everybody

To all my followers, readers, friends and family, may I sincerely wish you a very Happy and Peaceful Christmas, a wonderful New Year and an exciting 2014.

God bless us every one.

Skyfall IV - For Your Lies Only.

Five weeks, five days and about five hours later we were reconnected by BT Open Reach and it only took them a couple of hours to sort out the entire problem start to finish. The phone works and so does the Internet - finally.

Why it took so long, why we were lied to time and time again and why they sent a lonely engineer with a single hand held tool box to fix the fault only the day before - goodness only knows for we do not.

We received texts saying the fault had been repaired on 5 or 6 separate occasions, the engineers who turned up only to stand and stare at the broken line several meters above their heads could have made up a football team - and not five-a-side either. 

Even the CEO's office staff were lied to by Open Reach and were as perplexed as we were about the protracted delay, but we have learned several lessons: Facebook is wonderful and we have many friends who put themselves out to help us. This Blog had hundreds of hits so I guess people were interested enough to read about our problems and BT, who have spent hundreds of millions  of pounds buying TV rights to various Sports, have not set up sufficient infrastructure to serve the customers they have. Misplaced priorities? We think so and we will vote with our feet very soon.