Monday 21 October 2013

Hot Wired

In light of Autonomous' Mind's excellent post on the stupidity of the media's reporting of our current energy crisis, I had a quick gander at this Hansard account from Thursday 17 October 2013. What's intriguing is the openness of MPs in mentioning the EU when discussing our energy policy in contrast to most media reports.

That is not say though that all of the discussion had a degree of sense. This from Alex Cunningham - Labour MP for Stockton North - in particular struck me (my emphasis):
I think that just 25 people have benefited from the green deal in my constituency so far, but thousands of people across Stockton-on-Tees could have warmer homes thanks to a tremendous project to externally clad their homes run by the borough council and deliverer partner, Go Warm. This has attracted £20 million of investment and 300 jobs. Sadly, a legal judgment means that BT is the only company that can remove the eyelets that support the wires in the houses that are benefiting from the scheme. This is slowing the programme down because of insufficient resources to do the work in a reasonable time. Will the Minister please intervene, tell BT to get its act together, get the work done more quickly and give my constituents the warmth they deserve?
Having dealt with BT for over 10 years in my previous job I can accuse them of many things, but that they are somehow culpable of failing to provide "constituents with warmth" is a new one on me.

5 comments:

  1. It's not BT that bothers me. What I want to know is from where they are sourcing the £20million 'investment'? One suspects that what is 'investment' to them is probably grants made up from taxes from someone else.

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    1. It goes without saying that the "investment" is from taxes

      http://ces-cic.org/aboutus.html

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  2. There's an awful lot wrong with everything said there:

    1) What is this legal judgement that says only BT can remove these eyelets (whatever the hell they are)?

    2) He's passing the buck. As the MP for his constituents, why doesn't he contact BT directly and ask them nicely to get a shimmy on?

    3) Why does "the Minister" he refers to have any right to TELL BT to do anything?

    4) Why does anyone "deserve" warmth?

    5) As already pointed out, it would be interesting to know where that £20million came from - I also suspect that its source is taxation. I.e. moneys stolen from Peter so that Paul can have his house externally cladded.

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    1. Excellent questions. Regarding the legal judgement I have tried searching for it last night and this morning to no avail as yet. Agree with points 2, 3, and 4. As for 5 see answer to Woodsy42 above.

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  3. "Legalities" never stopped builders, or window & facia replacement companies from moving BT's "eyelets". They really mean the brackets which attach overhead wiring to the house. Good luck with getting BT act more swiftly on dealing with that. They can't even sort out damaged or vandalised main cables in less than a week now. The "good old days" of PoTel may not have been perfect, but at least you spoke to someone with knowledge of the system when making a complaint - most fault reception was done by former engineers. Now they are a "communications" company which is incapable of communicating.

    As for external insulation, Pierre Gosselin (NoTricksZone) has posted many articles on the folly of this method, since it is being used extensively in Germany. Major problems with damp, are just one issue...

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