I very rarely read the Daily Mirror, but using my National Assembly Bus pass on the train today (thanks IWJ), I picked up a copy of Monday's edition. (You need to look at the "clean carriages" issue IWJ).
Amongst all the usual celeb crap there was one very worrying item in the paper:
Most people, who I know, always make the same complaint about BT telephone bills - the bill was huge but the actual cost of the calls was a negligible part of the bill. It's the "extras" that cost! Because of this problem, apparently over 2 million households no longer have a land line, they depend on mobiles alone.
Those who have given up the land line tend to be those who are on the lowest incomes.
But government cut backs mean that many services that use to be available through your local benefit office are now only available on the phone.
For example Social Fund Crisis Loans for all of Wales are now dealt with through the Llanelli Office. If you Live in Holyhead, Wrexham, Monmouth or Cardiff, and many other parts of Wales, you have no choice but to phone Llanelli to apply for a crisis payment.
The number is an 0800 one, costs nothing from a BT land-line. BUT you pay full network rates if you call from a mobile. If you get through, the cost of listening to "Greensleeves" (or other tinny music) and being told that "you have now moved down one place in the queue of 43 who are waiting" can cost a fortune. Sometimes it can cost much more than the value of the benefit that you want to claim.
According to the Mirror report calls to the Department of Work and Pensions (the benefits and unemployment service) cost mobile phone users up to £400,000,000 lastyear!
Some tips to anybody who finds themselves with this problem.
1) If you have friends or family with a land line, ask them to let you use their phone to make free 0800 calls.
2) 0800 calls are free from call boxes as well as land lines (if you can find an unvandalised one and can stand the smell of stale urine for 90 minutes)
3) JobCenter+ offices must, and CAB's might, allow you to use their phones to make free calls to benefit providers
4) Ask your local Labour Party representative why the Labour Party, of all parties, has allowed such a situation to arise!
Showing posts with label mobile phones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mobile phones. Show all posts
22/08/2007
Nimcy Jones MP
We are all aware of the acronym NIMBY which describes those who think that a development that benefits many should go elsewhere, as long as it's Not In My Back Yard. In Conwy County we have a mutation of the NIMBY, a NIMCY Not in My Church Yard. The leading Nimcy is none other than local MP David Jones, who is leading a protest at the proposed siting by Ericsson of a mobile phone mast on the highway immediately outside the ancient parish church of St Trillo.
Good communication links are essential to the development of businesses potential in Wales, be it physical communication links such as duelling the A470 (which most NIMBYS oppose) or modern communication methods such as internet and mobile phone connections. Many mobile phone users who travel up and down the Conwy Valley have to own two mobile phones, because you can't get a decent T Mobile signal in the south of the valley and you can't get a decent Orange signal in the north of the valley. A situation that people in the rest of the UK would find intolerable.
If we are to improve communications and get rid of mobile phone black spots we need to build more masts. There are some places where it might be inappropriate to build them, but I can't for the life of me see why the highway outside St Trillo's church should be one of them. Nimcy Jones MP claims that to erect this mast would be nothing short of sacrilege. As many a rural church survives from fees for mobile phone masts that are added to their spires, without claims of sacrilege against them, how on earth can a mast on the highway by a church be called sacrilege?
The MP notes that This is one of the finest churches in North Wales; its tower is unique, topped by a turret known as the Rector’s Chair, whose function was to hold a brazier which would be set alight if warning ships were spied, quite right too. St Trillo's is, without doubt, a fine church of historic significance, but a mobile phone mast on the highway beside it won't destroy any of the church's features and can't take anything away from its historic importance. So what's the problem?
The problem is that the protesters, in general, are people who have made their fortunes running successful businesses or working for successful businesses elsewhere; businesses that succeeded by using every new innovation that was available. But now that they have retired to their idealised vision of north Wales as a rural backswood they hate anything that might enable the local people to live successful modern lives in a modern Wales. People who think that industry and modernity shouldn't exist in their retirement haven.
Of course those who want to live modern lives in a modern Wales vote Plaid - the NIMBY incomers who want Wales to retire with them vote Tory, which is the only reason why David Jones MP is supporting protests against progress happening in his own constituency.
Good communication links are essential to the development of businesses potential in Wales, be it physical communication links such as duelling the A470 (which most NIMBYS oppose) or modern communication methods such as internet and mobile phone connections. Many mobile phone users who travel up and down the Conwy Valley have to own two mobile phones, because you can't get a decent T Mobile signal in the south of the valley and you can't get a decent Orange signal in the north of the valley. A situation that people in the rest of the UK would find intolerable.
If we are to improve communications and get rid of mobile phone black spots we need to build more masts. There are some places where it might be inappropriate to build them, but I can't for the life of me see why the highway outside St Trillo's church should be one of them. Nimcy Jones MP claims that to erect this mast would be nothing short of sacrilege. As many a rural church survives from fees for mobile phone masts that are added to their spires, without claims of sacrilege against them, how on earth can a mast on the highway by a church be called sacrilege?
The MP notes that This is one of the finest churches in North Wales; its tower is unique, topped by a turret known as the Rector’s Chair, whose function was to hold a brazier which would be set alight if warning ships were spied, quite right too. St Trillo's is, without doubt, a fine church of historic significance, but a mobile phone mast on the highway beside it won't destroy any of the church's features and can't take anything away from its historic importance. So what's the problem?
The problem is that the protesters, in general, are people who have made their fortunes running successful businesses or working for successful businesses elsewhere; businesses that succeeded by using every new innovation that was available. But now that they have retired to their idealised vision of north Wales as a rural backswood they hate anything that might enable the local people to live successful modern lives in a modern Wales. People who think that industry and modernity shouldn't exist in their retirement haven.
Of course those who want to live modern lives in a modern Wales vote Plaid - the NIMBY incomers who want Wales to retire with them vote Tory, which is the only reason why David Jones MP is supporting protests against progress happening in his own constituency.
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