The Daily Novel

(Another day has passed without any message to indicate that Sir Michael Rake is making any progress as the new leader of BT. Current state of play is that as from Monday we had a working telephone line at the London flat, but with a different number. Our old telephone number, which was supposed to have been transferred on August 1st, and has been giving a message of ‘you have dialled an incorrect number for two months) now gives a normal dialling tone. So what we don’t know until someone at BT tells us is:

1. Is this new number just temporary while they sort things out?

2. Have they given it to someone else who is never in?)

Number of Days BT has failed to connect my telephone as agreed: 63

Number of Days BT has failed to reply to my complaints and give me any explanation for this delay: 62

Money spent on mobile phone trying to contact a BT human being: £50 plus

Time spent on the telephone and internet complaints: Hours and hours.

Apologies from BT: Nil

Yet the BT automated messages declare that my call is important to them and that it is their policy to reply to complaints in two working days.

The Chairman of BT is now Sir Michael Rake, an accountant with a record quite as distinguished in that field as Sir Christopher Bland was in his. Can he be happy with the way the company he now chairs is behaving? Does he even know how they are behaving?

Maybe not, so if you meet him, tell him. This is what he looks like.

Sir Michael Rake was appointed to the Board as Chairman on 26 September 2007.

He was Chairman of KPMG International from 2002 until September 2007. Prior to his appointment as Chairman of KPMG International he was Chairman of KPMG in Europe and Senior Partner of KPMG in the UK.

Number of Days BT has failed to connect my telephone as agreed: 64

Number of Days BT has failed to reply to my complaints and give me any explanation for this delay: 63

Money spent on mobile phone trying to contact a BT human being: £50 plus

Time spent on the telephone and internet complaints: Hours and hours.

Apologies from BT: Nil

Yet the BT automated messages declare that my call is important to them and that it is their policy to reply to complaints in two working days.

The Chairman of BT is now Sir Michael Rake, an accountant with a record quite as distinguished in that field as Sir Christopher Bland was in his. Can he be happy with the way the company he now chairs is behaving? Does he even know how they are behaving?

Maybe not, so if you meet him, tell him. This is what he looks like.

Sir Michael Rake was appointed to the Board as Chairman on 26 September 2007.

He was Chairman of KPMG International from 2002 until September 2007. Prior to his appointment as Chairman of KPMG International he was Chairman of KPMG in Europe and Senior Partner of KPMG in the UK.

Number of Days BT has failed to connect my telephone as agreed: 63

Number of Days BT has failed to reply to my complaints and give me any explanation for this delay: 62

Money spent on mobile phone trying to contact a BT human being: £50 plus

Time spent on the telephone and internet complaints: Hours and hours.

Apologies from BT: Nil

Yet the BT automated messages declare that my call is important to them and that it is their policy to reply to complaints in two working days.

The Chairman of BT is now Sir Michael Rake, an accountant with a record quite as distinguished in that field as Sir Christopher Bland was in his. Can he be happy with the way the company he now chairs is behaving? Does he even know how they are behaving?

Maybe not, so if you meet him, tell him. This is what he looks like.

Sir Michael Rake was appointed to the Board as Chairman on 26 September 2007.

He was Chairman of KPMG International from 2002 until September 2007. Prior to his appointment as Chairman of KPMG International he was Chairman of KPMG in Europe and Senior Partner of KPMG in the UK.

Dear Sir Michael

I hope that your advisers are putting my blogs on your desk. Because i am later today cancelling my order for BT because they have not only failed to connect my telephone as agreed in the midle of july, but today they have connected me, but with another number!!!

Totally without consulting me.

So the company of which you are now chair is so arrogant, that they do not even ask customers what they want.

This kind of arrogance is worse by far than anything the Post Office did when they ran the telephone service.

Worse still the history of BT on the web does not even mention that BT is a derivative of a nationalised company. They are trying to rewrite history.

This is shameful.

And it is the kind of business ethics which would not have been contemplated by Peat Marwick, who were the root company of the group you have worked for most of your working life.

Whom i knew well when i was chasing Rober Maxwell. He said what he was doing was no worse than what the posh people in the City were doing. He was not entirely wrong, even then.

But today BT, a former pulbic service, still with immense power, is denying its past, and making a terrible mess of the present.

The people who work for BT, and for open reach, which is mainly staffed by ex-BT workers, are decent human beings and very professional. But the managers who have been running BT recently, are hopeless. They don’t know how to deal with customers. And they don’t know how to satisfy shareholders.

I am cancelling my order from BT. I may not be succussful in getting compensation for the huge waste of my time BT has caussed me. But they are not going to get my business.

If you don’t change things, BT will die.

Bob Jones

(Today I learnt that Sir Michael Rake, is now the chairman of BT. He should know what the reality is for the customers of the company he is now chair. Thanks, possibly to my efforts, they are no longer blaming the bad weather for their failure to respond to customer complaints. The automated message now blames the ‘high demand for their services’. Sir Michael should know that this customer is cancelling his order for BT who have totally failed to respend to his complaints starting on August 1st 2007.)

Number of Days BT has failed to connect my telephone as agreed: 63

Number of Days BT has failed to reply to my complaints and give me any explanation for this delay: 62

Money spent on mobile phone trying to contact a BT human being: £50 plus

Time spent on the telephone and internet complaints: Hours and hours.

Apologies from BT: Nil

Yet the BT automated messages declare that my call is important to them and that it is their policy to reply to complaints in two working days.

The Chairman of BT is now Sir Michael Rake, an accountant with a record quite as distinguished in that field as Sir Christopher Bland was in his. Can he be happy with the way the company he now chairs is behaving? Does he even know how they are behaving?

Maybe not, so if you meet him, tell him. This is what he looks like.

Sir Michael Rake was appointed to the Board as Chairman on 26 September 2007.

He was Chairman of KPMG International from 2002 until September 2007. Prior to his appointment as Chairman of KPMG International he was Chairman of KPMG in Europe and Senior Partner of KPMG in the UK.

(This is my final update in this series. Because i started sending out my change of address details today. And one person emailed me to tell me that Sir Christopher Bland is no longer chairman, although he was chairman when i started this series. So from now on this series is renamed; BT: Rake’s Progress.)

Number of Days BT has failed to connect my telephone as agreed: 63

Number of Days BT has failed to reply to my complaints and give me any explanation for this delay: 62

Money spent on mobile phone trying to contact a BT human being: £50 plus

Time spent on the telephone and internet complaints: Hours and hours.

Apologies from BT: Nil

Yet the BT automated messages declare that my call is important to them and that it is their policy to reply to complaints in two working days.

The Chairman of BT was, until last week, Sir Christopher Bland, a distinguished businessman and former chairman of the BBC. Does he know how badly his company is failing its customers?

If you see him, tell him. This is what he looks like.

(This story is now beyond belief. I really thought it was finally happening on Thursday when Dave from BT told me my London phone would be connected on Friday. It is now Monday morning but the line still tells me ‘I have dialled an incorrect number.’ )

Number of Days BT has failed to connect my telephone: 61

Number of Days BT has failed to reply to my complaints and give me any explanation for this delay: 60

Money spent on mobile phone trying to contact a BT human being: £50 plus

Time spent on the telephone and internet complaints: Hours and hours.

Apologies from BT: Nil

Yet the BT automated messages declare that my call is important to them and that it is their policy to reply to complaints in two working days.

The Chairman of BT is Sir Christopher Bland, a distinguished businessman and former chairman of the BBC. Does he know how badly his company is failing its customers?

If you see him, tell him. This is what he looks like.

1.

Home is where the heart is

Said the scarecrow to the crow

Home is where the heart is

And that’s all I really know.

 

This field is mine for all this day

I’ve watched the kids who’ve come to play

I love it here and want to stay

But Farmer Joe is not the kind of bloke

Who listens to what scarecrows say.

 

Today I’m in this field of wheat

And I can see, just past the street,

The cliff top edge.

And farther still, beyond the hill,

I can see old Portland Bill.

On nights like this when I cannot sleep

He winks at me in a code not Morse.

I rack my brains and beat my chest

And give the task more than my best.

I don’t have much time, you see

‘Cause come the dawn

His light goes out

And I can no longer see

What he might be telling me.

 

With light so bright he must be wise

His meaning clear to one who tries.

But I’m so dumb I cannot see

What he surely must be telling me.

This night might well be my last

Chance to crack the code

Cos come the dawn

I might be back to that fieldd of corn

Where the lights I see

Never seem to wink at me.

Where the children never come to play

And I cannot even see the sea.

2

You moan all night and you moan all day.

You don’t even listen when I squawk at you.

You see the sea but you don’t hear it roar

As it beats upon the shore.

And erodes the cliff beneath your feet

When you are in that field of wheat.

You envy me as I fly around

While you are stuck upon the ground.

You can see I love to roam

And do not pine for a place called home.

 

When I was young

I loved the nest

But now I know it was for the best

When I was thrown out into the sky.

I did not know that I could fly

Until I had to fly or die.

 

You moan your lot but it’s all you’ve got

You cannot be what you are not.

So the farmer pushes you around

Shifting your spot upon the ground.

What’s wrong with that you bunch of twigs?

Us crows have much more to fear.

 

Cos if Joe decides you no longer scare

He’ll get his gun and shoot us down.

So rattle your cans for all you’re worth

Be the best scarecrow on all the earth.

 

Home is where the heart is

And that is all I know

And that’s why it does not matter

To which field you have to go.

(I wrote this poem on a night I could not sleep because I was trying to compose an article about the extraordinary scenes as depositors withdrew eight billion pounds from the Northern Rock Building Society. I wanted to attack the over dependence of the British economy on ever rising house prices. It is not only Northern Rock who fuels this boom. The giant in the housing market, the Bank of Scotland, which owns the Halifax Building Society as well as many other companies, is just as guilty of encouraging people to take mortgages beyond their means, in order that they can buy the house of their dreams.

While I was thinking about what the angle should be I was aware of the paradox that I had spent much of the past year in buying the house of my dreams. And I was enjoying it hugely and felt very reluctant to go back to London the next day. When I read the poem as the dawn broke, it did not seem quite right so I stuffed it into a drawer.

Tonight I could not sleep. I was thinking that because of all the time I have been spending trying to make the Dorset house into my version of the Ideal Home I have not written about the current state of British politics. I had planned a long time ago to go the Trade Union Congress in Brigthton and the Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth, both an easy trip for me. The Sunday newspapers were full of the seemingly hopeless task faced by David Cameron as he travels up to Blackpool for the Conservative Conference. Cameron is not only being trounced in the opinion polls he is being deserted by many of the party faithful. Margaret Thatcher has spent two hours in Downing Street having a heart to heart chat with Gordon Brown and Norman Tebbitt, who bonded on that night in 1984 when the IRA bomb rocked the Grand Hotel in Brighton, where Thatcher and Tebbit were staying.

The bomb went off at 2.59 AM when, as Thatcher told the nation the following morning, ‘Denis was asleep but I was working on one more government paper.’ If Thatcher could manage on four hour’s sleep a night what was I doing lying in bed trying to get to sleep?

Surely I am not such a wimp? So I jumped out of bed and ran down stairs seeing the arch showman of another Blackpool conference, Quinton Hogg, ringing a school bell and proclaiming,

‘Do not ask for whom the bell tolls

It tolls for thee.’

By the time I had made a cup of tea, I still had no clear idea as to what message I was going to deliver to David Cameron. So I opened my drawer and re-read the poem. It did not seem so bad, and I saw a way of making it a bit better by modifying one stanza, and cutting out two other stanzas.

If I have time later today after struggling once more to get the kitchen cabinet up I may write a serious political blog.)