Say no to filthy Spanish electricity
As we all know, the Little Britain pound is big money. Buy British. British Jobs for British Workers. No element of our lives is immune to an attempted appeal to knee-jerk nationalism. You’ll never go broker appealing to Billy Britain.
Take the Southern Electric representative who just knocked on our door trying to get us to switch our power supply to his company. To say he wasn’t going to take no for an answer was an understatement. When he finally saw he wasn’t getting anywhere, he asked which supplier we were with. Upon being told we were with Scottish Power he replied:
You know they’re Spanish owned now, don’t you?
(Because light bulbs glow that little bit brighter with good old British electricity, don’t you know. Because you don’t want your money lining the pockets of avaricious Spanish businessmen when it could be lining the pockets of avaricious British ones.)
And with his appeal to our patriotism also falling on stony ground, he was gone. I wonder if appealing to British nationalism is in the training manual.
Posted on November 5th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
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The last time Scottish Electricity came proseletysing I asked him to get back to me after he had found out what extra voltage drop was to be expected in the power lines between Scotland and my adddress in London as opposed to that with the more local London Electricity Board now Electricite de France.
He has not come back so I assume he is still trying to work it out.
And, as you might guess the origin does not particularly concern me although I am still not sure about buying nuclear energy vicariously through edf.
I always smile when I think about EDF. Under our glorious privatised market a French state-owned company has a nice slice.
It’s more widespread than that, particularly in transport:
* Netherlands state railways have an interest in the Merseyrail franchise,
* SNCF have their mitts in all sorts including both Eurostar (with SNCB of Belgium) and the train operator GoVia (who’ll run the Olympic trains, amusingly)
* Transdev (Nottingham trams and lots of buses) is 25% owned by the Paris public transport operator RATP.
There’s also London Overground, soon to be part operated by the Hong Kong metro company MTR, the German railways are looking hungrily at the freight company EWS and even the Danish state railway DSB has put in a bid or two.
Of course, our own bus bandits are doing much the same Over There, bringing the benefits of British deregulated bus operation to the Continentals, and much good it may do them.
All in all, if you want to avoid the perils of lax continental transportation, ride a good old fashioned Raleigh bicycle. Oh, hang on, they’re made in the Far East these days…
I’m reading this using Spanish electricity y’know. Mind you, the lightbulb just exploded…
No doubt the cause of a brown-out.
/Sun