Comments on: Why Britain’s watchdogs have fewer teeth than goldfish

By: mikesey

mikesey — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:13:01 +0000

One thing that the Tories have promised to do, when they get power, is to dismantle these wasteful-of-money quangos; Ofcom in particular, hopefully Ofgem too. Both of these don’t have the consumers’ interests at heart at all. Ofcom took all the caps off BT., to allow them to raise their prices, now we have to pay a “Connection fee” for all calls. Ofgem, has done absolutely nothing to check the rising prices of the greedy foreign-owned energy firms.

By: Alan

Alan — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:54:32 +0000

Adn remember that many of these public employees are looking to work inthe industry they are supposed to monitor. How many Govt health officials move into positions in the medial industry, MoD employees and Govt ministers offered positions within defence contractors, and so forth. Mr Graham doubtless does not intend to keep his current role for life, and will be looking for a movee in the next 2-3 years, perhaps a role in the IT/Telecoms industry…

By: Tony Hague

Tony Hague — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:06:30 +0000

Remember that the so-called “watchdogs” are staffed by civil servants. I personally have known civil servants who were actively planning and looking forward to their retirement by the age of 30! With such attitudes, changing the man at the top is irrelevant.

By: John McDonald

John McDonald — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:58:29 +0000

I sent primae faciae evidence to the Information Commissioner about blatant, wholesale, institutionalised flaunting of the Data Protection Act. Action taken – zilch, rien, niente, nowt! What a complete and utter waste of taxpayers money.

By: Barrie Callender

Barrie Callender — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:21:40 +0000

While “T-Mobile had little choice but to release a confession …”, I wonder how many of the other four were in receipt of stolen goods.

It’s been a similar story for years. Who polices the Police, who watches the Watchdogs?

By: Burnt out

Burnt out — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:17:40 +0000

In our experience, Ofcom is utterly toothless, and a complete waste of time.

To cut a LONG story short, we reached a stalemate after trying to get BT to remove a DACS (digital multiplexer) from our line. Despite Ofcom passing a rule in 2006 that BT *MUST* remove a DACS on request, they would not enforce this; in fact, all Ofcom did was refer us back to BT with some nonsense about “functional Internet access”. They denied any responsibility, claiming their role is not to investigate complaints against service providers, but simply to “provide information to the consumer”.

So we continue, in 2009, to be stuck with a painfully slow and essentially unusable Internet connection that is limited to a maximum speed of 33,600 bits per second. To illustrate this, it takes over 7 minutes to download the PC Pro homepage. As I explained to Ofcom, we had a faster connection than this 12 years ago!

My business has been ruined, not to speak of my mental health, yet the organization appointed to deal with rogue companies like British Telecom doesn’t care two hoots. In this case it has actually pandered to BT’s interests. So this begs the question: What is the point in a ‘watchdog’ that is of absolutely no use to those that it is supposed to protect?

By: Tibbs

Tibbs — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:15:55 +0000

Good stuff, Your not the only one who knows our government quangos are incompetent, wasteful and mostly pointless.

Steve S comment “The Gov’t worker gets paid whether action is taken or not.” is the key, I think that’s why they don’t even try, why create work for themselves when they can do nothing and still get paid.

By: Steve S

Steve S — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:43:42 +0000

This is an area where England is still stuck in the Feudal ages. The Gov’t worker gets paid whether action is taken or not. In countries where the person is more important than a transient company they can personally sue which actually gets companies to change. And a lawyer who gets paid by results will actually strive to get results. Don’t hold your breath for any change here though.

By: Steve Cassidy

Steve Cassidy — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:29:15 +0000

My favourite concerned a client of mine whose e-commerce site was hacked. Happily for me, it wasn’t my host; unhappily for them, the police seemed entirely unable to respond in any useful way. Eventually I abused my PC Pro colleagues until they got me a contact at the national cybercrime squad… who said “oh yes, we don’t have any direct contact with members of the public”.

By: James Bassett

James Bassett — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:14:43 +0000

Utterly pointless. I once made a complaint to the ASA and, many months later, received a letter back stating that, as I was the only one who had complained, they were taking no further action. Not because there was no foundation to my complaint, not because the company had broken no rules but because there was only one complaint? Since when did one valid voice become less important than several erroneous voices?