Cadent - gas main/to house replacement

[Jethro_uk]

After the 87 storm, an underground cable was ripped up at the end of our street by a trees roots. It was temporarily filled in the next day, and finally properly finished in June 88.

The day after it had been finished (proper nice job, rolled tarmac and all) BT turned up and ripped it out to do some work.

I suppose in some ways that's cosmic balance for the reverse situation a few years later (1993), when I visited a friend in a new build where the roads and pavements had yet to be laid. I commented it would make it easy for Telewest (!) to lay cable. He said he'd called them, and the address was on the list for "1997".

Does rather refute the assertion that capitalism is somehow more efficient than it's alternatives.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh dear. Try not to bring political bias into this. State run industry is just as capable of ensuring the left hand doesn?t know what the right hand is doing.

IF the same entity is not only in charge of road mending *and* cable laying AND if that entity's rewards are an inverse function of costs, then you may see joined up thinking.

The problem is you need to associate reward with performance, which state industries never have, and link up disparate organisations, which is not likely under capitalist systems and still unlikely under socialist ones

To put it simply capitalist systems don?t have the power and socialist systems don?t have the incentive to do 'joined up thinking'

Even in the case of my own house, second guessing where I might want to have a socket in ten years time has proved impossible

I ripped down a bit of ceiling to replace a fan I never left an access panel for. One days work in twenty years is less than one days work at day one to make a hatch. Until te 20 years were up.

There is a 12V transformer buried in a wall for 17 years that is still working fine.

Digging up and replacing roads is not the most expensive thing in the world.

Laying miles of ducts that may never be used is more costly

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The iron barrel type was 'replace' here some time ago. Without any disturbance to the outside of my property - all done from the street and inside. I did wonder if they just fed a plastic pipe inside the iron barrel.

[Steve Walker]

We had 6 months of disruption as about 5 miles of very busy road was resurfaced - with no sensible route around it and temporary lights wherever they were working. Within a couple of months of finishing, they dug it up again and installed fibre-optic cabling along the whole length, snaking from side to side - despite there being grass verge along nearly all the length!

SteveW

[Dave Liquorice]

Temporary lights strike me as a "sensible route around".... At least compared to the 70 mile diversion we'll have when they *close* for 4 weeks the A689 for resurfacing next month. Which also clashes with one of the biggest lamb sales in the area and *the* day that the hill farmers get the majority of their income...

Bit remiss of the county highways department not to put a Section 58 order on the newly surfaced road. A Section 58 order prevents the utilties digging up a road for a period of time (3 to 5 years is normal). There are a couple of get outs though, emergency work or a new customer connection. Note the use of the singular for customer...