What follows is likely to be particularly grumpy, even by my less than cheerful standards. In part this may be due to the fact that I started to write this on the seventeenth day I had been without the use of a landline and without access to broadband, while facing the prospect of another three days with only the most limited ability to use the internet. It’s only at times like these that one realises just how utterly dependent on the internet we are becoming as a society, and how desperately vulnerable this makes us as a nation, given the relative ease with which terrorists or a hostile foreign power could cause us major problems. Data hacks are bad enough – taking down the internet would reach a whole new level.

Less than four years after I wrote about a similar incident, history has repeated itself. On the previous occasion, I was without landline and internet for eleven days, because a badly driven car smashed into our local BT junction box, which is problematically sited on the inside of the pavement at a sharp road junction. Given the chaos caused last time, one might have thought that BT Openreach planners would carry out a belated risk assessment and conclude that the junction box ought to be moved, in order to avoid a repetition of the problem. One might have thought that, but one would be wrong. The junction box was replaced in exactly the same vulnerable location, and now it has been smashed up again.

This time a lorry slipped on black ice and carried straight on, over the pavement, instead of taking the corner. The damage was much worse than before, with the box smashed to smithereens, and the wall behind it utterly destroyed. And this is where I become really grumpy. Why did the lorry skid on black ice? In part, at least, because the Council gritters had not been out the night before. This might have been because a cash-strapped Council (try spending less on the “climate emergency”, methinks) decided to save a bit of money by not sending the gritters out. In making that decision, they may have relied on an inaccurate weather forecast which failed to predict sub-zero temperatures and the likelihood of black ice forming. Failure all round, then.

Nothing happened for a week. Then traffic lights appeared, causing quite a bit of traffic disruption, given that the accident site is on one of the main roads in and out of town, on a junction (necessitating three-way traffic control) and is near two schools. So far as I can see, the only ongoing reason the lights are necessary is so that the workmen can park their vans on the double yellow lines on the main road beside the junction box. I don’t envy them their job, and I appreciate that it wouldn’t be too convenient for them to park their van thirty or forty yards away in the side street, but it might have been an idea, given the disruption caused by their vans and the associated traffic lights.

During the ongoing outage I have received many texts from my telephone and broadband provider, the ironically-named TalkTalk, which really doesn’t want me to be able to talk to any of its staff. These have informed me variously (in the order that follows) that service would be restored on 2^nd February (I had this message twice in succession); that it has been resolved (I had this message twice in succession, and needless to say the message was wrong); that service would be restored on 27^th January; that service would be restored on 28^th January; that service would be restored on 11^th February; that service would be restored on 4^th February; that service would be restored on 6^th February; that service had been restored (it hadn’t, of course). This latest led me to wander down our pot-holed road (don’t get me started about the pot holes) to speak to the BT Openreach engineer who was working at the junction box. He was very helpful, and told me that he hoped that service would be restored by 6^th February. In fact, it was restored at some point today, after I commenced this narrative but before I returned to finish it. Ironically, perhaps, I then received a further plethora of texts and emails from TalkTalk, the latest of which said:

“Thanks for getting in touch and using our automated phone service to do some checks. We now need to speak to you so we can resolve your service issue.

We need to speak to you to try again, so please give us a call…when you’re at home.

Needless to say, I haven’t bothered. Having told me several times that my service had been restored when it hadn’t, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that they are unaware when it has been restored.

I am grateful to the BT Openreach engineers who laboured in cold and damp conditions to restore service, but I am less impressed with the BT Openreach bosses. Last weekend, for instance, no work occurred. Why not? Had the weekend been worked then landlines and broadband would have been restored to around 450 properties two days sooner. It may not seem like much, but a combined 900 customer days without access is arguably quite a big deal. And it would have helped the traffic situation if the traffic lights had been removed two days earlier than has been the case. More to the point, perhaps, with compensation of £9.98 payable per customer per day, the saving in compensation would have been close to £9,000. Even if two engineers had been paid triple time to work over the weekend, BT Openreach (or their insurers, or the lorry owner’s insurers – whoever picks up the tab) would have been thousands of pounds better off by adopting that simple expedient. Yet they didn’t. Their other failure is to reinstate the junction box in exactly the same location, so it’s probably only a matter of time before the residents of this part of town are once more without landlines and broadband.

Last time this happened I discussed what lessons might be learned. Well, I did learn some – as I contemplated at the time, my wife and I decided to have a smartphone each instead of rather meanly sharing one between us, and we subscribed to monthly packages that supply a decent amount of data. I also took note of the advice I was kindly offered at the time, and learned how to use my smartphone as a wi-fi hotspot so as to give me access to my laptop. However, it was, to an extent, in vain. Where we live the 4G (never mind 5G) signal is extremely poor, so anything we tried to do online was painfully slow, and the signal regularly dipped out. We also seemed to burn through data at an extraordinary rate, necessitating constant phone top-ups. At one point £20 of top-up promptly disappeared, and it took 24 hours for it to be reinstated, after an on-line complaint, which had to be made from the one phone that still had data available at that point. Needless to say, our smartphone contracts are with a supplier who also requires everything to be done online, and doesn’t make anyone available to speak to customers. All well and good, but what happens if you can’t go online?

So much for me. What about the authorities? They seem to have learned no lessons at all. As mentioned above, BT Openreach continue to put the junction box back in the same problematic location. The UK government continues to go hell for leather for “net zero” (involving electric vehicles, electric cooking, electric heat pumps, etc) and for “decarbonisation” of the electricity grid, making us more and more dependent on electricity for the necessities of life, while leaving us vulnerable to the vagaries of renewable energy and to the risks of the grid coming under attack. Also, every day, we seem to be pushed more and more towards reliance on the internet for almost everything. I don’t think this is what resilience looks like.

Postscript

As a vaguely relevant aside, I recently had to deal with His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) in my capacity as attorney under an elderly relative’s Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA). Despite HMRC increasingly trying to force taxpayers in the UK to do everything connected with itself online, it point-blank refused to avail itself of the excellent online system provided by the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG). This allows attorneys to go on the OPG website and generate a code which can then be supplied to those with whom the LPA needs to be registered. I have used this system successfully in many cases, inclduing with the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), who have been a pleasure to deal with. But not HMRC. No, they insisted on being sent the original document through the post. I think I may have worked out why – the OPG-generated code is available for use for only thirty days, and then it expires. I don’t think HMRC are capable of doing anything within thirty days.

Why do I mention this? Because the talk of successive Prime Ministers of various political persuasions about the UK “leading the world” is poppycock, whether it be in connection with the alleged (but extremely dubious) merits of net zero or with regard to pur putative status as an AI datacentre superpower. Don’t make me laugh. Swathes of the country don’t even have functioning 4G, and huge and powerful government outfits like HMRC are highly selective about using the internet, preferring to rely on pen and paper when it suits them (but not when it doesn’t). I suggest that we try walking before running.

Energy Consents Unit (ECU)

One final point relates to the above. The ECU is the government body in Scotland which administers certain planning applications in relation to energy infrastructure, which are made to the Scottish Ministers for determination. Currently these are applications for consent for the construction, extension and operation of electricity generating stations with capacity in excess of 50 megawatts (applications below this threshold are currently made to the relevant local planning authority); applications for the installation of certain overhead electric lines and associated infrastructure; applications for necessary wayleaves to confer rights over land to install electric lines; compulsory purchase orders promoted under the Electricity Act 1989; and applications for consent for large gas and oil pipelines. For a long time now the ECU has accepted the submission of objections by email. Out of the blue, and (so far as I am aware) without any consultation, the ECU has recently declared “Please note that representations@gov.scot can no longer be used to submit public representations for cases where the public consultation opened on or after 16 January 2026. For these cases, representations must be submitted via the portal – account registration is not required.”

This will have the effect of forcing objectors to go down a specific route, thereby losing the freedom to phrase their objections as they wish. Many elderly objectors might be comfortable with using email, but be less comfortable with using an online portal. I can only surmise that this is a deliberate tactic, calculated to make it more difficult to object, or – at the least – to deter people from objecting, in the belief that objections will be more difficult to submit than was previously the case.

I am not a fan of Nigel Farage, and I won’t be voting for Reform UK any time soon. But I can’t help thinking that his claims about “broken Britain” have something in them. Failing infrastructure, a complete lack of urgency with regard to urgent repairs, cancelled local authority elections (for the second year running), and changes to the planning regime (the above change, plus the changes in the Planning & Infrastructure Act) aimed at making it harder for objections to be made to large infrastructure projects which many consider to be utterly inappropriate. And now we have revelations about a political elite that wouldn’t be unfamilar to a greedy eighteenth century aristocrat grubbing around for well-paid sinecures and favours for friends and family. None of this speaks of a democratic country in robust health. I fear we’re going to the dogs. Please feel free to disabuse me by making comments which will cheer me up (or not, as the case may be).