Copper Theft

I know it's not new and I think has been talked about here in the past but copper theft is getting more widespread.

A few months ago a village only 5kms from us lost it's telephone lines because of copper theft ... it happened to us this past week and we have been without a telephone link since Monday night. We went to PT on Tuesday and were told it was theft of the copper, usually by gypsies. We got back on line today.

I had a dentist appointment on Wedneday and when we where chatting (when he was waiting for the anaesthetic to kick in) we were talking about that and he said he has an American friend who works for NATO in Italy who gets hit about one week a month with this problem.

Good news was that whilst talking to the PT folk I asked for a better tarif than the €17,95 a month we pay and we don't use the phone except for internet access and general calls and they gave me a special price of €10,95 a month with 100 free minutes with all calls beginning with a '2' (ie, all Algarve) which I couldn't use if my life depended on it, so .. whey hey!

 

Seen it on TV, they break in to an empty house and remove all the central heating pipework, literally just rip it out, and anything else that is in the way.

 

Metal theft is a bit of a problem these days. Only yesterday it was on our local news that some scum had even stolen the metal plaque of a war memorial. Nothing's sacred any more it seems.

On a more mundane note, a mate of mine lost a job because of it a couple of years ago. He was commuting to work on the train, and when for the 5th or 6th time in a row he was several hours late for work due to the train being stationary between stations due to thieving toe rags having taken all the cables, his gaffer decided to let him go.

 

Hiya.

If it weren't for the scrap metal merchants that turn a blind eye to the sources, there would be no market for stolen metals. A scrap metal merchant in Melksham was raided maybe a month ago with tv cameras present. They found a skip full of multi strand telephone cable. The thing that scares me is that they are stripping out cables from train signalling systems, idiots