The Tories are getting fat

Or, as they say, Christmas is coming and the Tories are getting fat. Which paraphrases my current feelings.

We have been with British Gas (or whatever it calls itself these days) for perhaps forty years now and from time to time they announce that our direct debit payments are well below what they need to be and hike them up by 50% or so. Then after a while they drop them back down again. For some reason, I have not got beyond thinking that the chaps in the British Gas billing department do not really know their business.

We have been with British Telecom for around the same sort of time and for some reason, for some time, I have been suspecting them of providing a good service but charging rather a lot for it. That is to say for land line and broadband; no sports, no camera or anything else of that sort. Then today, I get an email announcing that my direct debit payments are to go up by 50% or so, this despite our usage being modest and more or less unchanging. We don't spend all our days texting, streaming, skyping or anything else of that sort.

I am moved to download the bill. Which, like all utility bills these days, turns out to be incomprehensible. I associate to the dealing with trade unions device of the 1970's of providing them with far more information than they can possibly absorb. That will keep them quiet.

All of which leaves me seriously annoyed. I thought I was paying for a premium service with this premium rate, a premium service which included not having to worry about whether I was being ripped off or not. Or anything else. Whereas now I am going to have to spend a part of tomorrow checking all this out.

PS: and to think that I had been vaguely thinking of moving my camera from O2 to BT.