Anyway, after having signed the contract with the telephone, internet and digital television company they have let me down. On several levels. Should somebody say that privatisation would improve things. In my experience it doesn’t. Let’s nationalize all the electricity, telephone, water and transport companies again, it can only be better, and would take loads of worries out of the population, I am sure the mental health status of the population would also improve tremendously!
So these workers came to install the telephone line and the digital television, and instead of working within the arranged hours 4pm- 7pm, they came at 6 pm and stayed till 9.30 pm, which actually was as such quite intrusive. The workers were nice though, and I felt quite sorry for them working overtime. At the end they vanished and the telephone still did not work, though they assured it would all be sorted out the next day. Of course it wasn’t, and it wasn’t the day after that either, and when I tried calling the company I was given the run around- or better the phone around several times disconnected and several hours hanging on the phone trying to get through to somebody competent enough to tell me whatg is going on. When I got through at last they told me they would not have enough coonections/switches rented in the area, and that it was impossible to connect me. They couldn’t even say when there would be the next one available and how long the waiting time would be, they would not give me any discount, but would charge me the full line rental nevertheless, and above all, they wanted to increase the rent for the “extra” digital television to 20 pounds a month!
Well, at least I was happy that my boyfriend insisted that the workers would not use the BT telephone line, but had to install their own, otherwise it would be much more complicated to get a telephone connection with BT instead. Anyway, the offer was good, but maybe too good to be true. But the most upsetting thing was that they seem to do that all the time. Meeting a neighbour of mine, exactly the same thing happened to her, apart from that she had to give them a huuuuuge deposit and had troubles getting it back. The phone company refused to give any compensation, and asked why they are able to break the contract, whileas the customers can not, they only replied that they are very sorry and will come and de-install and take away all the equipment. Apart from that it has the side effect that i get addicted to digital tv, and for some strange reason I suddenly can receive ALL channels, not just the 5 or 6 opriginally subscribed to.
But flicking through, the main channels are still BBC 4 with its brilliant documentaries, they had the Cuban missile crisis on, the history of Indonesia (very very interesting), and yesterday was photography time with documentaries of Frank Hurley and Robert Capa. Robert Capa’s stroy was fascinating, his photography soo grapping. He was the only photographer to photograph the D-day, and also photographed the Spanish civil war on the side of the anti-fascists, as he had to flee Hungary and Berlin because of them. He was finally killed in the Vietnam war. So, I get totally addicted to documentaries, particularly Storyville:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/storyville/
and for the first time, British television actually is usefull and interesting, mind stimulating and transferring knowledge. All the other channels are a bit crap in my opinion, the documentaries in the history channel and documentary channel seem to be produced rather cheaply, and their style is offputtingly populist and superficial. There is also a french, and italian and a german channel. Actually the german language broadcast wasn’t too bad, in fact it was quite good, about stem cells, cloning, and the ethics and science around it. I was a bit disappointed about “Al Jazeera – control room”, because the film seen before in the Filmhouse was much, much more thrilling. I did not like the interviews with the US army press officer; in my opinion, they were more than a show rather than actually helpfull for the story. Also the reporting was quie distant from the people, the other film about Al Jazeera was much mre gripping. There was one film made by ARTE and produced by a french team, which was also great, have forgotten the name. However, there is also an older film made by BBC2 Al Jazeera Exclusive, which can be downloaded via http://indypeer.org/show_file_page.php?file_id=203 IndyPeer and which is going much deeper than the new one.