Nicking copper...

F-Blocker

Last Monday (5pm) my home phone line (New Eltham) went dead. I logged it with BT & it was fixed on Wednesday.

Tuesday evening I had to pop up to Eltham High St at about 10pm. At the corner of Green Lane & Foots Cray Rd, 2 BT vans were working.

Wednesday evening. Again, I had to pop out & there were 3 vans working in the same place at about 8pm

Thursday evening (spotting a theme yet?) - 11:15pm - 6 vans and 2 lorries

Sunday - 3 vans

The wife was walking past yesterday afternoon, so stopped & asked what was going on. Apparently in broad daylight, on a busy road/junction, some pikeys (BT guy's word!) tried to nick all the phone cables from the green junction boxes & in the man-holes! It seems they managed a temporary fix to get people's lines working again, but are now having to do a major re-patching job.

It must've knocked-out a load of lines. Was anyone else affected?

Leroy Ambrose

Used to work for the British Transport Police. Second biggest problem on the railways (after the prevention of terrorism) is copper theft. Gippos nick it from anywhere they can get it - usually in live service. There are lots of fatalities on the railways when they've gone in and cut what they think is dead cable, only to find its live - the fire service have to peel them off the tracks with a sponge on a semi-regular basis. They nick it, punt it on through dodgy scrap merchants (usually more gippos) who then sell it on to China. Before the credit crunch, the cost of copper went up by about 600% in the space of two years. Its starting to climb back up again now - which will inevitably lead to more thefts.

Stuart_the_Red

Read the title to this thread and thought a corrup policeman had been arrested :o)

Friend Or Defoe

[cite]Posted By: Leroy Ambrose[/cite]the fire service have to peel them off the tracks with a sponge on a semi-regular basis.

Peel off the copper or the pikies?!

Carter

You would not believe how much of a headache these crackmonkies are. A lot of them doing the robbing used to work as subbies for BT or still do!!

About 6 years ago you could not give copper away, then the price ot the stuff rocketed. Leroy has got it pretty much nailed on the head with the types who rob it. and they die pretty frequently in doing so.

heavenSE7

Exactly same thing happend to me mate, (New Eltham), what gets me is that it was in broad daylight!

Really makes you wonder why the old bill are never around when you need them!

ThreadKiller

[cite]Posted By: heavenSE7[/cite]Really makes you wonder why the old bill are never around when you need them!

they'll get them if they break the speed limit.

ken from bexley

same type of 'herberts' behind the power failure......Oh what Wags!

Carter

[cite]Posted By: ken from bexley[/cite]same type of 'herberts' behind the power failure......Oh what Wags!

Next time someone tells you about the 'travellers' they know and how they are salt of the earth... This is they're bread and butter. They don't care about your fish, your frozen food, your elderly family one jot.

Great bunch yeah