It was my idea! Just ask Tom Steinberg!

Alex Hilton

Hasn’t ‘drop-jaw’ already promised enough…. Just like his predator, ops I mean predecessor.

Didn’t he promise he would get tough with anything related to terrorist in the UK.

Well he really got tough with Abu Qatada. I suppose getting tough in his eyes means getting him and his family moved into the four-bedroom house, worth around £800,000, in Acton. And at the expense of many who earn and pay taxes for a honest days work.

Now I know how to get an £800,000 house in the capital! Don’t work hard, just become a terrorist and live on benefits from the country you despise so much.

In the comments on that page someone posted a quote:

“When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.”

I think this is an accurate statement……the liberals and lefties who are defending him and other Muslim extremists should try thinking about that. If they have children, they should remember that their children will be living in this country for another 30-40-50 years – long after they’re gone, and I wonder if they’ll enjoy living in this country after what its turned into because of their parents leftie “human rights” hand-wringing and defending the rights for all these dangerous people.

IMHO I think (and it seems many others I speak too) the only way is now to bring discipline back in schools and on the streets, Police should forget their targets and tons of paper work and get back on the beat and show no lenience towards these CRIMINALS.

But then ‘drop-jaw’ claims he listens and acts what his citizens want.

Ha Ha go tell it to the marines ‘if any are left after the Middle East conflict’

1. Mobile Phones do not always have a good signal in outlying areas.

2. What happens if the residents in the rural areas have a line problem?

3. What if an emergency occurs whilst out travelling in these areas, where does one make a call from?

Please leave Public Telephones in the Highlands.

Money can always be found by the Highland Council for £Multi-Million overspend disaster Eden Court or some other project which is not an essential service such as a £300,000 Inverness firework displays!

Gairloch Business Association wishes to object strongly to the proposed removal of several public call boxes currently subject to consultation. Our specific objections relate to boxes from the area around Loch Gairloch, but our principle reasons for objection also apply more widely in Wester Ross, and the lack of public call boxes that would result on our major road routes to and from the area is also of concern – effectively all those in the IV21 and IV22 areas.
While we understand that compared with call boxes in urban areas our call boxes may have relatively low rates of use, we feel that our remote and naturally hazardous environment more than justifies the maintenance of these boxes as a basic contact provision, particular in times of emergency and severe weather conditions.

We also understand the general point that as more and more people are equipped with mobile phones, the day-to-day use of phone boxes has reduced. However, we feel the proposed closures do not take into account the unreliability of mobile phone service in our area.

The public call boxes of primary concern to Gairloch Business Association are:
• 01445 712112 Pier Rd, Gairloch IV21 2BQ
• 01445 712491 Big Sand, Gairloch IV21 2DD
• 01445 741249 Post Office, Opinan, Gairloch IV21 2AT
• 01445 741261 Port Henderson, Gairloch IV21 2AS

And our objections to closure arise mainly from the following considerations:
• We have a naturally hazardous environment, particularly marine and mountain
• Undependable cellular base operation, particularly at times of severe weather
• Patchy cellular phone coverage, very weak in the case of some of the boxes above
• Incomplete cellular network coverage, particularly lack of Orange and T Mobile
• Periods of prolonged power cuts affecting cell bases and handset charging

There is only one cellular base station serving almost the entire area surrounding Loch Gairloch, and it has not proved to be the most reliable of bases. Indeed on the very day the current consultation was announced, our cell base had been out of action for around 18 hours. It is quite routine for the base station to be out of service for several hours, and it has been out of action for several days at a time.

There is no obvious external cause for the most recent outage, but often of course they are in periods of severe weather, prolonged power cuts and suchlike – the very times that emergency phone contact could be most expected to be needed. The area also suffers occasional protracted power cuts and many people will find themselves with discharged cellphone batteries at these times, so even if the base station is working they may be unable to make contact. In the longer cuts, the bases stations also fail and sometimes fail to resume service until hours or even days after power is restored (particularly the Cliff Hill cellular base serving the Loch Ewe and wester Loch Maree areas).

We would stress the point that these outages routinely affect both networks carried on the Badachro base station serving Gairloch (O2 and Vodoafone), and so the normal ability of a cellphone to make emergency calls by roaming on other networks than its own are no use either. In urban areas the density of base stations is usually such that if one fails completely many cellphones will get a weak but adequate signal from neighbouring cells, but we do not have that luxury.

Beyond these temporary outage problems, there is the fact that we have no coverage whatever from Orange and T Mobile. While local residents are of course aware of this, we have a high proportion of temporary visitors staying in the area or passing through in summer and other holiday times. Many are caught out by the absence of Orange service in Gairloch, and may be dependent of public call boxes.

Revenue matters

BT asserts that revenues from these boxes has fallen substantially, and we have no reason to doubt that. However, we would like to know whether the figures used include called received at call boxes, and calls made by reversed charge, for both of which BT receives income directly generated by the call box, but which would not necessarily show up in callbox revenue as such.

We would also like to point out the deleterious effect on call revenues that we believe BT has caused by converting boxes to operate on credit card only, with a minimum call payment currently of £1.20. We regard this as a deterrent rate of charge, and quite probably responsible for a significant part of the fall in call box revenue. Leaving aside emergency calls, the people who would otherwise seem most likely to use a call box – those unable to afford their own line rental or cellphone charges, are equally unlikely to be carriers of credit cards or willing to pay £1.20 for a short local call.

Further, many of these boxes have been allowed to deteriorate to a very poor standard of cleanliness and internal appearance, some with no lighting for a long time (in an area that has over 16 hours of darkness in winter).

We do not believe the cost of operating a call box can or should be anything like as high as some figures we have heard mentioned (see footnote) We understand that the cost of collecting cash from boxes was a significant loss factor in the past, but believe BT did not make reasonable endeavours to minimize these costs, but insisted on using and expensive security company to collect amounts dwarfed by the collection charge.

We are also aware that local residents and businesses have in the past offered to take on the management of individual boxes to address the problems of cost and maintenance, but BT offered inflexible and unrealistic terms, including paying for the unnecessary security collections. We would like to see BT being much more flexible and imaginative about the future maintenance of these boxes, and involving local businesses, voluntary groups and residents in their management.

Other possibilities

BT has already written off the capital investment in installing these sites and their services many years ago, and the marginal costs of running them could be very small (see footnote). BT could consider, for example, reinstating coin operation and setting up local management agreements in return for local retention of the box receipts. This would allow BT to provide a basic public emergency telephone call provision at minimal cost to itself, and present a much better image to local residents and visitors.

There are other possibilities, such as in harbour areas using the boxes as the base for charged-for public Internet access, capitalizing on the existing provision of phone line and power supply. This was proposed by a business in the Gairloch Harbour area at a previous round of closures, but rejected by BT. We believe this would have provided a viable and successful service in Gairloch Harbour, where the phone box was removed. Such use could also be combined with provision of webcams in the area, something that the GBA offered to put funding into in respect of its value to a tourism-dependent area.

We would be pleased to discuss these and other possibilities with BT and Highland Council, but in the meantime we would like to maintain our formal objection to these closures on the basis of the points outlined earlier in this letter.

Yours sincerely

(signed)
Alex Gray
Vice-Chair
Gairloch Business Association

Footnote
BT claims that the cost of a public phone box is typically around £1700 per year (source: Ofcom). Even if taken at face value, we do not believe this average figure is likely to be at all representative of the cost of maintaining our local call boxes.
The price of a phone line is around £100 per year (the actual cost to BT is much lower of course, especially if DACS is deployed), and we would estimate the annual costs for electricity and 8W lamp to be about £10. The only other necessary cost should be a routine, perhaps quarterly, inspection and light maintenance visit, which might be a day’s handyman work for a eight boxes in a sparse area, adding no more than £80 per box per year. A maximum reasonable cost of under £200 per year per box. Occasional repairs of greater cost might be needed, but on the other hand we don’t believe BT has been carrying out even this minimal level of maintenance on our call boxes in recent years.
There is of course the capital cost of box replacement to be considered, but most of these boxes would last for many years with a little preventative maintenance, and the cost of the existing boxes has probably already been full written down.