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There must have been some sort of mistake.

We have now decanted a decade and a half’s worth of possessions, including those belonging to our two boys, into what we thought was a spacious four or five-bedroomed property. Turns out it’s just a bijou one-bedroomed studio maisonette after all, in which we occupy a few square centimetres of space in the centre of sinister towers of cardboard boxes.

Mind you, watching the sun rise and set over the beautiful old oaks and striding out in the morning with the dog across our own field makes it all worth it. The fire’s lit, the music’s on, we can cook and sleep and wash. What more do you need?

“A telephone.”

Was that you at the back, Brother Bassett? Well, yes, a telephone would be good.

But then, in this country we handed control of this vital public service to a private sector monopoly. BT Group makes pompous noises about separating its functions, but the central fact is this: lines are provided and maintained by BT Open Reach, part of the same group as British Telecom, which supplies your phone and broadband. BT Open Reach operates a barely functional service in which it won’t even deign to speak to customers, and takes at least three “working days” (Saturday and Sunday are extra to BT Open Reach, virtually alone of all companies, so if your fault develops on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday, the three-day guarantee is additionally meaningless) to rectify any fault. It doesn’t talk to British Telecom. British Telecom doesn’t talk to it.

Result? We were cut off a week before we moved, then told the line had been transferred to our new home, then moved in to find – go on, take a wild guess – that BT hadn’t even managed to carry out that task, despite giving their miserable incompetent selves an extra week. This afternoon contact with the world was finally restored.

Yes, I know all you young people have mobile phones and sneer at landlines and landline-based broadband as a quaint relic of a distant past – but to us and millions like us, a landline and landline-based broadband remain incredibly important.

We are not, however, going to take our custom elsewhere, after this debacle. I am going to break the principle of a lifetime and buy a share. In BT. So I can make a thorough nuisance of myself and ally myself to the growing movement aspiring to an adequate public telephone service.

I’ve complained, of course: I’ll keep you posted

By the way, BT Group’s profits last year: more than £2billion.

Death of taxes

Wonder how much tax they paid? Nearly all of Britain’s biggest companies legally avoid tax in the UK according to the charity Action Aid, which found that 98 out of the 100 companies on the FTSE 100 base their operations in territories where there is low or no tax.

HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds and RBS have 1,649 tax haven companies between them.

The charity says developing nations lose three times more to tax havens than they receive in aid each year.

Action Aid’s Chris Jordan said the UK could be missing out on £18bn a year in tax revenues.

He said: “When multinationals use tax havens to avoid paying their fair share, ordinary people in both poor and rich countries are left to pick up the bill. Spending on doctors, nurses and other essential services gets cut for those who need it most. At a time when all countries are desperate for revenues, the UK Government can’t afford to turn a blind eye.”

But it will, of course.

After all, there are all those vile dole cheats and social security scroungers to chase. Who needs £18bn in lost tax from big business when there are bigger fish to fry?

Or… will the Government get tough, as David Cameron has just done on energy companies: they’re operating a crippling 9% profit margin and raking in £125 for every single customer in profit in the midst of the most savage economic crisis and vicious dogma-driven cutbacks. Here is the moral bankruptcy of an unregulated free market at its most repellent: people, poor people, old people, go cold because rank profiteering goes unchecked.

So Cameron got tough: “Shop around”, he told customers. Crikey, Dave, that’s telling them. That’s standing up to the corporations who’ll put enormous profits – not profits, enormous profits – ahead of a pensioner’s comfort.

So, shall we shop around? Er…. They all overcharge, Mr Cameron. Your predecessors gifted private sector leviathans the right to do pretty much whatever they want, and your predecessors enabled the flogging off of these private sector leviathans to corporations, often foreign corporations, that have no root or interest in our society at all. Mind you, one of your predecessors said there was no such thing as society

What a bunch.

Mind you, there’s been no alternative to Cameron, has there?

Where’s the leader who says to BT, banks and energy providers: “Get your stinking fat greedy useless snouts out of the trough, start doing your jobs and for the love of sweet Jesus Christ put people before your overloaded wallets”?

A bank to love

Our local school made deposits in the local food bank – a charity collection point that collects and then distributes meals to people in need. The representative told us food banks are growing fast in Cornwall, and are busier than ever before. Before coming to us he’d delivered meals to a family who hadn’t eaten for three days. Demand for food from families who cannot afford to eat rises by the day.

What could be more sickening and shaming an indictment of the way we live?

Next time you see an energy firm executive ‘regretting’ ‘unavoidable’ price rises, or see George Osborne and his smug friends on the telly, or hear Cameron tell us we’re all in it together, or watch bankers pocket their bonuses, or get told by BT you can’t have your phone for five days while their shareholders pocket billions in profits, or look at an executive driving a BMW 4×4 with a personalised number plate, or see a besuited managing director ‘regretting’ job losses on the news, or watch a premiership soccer match, or do a million other things, remind yourself that you live very, very close to families – mums, dads, children – families who cannot afford to eat.

Thanks

Thanks to all of you who commented, e-mailed, phoned or spoke to say you liked last week’s contribution. I really appreciate the kind thoughts and encouragement.