A high-pitched buzz
I FIND enthusiasm in the City for John Lucas, the Merton don who wants British Telecom's big shareholders to elect a direc- tor to look after the customers. The chairman of a City market, which itself is one of Telecom's major customers, contri- butes his own horror story of a newly- installed telephone system, which emits the noise of somebody being slowly strangled at the other end. This is a clever trick, but he would rather have a telephone which worked as a telephone. He therefore embarked, a year ago, on what proved a one-sided correspondence with Telecom, writing twice a month (If you have a problem in writing to me, you might use the telephone'), and after a false dawn in the autumn (`Your communication is re- ceiving attention') asked for help, in February of this year, from Telecom's chairman, lain Vallance. This brought a prompt reply: 'I have asked your district office to look into this.' Thereafter, si- lence. March brought a second exchange with Mr Valiance's office: 'My district office has not yet replied....' I have urged the matter with your district office'. Silence again. The April exchange has begun differently: 'Dear Mr Valiance, I still haven't heard from my district office. If the chairman finds it difficult to get through to them, imagine how difficult it is for the rest of us.' Or even for the director in charge of looking after customers? Maybe a fund- manager friend of mine is right when he argues that what Mr Lucas should propose is to vote a director off.
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