Disconnector Online

Gazprom Marketing & Trading certainly knows how to push the boat out. Its bash last Friday must have cost a few roubles.
It was at Kensington Palace. The proceedings started at 19.00 with a champagne reception in the sunken garden. This was followed by private tours of the palace, a gala dinner in the state apartments and rounded off by a concert in the orangery at 22.30.
Now, we know that the UK arm of the Russian giant has had a good year, posting a profit of £23.5 million, mopping up some tasty industrial and commercial supply contracts and now completing the acquisition of Natural Gas Shipping Services.
The mind boggles over the party it will throw if it ever gets round to buying Centrica!

This column has had occasion in the past to note some intriguing exchanges in the Palace of Westminster where the odd flash of wit and wisdom can enliven proceedings. Parliamentary questions can prove a source of bizarre facts, as the following demonstrates.

The merger of South East Water with neighbouring Mid Kent Water is beginning to look more like a complete takeover. With regulated turnover of £112 million South East is of course three times the size of Mid Kent and it makes sense to amalgamate staff at South East’s Haywards Heath head office rather than find a neutral venue to base the enlarged company.

It’s always nice when the general public appreciate your work, and so it is gratifying to learn that Southern Water’s public tours of its fine Victorian sewer system are often full and even over-subscribed. Utility Week editor Steve Hobson (pictured emerging blinking mole-like into the daylight) recently joined a special “VIP” tour, where he was surprised to discover more than half the guests were female. Not something we would normally expect to appeal to the fairer sex, sewers.

Disconnector was inspired by pictures of a second record-breaking wind turbine being barged out to join its fellow at the Talisman field, printed in last week's Utility Week.
The first turbine has been braving the seas off the northwest coast for a year waiting for its twin. But Talisman Energy (UK) says the second turbine did not "miss the weather window" when the first turbine was shipped to site, as was suggested in the story.
Instead, the company says, "the weather closed in and prevented the sail out/installation in the time available".
Glad that's cleared up.

A colleague of the great man trotted off dutifully to Monday afternoon's’s session of the Lords Select Committee which keeps an eye on European Union issues like competition and the single market.
Centrica, National Grid and Gaz de France were due to give oral evidence. But for a moment it looked like the Frenchies (a.k.a the three-person delegation from GdF) weren’t going to make the session.

Disconnector has more than once seen advice to workers to reduce air conditioning requirements (and save money) in a hot summer by taking off their ties - advice first given (unles you know better) to Japanese salarymen.
Does it really work? At last we can put some numbers to the rumours, thanks to those style conscious Italians. "Taking off the tie produces an immediate decrease in the body temperature by 2C or 3C", Italian officials told the Guardian.
UK readers can now pray for a much-needed heatwave, secure in the knowledge they can look as cool as their continental cousins.

Disconnector has no tie to take off. But have no fear; his high tech outfit is, of course, warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

If the Reverend Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness can bury the hatchet (and not in each other) and serve in the same administration, Disconnector supposes there must be hope for the dynamic duo of ministers at Chris (sorry DBERR), Malcolm Wicks and Lord Jones of Birmingham.

Earlier this month, our brand new premier suggested during PM questions in the Commons that the government had made a decision to “continue with nuclear power”. Foul, cried Greenpeace.

Colleagues of the great man were much intrigued by last week’s ruling by the Competition Commission on the first appeal of an energy code issue under the new provisions of the 2004 Energy Act.

Utility Week escaped the effects of the floods that have caused so much disruption to lives and business this week.

The only problem at UW Towers was a warning from the building management department that the water was not fit to drink. The reason: the water was "contaminated by local authorities" according to warning signs on all the taps, raising fears in the office of an outbreak of the deadly "bureaucracy" virus.

No worries about an epidemic of local democracy, of course. Utility Week, like most magazines, is an occasionally-benign dictatorship.

Are utility executives prone to injury? Disconnector was browsing the Personnel Today blog and found the sad tale below. He hopes all parties are fully recovered now.

http://www.personneltoday.com/blogs/human-resources-guru/2007/07/guru-was-fortunate-enough-to.html

A colleague attended last night's launch of the report into the first year of the Energy Supply Ombudsman at the impressive Portcullis House opposite the Houses of Parliament. Although enquiries to the energy onbudsman are running ahead of those directed to the equivalent telecoms scheme at the same stage of its development, energy retailers were rightly pleased that only 630 formal complaints had been received by the ombudsman in the first year.

It is a truth universally acknow­ledged that the only people that come up smelling of roses when there is debacle such as British Energy’s near collapse are the lawyers and accountants.
The government, in the shape of the then Department of Trade and Industry, spent more than £29 million on, ahem, advisers’ fees during restructuring of the stricken generator, plus £2.5 million on its own administrative costs. Those figures come from the latest report by the Commons Public Accounts Committee.
The great man’s maths puts that at £31.5 million. Subsequently, some £16.5 million was recovered from British Energy.
So the total damage to the public purse (i.e. your pocket and Disconnector’s) is a cool £15 million. That’s a significant amount of trousering by m’learn’d friends and the bean-counters.
Of course, there was a time when the “experts” talked about nuclear power as being too cheap to meter.
Yeah, right!

A rather jaundiced great man was hoping for a quieter summer on the energy consultation front. Over the past few years, the government and Ofgem have been putting out documents on a near-continuous basis, leading to overheated printers and post persons at serious risk of injury.
So it was with a heavy heart that Disconnector learnt last Monday that “the government’s discussion with the public about the country’s future energy needs moved up a gear today with the start of an extensive programme of nationwide consultative events”.
Thanks to a newly minted press release from Chris (sorry, DBERR: the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform) he has learnt that a series of 12 regional stakeholder events “are being held over the summer to capture the views of green groups, energy companies, businesses, consumer groups, unions, faith groups and academics”.
Disconnector is a tad concerned about those choices. Why, he wants to know, aren’t Hell’s Angel chapters being consulted. Or the UK branch of the Klingons. And what do Scientologists make of it all?
Disconnector is deeply worried that this latest consultative exercise is fatally flawed and will mean a return match in court for the government’s laboured attempt to go nuclear.

Guess who has the poorest drinking water quality in the UK, or at least as perceived by a cross-section of punters contacted by pollsters?

Well, the capital came bottom, while Scotland came top in terms of the drinkability (is that a word?) of its tap water. Londoners, it seems, are underwhelmed by the quality of their potable supplies, with only 12 per cent giving the wet stuff a top rating. North of the border, customer satisfaction levels are a staggering 72 per cent.

Should that come as a great surprise? Disconnector thinks not. For many moons now, the Scots have drunk their national tipple (Scotch) with a dash of water, and you wouldn’t want to spoil the taste of your malt, would you?

Now, the Drinking Water Inspectorate has made something of a song and dance about the fact that on blind taste tests, consumers cannot distinguish chilled tap water from bottled.

And there’s little doubt that people are getting a tad sceptical about the claims of the bottled water manufacturers – and the cost of the stuff. Apparently, two-thirds of those contacted in a survey by Shape the Future felt that bottled water was just a way of making people spend more money.

Perish the thought.

And here's a sign of the times. Climate change and global warning coverage has become so ubiquitous in the UK media that even the pink ’un is not immune. Can you imagine five years ago that the Financial Times would run a story on one of its news pages that would begin in the following no-nonsense style: “British farmers could soon be helping to fight climate change by adapting their cattle’s diet so they break wind less frequently”?

All Disconnector will say is, he is surprised it didn’t say “fart and belch” to be less po-faced and, in fact, more accurate.