Beard Blog - Day 9

Today's beard

Electricity update

If you remember, City Works (they're the guys who make the orders for MCC) needed a cheque from the MCC finance department to give to UU so that they could process our order for mains electricity. However, to get a cheque from the finance department, UU must first provide them with an invoice for the amount required. As you can see, it's a laborious process.

UU appear to have a monopoly on laying electricity cables in Manchester. It's very frustrating and I struggle to see how it's legal. We tried to use a different company at one point, in order to reduce our costs; as with all monopolies (and I'm not saying UU definitely are), they can set their own prices and not have to worry about being undercut.

So our valiant effort began by calling UU to find the position of the mains electricity junction. We needed the grid reference so we could pass it on to another company, allowing them to know where to start digging. (At this point I feel I should explain why anything needs digging in order to give our skatepark electricity. We have been told (by UU, in fact) that the nearest electricity junction box to our park is about 100m up the road. Therefore, in order to bring it to our little skatepark someone needs to dig a big hole from the junction box to the park, get a 100m long cable, lay it in the hole, attach one end to the electricity, attach the other to our junction box next to the park, then bury the cable. Quite simple, really.)

UU refused to give us the grid reference. Their reason for not passing on this essential information was this: that if they give us the grid reference, we would be able to find another company to do the work instead of them. If that's not unfair practise, I don't know what is.

Lighting update

Amey have nearly completed the new lighting design. On completion it will be sent to MEDC to be checked. MEDC will then send a purchase order to Amey who will start the works as soon as possible.




Check out the beard growth process: http://picasaweb.google.com/johnnyhaines/MyBeardProtest