The weather forecasters tell us that all the rain we’ve been having recently is due to the Rocky Mountains and a sluggish jetstream. They say that standing waves build up behind the Rockies and if we get a trough hovering over us, it means rain. I can tell them they are wrong.

The reason we have so much rain is my fault. After years of a hose pipe ban I took advantage of a Wickes special offer and installed water butts everywhere in the garden, some even daisy chained together. Obviously it needed a lot of rain the fill them all up, enough to bring a smile to St. Swithin. The people flooded out of Doncaster and Hull will have to hope the weather clears up before ‘his day’ next Sunday. Unless, that is, they don’t stop whinging that us Southerners would get more help than they have, conveniently forgetting their huge rate support grants for a local infrastructure us Southerners fund and look on with envy.

Flooded out
It is pretty similar in the broadband world. With deregulation, loads of small suppliers sprang up in much the same way as happened with bus companies. Our towns were flooded with umpteen buses driving near-identical routes. The broadband market has become deluged by different offers, ‘up-to’ speeds, download limits and local loops unbundled. Eventually the bus companies sorted themselves out, simply by one or two buying up their competitors, almost back to as it used to be before politicians fiddled with things in the first place. The same is about to happen with high-speed Internet suppliers.

British Telecom, from whom the near monopoly rights were whisked away, is slowly grabbing them back, purchasing Plusnet in January and recently the Brightview Group who have operated some of the country’s best-run brands such as Waitrose.com and Madasafish. Pipex, current owners of Freedom 2 Surf, Nildram and Bulldog, hung a for sale sign out in March, soon to be followed by Virgin Media who recently merged with NTL and Telewest. Tiscali are rumoured to have grabbed a large residential customer base.

Five hundred quid of BS
These are all names we have considered or used as broadband and Internet solutions suppliers. Meanwhile Carphone Warehouse quietly gets on with destabilising the market by undercutting everyone and making broadband free if not trouble-free, the latter being a speciality of the likes of Bulldog and the (not) much lamented Business Serve in this office. BS consistently offered no email service then charged us five hundred quid to dump them – it still stings today.

Two excursions away from BT’s telephone service saw us running back nursing our wounds, the same with broadband even if we now buy from a smaller supplier (Aquiss) for that extra yard they go. At least BT seem to be buying up the cream of the independents to offer a quality service.

So what went around, came around. Until that is, the politicians fiddle with things again.