Republish: Criminal Insanity

CRIMINAL INSANITY
With the Green Paper published,
and the ESB dictat elucidated,
it is a good time to
republish my rant of July last

Q. How many ESB executives would you need to screw in a light bulb?
A. None, they are all too busy screwing the customers.

I was reading over the weekend where the Chief Executive of the Public Irish Electricity Facility, the ESB, is expecting a pay raise of 17%. Gee that is a little less than he wants to raise the price of electricity for the customers.

This guy is getting a salary of nearly a half million Euro, €477,650 to be exact, a year for overseeing one of the most disastrous and insane companies in Ireland, if not in the world.

ESB Committing a Crime?

Quite apart from offering one of the poorest electricity supply standards in Europe, ESB is IMHO committing a crime. CORRECTION ESB is committing several crimes.

1. ESB imports 85% of its power in fossil fuels, adding to global pollution and taking away from the Irish economy thousands of jobs that could be made in the production and processing of Biomass fuels.


2. ESB is burning pages of the "Book of Kells" to generate electricity!!! Well this is not exactly correct; I said it to get your attention. However, ESB is doing something almost as INSANE. It is burning our, that's yours and mine and our children's, precious and irreplaceable bogs. A heritage once gone, can never ever again be replaced. 5% of ESB power comes from peat bogs. This is a crime in my opinion.

3. ESB is overpaying it's workers, and especially overpaying it's executives. It's average wage is more than double the average industrial wage. ESB then wants us the customer to fork out for this jobs-for-the-boys cozy cozy situation.

4. ESB charge Irish customers more than 40% more than UK customers are paying, and this for a less reliable service.

It is this sort of insanity and stupidity that sometimes makes me want to leave this beautiful country of ours.


I sometimes think of the Irish people as a bunch of sheep with the wolves circling, and they just milling around and bleating but doing nothing to defend themselves.