A Tale of Two Plumbers

About 6 months ago I had my bathroom replaced, along with the old hot and cold water tanks. The tank work was sub-contracted and the work wasn’t quite so good. For one thing they managed to leak water from the loft when they did it so I have had a small previously damp patch on the ceiling ever since.

Last Saturday I topped up my loft insulation, and added some more insulation around the cold water tank. All was well until Sunday morning, when on walking upstairs I noticed the hand rail was wet. On looking up I saw a new damp patch on the ceiling. I went up into the loft and one of the pipes on the tank was dripping and was a bit loose. I had presumably knocked this when I did the insulation, though I doubt I loosened it, so this may have been leaking slightly before unnoticed. I decided to try to tighten it, which is where things got worse…

The pipe was the one that connected the valve that shut off the water. The tank is a sealed tank and I did not take the top off before starting. I did indeed stop the leak, but in doing so, with hindsight, I suspect that I twisted the valve from vertical, which meant it would no longer shut of the water when full. All seemed OK until I turned a tap on and all of a sudden, what had been a drip was now a stream. I ran to the stopcock, turned the water off, set the cold tap running in the kitchen, but the water did not stop, it just kept running from the tap and from the loft. I was now in full panic mode, I had water leaking from the loft, thankfully only onto my stairs, and I couldn’t stop it. I had to call someone. I tried to get hold of the guys that had done the work but there was no reply, which was fair enough on a Sunday morning, so I got the phone book out and called out an emergency plumber.

Enter plumber number 2, who on the good side was there in 20 minutes. He managed to turn the water off with a spanner on the stopcock, which in my panic I hadn’t thought to do, but then insisted on replacing the valve in the tank and charging me almost £200. There was one of those odd moments when he told me this. He knew the valve didn’t need replacing, I knew it didn’t need replacing, he knew that I knew that it didn’t need replacing, but did it anyway, and I wasn’t in any position to argue, being more concerned with catching water coming down at the time. He did change the valve though and seemed to do a good job, but overall I felt ripped off. He offered to come back and fix the stopcock, but I wasn’t going to give him that work as he had just replaced a unnecessary part, and from the look on his face I suspect he was used to such responses. If he had not insisted on changing the valve, I would have thought of the guy as a hero for saving my day, and may well have got him to change the stopcock or passed him other work. On opening the tank and seeing what I suspect would be a disoriented valve, he must have known what I had done, and could have just put it right by twisting and tightening the valve.  He could have still charged me £100 plus for the call-out on a Sunday. As it is, though he did save the day, I wouldn’t get him to do any other work or recommend him to anybody else, in fact I would actively tell others to avoid him.

This is one of those cases where several things conspired to cause the result, the original loosely fitting pipe, the faulty stopcock and my incompetent attempts to be a plumber. With hindsight I can see easily how I could have prevented the overflow that cost me the £200. Just leaving the thing alone until Monday and putting a bucket under it would have been one, taking the top of the tank off first would have been another. Not my proudest moment, but it is a shame that my overriding memory of it may be anger of being ripped-off by the plumber.

The Holy Screw of Mira

I have been having my bathroom done recently and have had a new shower, provided by Mira, that was installed about 10 days ago. However, it was missing a screw and so I have been unable to use it. There was then the usual comedy of errors with the wrong part being sent the first time, and then a second one ordered, but the correct part was delivered last Thursday, and still hasn’t been fitted.

As time has gone on, the screw has become more legendary as people asked if it had been sorted yet, and so today I have declared it to be some kind of holy relic, the ‘holy screw of Mira’. There thus now needs to be a proper ceremonial fitting of the holy screw when they do come to fit it, which hopefully will be tomorrow.

I have nothing against Mira, by the way, but all I can say at the moment is that the shower looks very nice, but I have yet to see any water come out from it to verify how well it works.

Why retail and investment banking need to be split

Today RBS announced a loss of £3.6 bn while paying bonuses to a few employees totalling £1.3 bn.  The loss was down to bad debts, and the bulk of their profits made before this is accounted for came from investment banking (5.7 bn of 8.3 bn).  The results were better than expected, and so good, you may say. I say no, and I will now explain why.

I have been recently having a lot of work done on my house, mainly a new kitchen and bathroom. I have taken out a loan with my bank to cover a lot of the cost. The bank is not lending me this for nothing. They are charging me interest and making a profit from it. However, as well as improving my house, this is providing direct and indirect benefits. I am employing a local firm and there is one person I am providing a few week’s worth of work for along with odd days of work for electricians, plasterers and other specialists. These people are in turn buying kitchen units, bathroom units,  and other items that are supporting often British companies and indirectly jobs. Thus as well as turning a profit for the bank, this is helping indirectly potentially a wide number of companies and people. The same could be true of business lending, which may directly provide jobs, and then indirectly help suppliers.

Now I’m no expert on investment banking but it seems to be me it is basically ‘speculate to accumulate’, buy something now (possibly with borrowed money) and then sell it later at a higher price, probably in increasing clever and ingenious ways. However, such behaviour has no impact on the UK as a whole, it just seems a bit of a private club for printing money, unless it goes wrong of course. Now I can understand the appeal of banks of what is effectively easy money, but I do not think that I as a UK taxpayer should be guaranteeing this in any way shape or form. While investment banking is mixed up with retail banking, this is very difficult to avoid guaranteeing. Now you could argue all these millionaire bonus recipients today are going to spend some of that money and thus help the wider economy, but I suspect the effect is trivial compared to the wider effect of lending money to many people spending money like I have recently.

So my proposal is this:

• Banks must be split into separate retail and investment banks.  I don’t mind if they share the same parent company but they must be financially independent. In other words, the investment bank cannot take money from the retail bank or vice versa and they must report separately.
• The taxpayer should only guarantee the retail banking side. If the investment bank takes too many risks that don’t work out, and they go bust, so be it. The effects on wider UK society of this are likely to be minimal. If the investment bankers want the ‘market rate’ I keep hearing about, they must be prepared to suffer the down side of the market, rather than expect to be propped up by the State.
• The Banks should be obliged to provide lending and other facilities to retail customers, and in ways that can be enforced, unlike the current situation. Their role should be be regulated as providers of finance to the wider economy, rather than just profit maximisers in their own right.

I don’t think the banker’s have learnt anything in the last few years, and Banks desperate to turn some form of profits seem to turning more to their investment arms for profits, while not lending as much on the retail side as they could. The result could easily be another crash in a few years, before we the taxpayer have paid off the last crash, and the country can’t afford this. We need to split retail and investment banks to make sure that taxpayer help in such situations is in protecting businesses and consumers, not a minority of investment bankers.