Tarred with the same brush

Would you believe it ... dancing is not allowed on Good Friday in my home town of Wakefield … And who do you think has been to the courts to enforce this rule? Yes, the local clergy. What's more, the local magistrate has agreed with them. I'd like to know how they are they going to stop people dancing!

Like every other town in the country, Friday night in Wakefield town centre is positively heaving with scantily clad girls (calm down Mike … Ed) and bright young men all setting out with one thought in mind – having a good night out.

That starts at the town centre pubs where they get a skin-full. At 11pm they all dive into one of the many late night clubs and dance away all that stored up energy until around 2am. Then it's out to the take-aways to gorge on some dodgy food and a taxi home. What they do after that is none of our business.

One thing I can guarantee … after invoking a 'No Dancing' rule to every disco in town, it won't be the local bishop who patrols the town centre trying to stop them next year. No, it will be left to the police to enforce yet another unwanted rule enforced upon the masses by the few.

We end up with a situation where the local force is at full stretch, fighting with the local populace, trying to enforce a stupid rule while the self-satisfied, perpetrating zealot is fast asleep at home at peace with the world. In my book it's a direct infringement of civil liberties.

What's that got to do with security?
From our industry's point of view, the downside of this is that if a break-in or an attack on an old person occurs between 10pm and 2am will the friendly local copper be able to help? No, he'll be too busy arm wrestling drunken revellers into the paddy wagon because the bishop has decreed: No Dancing! Perhaps before I started shooting my mouth off about the local religious zealots I should have remembered the Biblical phrase "Let he who is without guilt cast the first stone". Perhaps I should have looked at our own industry. We're fond of allowing the few to impose rules on the many. For a start I'm always banging the drum about the cowboys in our industry who cut all corners and each others throats' to flog the unsuspecting public a cheap (and probably inferior) security system. But have I the right to do this? I also moan about the grossly under-trained people who pass themselves off as alarm engineers to unsuspecting and desperate-for-staff alarm companies. But once again have I the right? Am I not infringing the civil liberties of people who just want to get a job and earn some dosh? Good question! ACPO have included vetting as part of their policy on the alarms installation industry. Are they right or wrong? And is it an infringement of civil liberty to preclude ex-offenders from earning a decent living? What about NACOSS with their decision to enforce ISO 9000 on all companies large or small? Once again have they the right? A very debatable point, and one that we could argue for years.

Door knocking is not illegal
There's an element of our industry that secures its business by going around knocking on the doors of the unsuspecting public to sell them inferior intruder alarms at inflated prices, and then when the customer wants a fault repaired they disappear and pop up again under a different name and start again all over again. The police and the television companies have been hounding these people for years but, once again, have we the right to do this? Door knocking is not actually breaking the law.

Perhaps it is a good idea to stop and re-assess our motives once in a while. Perhaps we could start with the question "What are our intentions? Are they aimed at personal benefit or are they for the good of the industry?" There are a lot of installers out there who firmly believe in buying the cheapest possible equipment and installing it as cheaply as possible while charging the best price they can get. Some would say that this is just good, sound business practice – but what effect does it have on the rest of our industry? We all remember the terrible reputation gained by car salesmen a few years ago when a small minority changed their sales methods and only gave us the monthly payments instead of the total price ... and the shock we had when we discovered exactly how much we were going to have to pay in total.

We had the same problems with double glazing salesmen, only this time they didn't sit and wait for you to walk into their showrooms, they came out banging on doors and pestering the hell out of a public that was just settling down to watch the big match on the telly. Once again, it was the few that gave the many a bad reputation.

And finally here we are with our own industry tarnished with the same reputation because a small minority are out there door-knocking, selling what are often very inferior wire free systems at very high prices. How do they manage this? By telling the customer the daily or weekly price instead of the final total.

The kit they are selling is often so inferior that it hasn't got the intelligence to tell the customer when the battery goes flat! I know this because I talk to lads who have been called out to repair these systems when the installers have disappeared off the face of the earth. You and I are going to be tarred with that brush! We also have the same problem with the £199 brigade who are underselling their work at the bottom end of the price spectrum. I often get involved in conversations in the local pubs with people who have had these inferior systems fitted … systems that activate night and day for no good reason, systems that conk out after a year and a month and worst of all, systems that only partially cover the protected property so thieves are able to empty garages, outhouses, utility rooms and even kitchens without activating the alarm.

When it becomes known that I am in the alarm industry I personally get the blame for all these failings. Hands up all those installers who have been called to fix these DIY and inferior systems. When you advise the customer to have the thing ripped out and start again they call you a con man and rip-off merchant.

I like to think that I hold some sort of standard for myself and I have no desire to be classed as a rogue or a charlatan but this is exactly what will happen to me, you and the rest of the industry if we continue to sit around and do nothing.

So what can we do? And here's the difficult bit, have we the right?

I would dearly love to see licensing brought in so that a company or an individual cannot trade without that licence, but (and it's a very big 'but') what criteria are we going to set for the gaining of a licence and how are we going to police it?

We could set 'qualification' as one of the criteria but for two things: the first is the vast number of installers already working without a qualification. Are we going to tell them that they cannot work any more until they have been back to college to get qualified? And with the current state of the SITO regime, where we have to take an Open University course in paper shuffling and form filling and then find a suitable college before we can even start our education, I estimate that it will currently take the average installer a matter of years before he gets that all important bit of paper.

Who is going to pay his wage while he spends all that time learning what he already knows? My main gripe against a qualification is that like a driving licence, once you have got it you can throw away the rulebook and drive like an idiot, until the police catch you.

When you advise the customer to rip out the inferior alarm and start again they brand you a ‘con man’

Ongoing inspection is better
We could force them to join one of the inspectorates and have the quality of their work regulated, (for my money a far better idea because it is ongoing inspection against a known standard) but once again have we got the right to force a man to pay hard cash to an organisation that he doesn't want to join?

There's always the vetting aspect to fall back on. But there are those among us who claim it is an infringement of our civil liberties to have our past investigated without good cause.

(I am informed that there is at least one police force in the country that will not release police computer details to confirm that a job applicant has no known record, even though it is a requirement of the ACPO policy that an alarm company cannot employ a person with a criminal record.)

This raises the obvious question: How the blazes do they expect a company to comply with the ACPO policy if they refuse to give out the required information? We also have to ask: Is it an infringement of our civil liberties to force a man to take out a licence to earn a living? Have we the right to do that?

Maybe we should advise the public on what to look for when buying an alarm system and how to pick a good company. But who is going to set the rules and criteria for that, and who is going to pay for all that public education? And how much notice are the British public going to take? Precious little would be my guess.

The police have done something towards the cause by refusing to turn out to a system without a URN. You could claim that they have the right to insist on certain standards being maintained before they will respond but they cannot extend that to the rest of the industry.

The insurance companies also have the right to insist on certain standards before underwriting risks, but that is another story that is too complicated to investigate here. We are left with the question of who is going to set standards for those outside the police and insurance requirements? Who is going to protect the householder from the doorstep salesman and, once again, have they the right to interfere with a customer 's freedom of choice of installer? Do you know, for once in my life I am stuck for an answer! OK ... I'll lighten up!
To end on a lighter note, readers know I like a good laugh ... Here's a couple of amusing (printable!) things readers have sent to my email.

First: 'The Farmer's Glossary of Computer Language':
Modem: What you did to the hay fields.

Keyboard: Where you hang your keys.

Windows: What to shut when it's freezing.

Log On: Making the wood stove hotter.

Hard Drive: Getting home during bad weather.

Microchips: What are left in the bag when the chips are gone.

Download: Getting firewood off the tractor.

Megahertz: What you get when you're not careful downloading.

   And what about this 'true' story ...
A group of chess enthusiasts were standing in a Birmingham hotel lobby discussing their tournament victories.