Two-thirds of the members of Exeter and District C o n s u m e r Group responded to a Christmas questionnaire in which they were asked to express their main concerns as consumers. Three of the top six concerns were about food. If asked now the results might be even more in the direction of food and food safety, even though the dreadful foot and mouth epidemic, with Devon one of two epicentres, does not directly threaten food safety. We are only now learning about some of the indirect threats. What it must be like to be a livestock farmer in Devon or Cumbria at the moment challenges the imagination. It must be the realisation of one's own worst nightmare.
The issues which were highlighted in the questionnaire were about food labelling and information, the food industry generally, BSE and meat hygiene. Other matters of equal concern were health services, local development, and the cost of goods and services. This indicator of members' interests and concerns will give the Group plenty of leads to follow up.
As a STOP-PRESS insert in the March issue of XCHECKER, the Group's newsletter, there was a paper explaining the efforts of the Devon Trading Standards Department in helping to cope with the Foot and Mouth outbreak which, all too quickly, became an epidemic. In the reports of this disaster the role of the Local Authorities has been seldom mentioned.
The news of the first suspected outbreak came on 24th February, late in the afternoon. The Chief Trading Standards Officer, Roger Riven, and some of his colleagues spent all night with MAFF and Police, serving notices and putting up signs around farms that might be affected.
The confirmation came the next day and the Herculean task of tracing all possible contacts began. Devon has seven animal health officers and the task was quite beyond them, so all staff, 45 officers, were mobilised for the task of trying to control the outbreak. A 24-hour, seven-days-a-week operation was organised. This meant that all other activities, even the consumer advice telephone service, had to be temporarily suspended.
The ban on all movements of livestock, which came into effect the day before the first Devon outbreak, was subsequently modified to allow animals on unaffected farms to be moved directly to slaughterhouses. The scheme was to be administered by the Local Authority. Trading Standards had to put into operation a licensing system as quickly as possible. This was another monumental task. In 20 hours on 5th and 6th March the TS operations room issued 300 licences, a far from simple task as each request had to be checked against the constantly changing situation.
Now some Officers have been able to return to their normal activities, but the disease is still rife in Devon and the seven-day service to farmers and MAFF continues. At the same time Trading Standards has had to investigate allegations of farmers moving livestock in violation of the ban and, almost unbelievably, walkers with dogs crossing farmland.
A breakthrough in Group Magazine production has been achieved by Edinburgh Consumer Group with the Spring issue of `Counterpoints', where the middle six pages are in glorious Technicolor. They are not just pretty colours, they present some very useful information depicted in three-dimensional chart form. The Group has investigated the cost of phone calls, both landlines to landlines, landlines to mobiles and mobiles to mobiles in great detail, covering fourteen different service providers. Did you know that SAGA, Asda and TalkGas were telephone service providers?
No particular provider shows up as the cheapest under all circumstances. There is a bewildering array of charges and options, and the authors of this outstanding investigation show which is cheapest under certain circumstances, ie unit call and other costs, landline to landline and to mobile networks, weekend calls where BT Together was cheapest to some networks and Saga to others.
If you are interested in learning about this investigation you should contact the Chairman of Edinburgh Consumer Group, Dick Mackie, 0131 447 6661. Whether he has a spare magazine for you I do not know, but it is worth a try as I think this information is better than that available from OFTEL or anywhere else.
Before last Christmas the Edinburgh Group paid a visit to Powderhall Waste Transfer Station. This is where a huge quantity of rubbish is collected and squeezed into enormous containers which are then loaded onto a train and taken, once a day, to a private landfill site in someone else’s backyard - 3,000 tonnes a week!
Inside the visitor centre a video and displays reveal the enormity of the disposal task facing the City. Because garden and vegetable waste is a high proportion of the whole, citizens are encouraged to compost as much as they can. Recycling has not been very successful, there is no market for green or blue glass and there are no waste paper recycling plants in Scotland, so it all goes into the landfill. Group member Ray Heyworth comments "just think, every time we take a green bottle off the shelf it could be around for a million years!".
With thanks to the `Plymouth Consumer'
These are rather worrying because they seem so ordinary. You may receive a phone call at your place of work from "The Post Office" asking you to confirm your company's postcode. When you have done this you are told that you are to be sent gift vouchers for your cooperation, and asked your home address. So far 90% of those who have given their home details have been burgled! The Burglars know that there is a good chance that the house will be empty during working hours. The Police are aware of this scam, and the Post Office is not conducting post code surveys.
If you receive a `phone call from someone who identifies him or herself as a technician from AT&T Service, BT, or any telephone service for that matter, conducting tests on your telephone line who asks you to help by doing the following DON'T.
You will be asked to press the nine, zero and hash keys and then replace the receiver. You hear nothing, but the caller now has access to your telephone line to make long distance or expensive chat line calls which will be charged to your account. The Police have checked out the procedure and confirm that the code is correct. Furthermore they suggest that many of these calls emanate from prisons.
Birmingham Consumer Group decided to conduct a review of Health Centres (GP Practices). This inquiry arose because one member had experience of a health centre in which eight doctors practised, six of them operating single-handed practices with their own reception desk and staff. None operated an appointment system. The result was extreme overcrowding at times with patients suffering very long waits before seeing a doctor or nurse.
Current health policy is based on the development of Primary Health Care to provide an alternative to hospital admissions and to promote prevention of illness. Money has been made available to help GPs improve their premises and many have done so.
Group Members were asked to complete a questionnaire about their own doctor's practice and to obtain a practice leaflet. Returns covered eighteen practices. The review does not pretend to be a reflection of the standards of all the practices in Birmingham but eighteen results can, nevertheless, provide a snapshot of the standard of service. Members were, however, not asked how good their doctors are.
All practices were group practices, varying from three to eight doctors. Unlike the practices which sparked off the review they all operated appointment systems, and it was normal for there to be a two-day wait, but urgent cases could usually be seen the same day by one or other of the practice doctors. Most practices were open for appointments from 8.30 am to 6 pm and one opened at 7.30 am.
There are a surprising number of services available. One has come to expect well-women clinics, practice nursing, physiotherapy and chiropody, but among the practices surveyed were special baby and children’s clinics, asthma and diabetes clinics, minor operations, cervical cytology, elderly-person screening, travel advice, health promotion, family planning, well-person checks, immunisation, audiology and even stop-smoking clinics.
Fifteen of the health centres were purpose-built, all but one had good disability access (doors heavy to open was the one criticism), all had toilets and the waiting areas were, with one exception, pleasant and comfortable. The one question which uncovered criticism related to privacy in the reception area.
The Birmingham Group considers that the review shows a great improvement in GP practices. It demonstrates the effect of more capital outlay, providing designed-for-the-job health centres. The range of services provided by qualified staff has expanded considerably and working methods are more flexible.
The Editor of Consumer News has childhood memories of the Market Hall in Birmingham, later still a market but roofless. It was the fish stalls which he particularly remembers, with piles of ice. Birmingham Consumer Group has been keeping an interested eye on the Birmingham Indoor Market and a report in the spring newsletter describes a market to be proud of. It is right in the centre of the city but access by car is well signposted and parking for disabled people is a delight, with lifts designed for deaf and blind people. When all the Bull Ring development has been finished access on foot should be easy, though Group Members report that it is tortuous at the moment.
Everything was spotlessly clean at gam, reported a Group member, and all the stalls and staff appeared to comply with all the hygiene standards. Fresh fruit and vegetable, fish and meat stalls were plentiful with a wide selection of wares. The place is very different from the old market, no fishy odours and no elbowing one's way down narrow littered and grubby aisles between the stalls. While the competing shouts of wares to sell seem much less strident, the value for money remains very much in evidence.
Oxfordshire County Council conducted a two-year project "Better Government for Older People" with which the Oxford Consumer Group was involved, represented by Ken Frere. The County Council held a `Celebration' day to mark the end of the project and County Hall's accommodation was well used.
There were stalls for many groups and bodies with a connection with older people and, of course, Oxford Group's stall was very prominent. Many people came to the celebration and the day was filled with line-dancing, folk dancing, other sorts of dancing, poetry reading, music, rhythmic exercise and such activities. There was plenty of delicious food in the canteen, and stall holders received free luncheon vouchers.
back to menu
Click Logo to Return to
Main Magazine Index