Stupid Meters

I hadn't heard from my Tasmanian correspondent for a few weeks.  Fortunately I remembered she'd gone on holidays before I called the police.  The last time I reported her missing to the Tasmanian police it got a little weird.  They asked me if I had anything with her scent on it.  When I responded with an outraged (and, I hope, convincing) denial they locked the dogs back up in their kennels and told me there was nothing they could do.  I suggested they speak with friends, neighbours, relatives and attempt to trace her movements.  They suggested I'd watched too many movies and that they didn't have the resources to do that stuff.  Finally they admitted they were a group of homeless people who'd been permitted to sleep in the police station in return for answering the phone occasionally and not ripping copper wire out of the walls.  Then they asked me if I wanted to buy some copper wire.

After my correspondent's somewhat reluctant return from her leave (which she had foolishly arranged to coincide with her daughters school holidays) I managed to pencil in a video conference with her when my Belarusian tech support found a window in their Moldavian bride shipping schedule.  Not that the video link seemed to do me much good.  The entire room was dimly lit and in the background I could clearly hear the crack of whips and the occasional whimper of pain.

"I'm very sorry," I apologised.  "I didn't mean to interrupt your date."
"I'm not on a date," she snapped.  "My electricity supply has gone to hell.  I've got the kids running on a treadmill just to power the computer."
"Well at least you have a little background light as well."
"That isn't electricity," she responded.  "It's coming from the spent plutonium fuel rods your damned tech support is storing in my spare bedroom."
"That can't be healthy, have you noticed any ill effects."
"Not really," she replied shrugging a tentacle.  "But it does mean I can't have anybody over."

I was astonished to learn about my correspondent's electricity woes.  Back in the day the Tasmanian government had dammed pretty much every trickle of liquid in the state for hydro electric power.  I'm surprised they hadn't put dams on public urinals.  The theory was that as long as they didn't run out of water they wouldn't run out of electricity.  Then they ran out of water.  But it had rained since then and it was my understanding that Tasmania had, at least briefly, rejoined the list of first world nations with a reliable electricity supply.

"The electricity supply is fine," said my correspondent.  "They're just not sending any to me."
"Why not?" seemed like a perfectly legitimate question to ask at this point but it sent my correspondent off in a long rant about smart meters and front gates which I found a little confusing.  As far as I can interpret it the situation went something like this; my correspondent's electricity usage is measured by a smart meter.  This allows the electricity provider (and indeed my correspondent) to accurately measure her exact electricity consumption and bill her accordingly without someone needing to come out and physically read the meter.  It sounds excellent unfortunately, this being Tasmania it isn't.

Apparently all this sexy smart metering is (for reasons I don't begin to understand) still reliant on someone coming out and physically reading the meter at least once a year.  This is where the problem arose.  The meter reader couldn't gain access to the meter.  He made it as far as the front gate but apparently was unable to work out how to open it.  So he went away again.  My correspondent's meter went unread and to punish her for having a gate beyond the intellectual capacity of their employees to open the electricity company  decided it was much easier to simply remover her from the grid.  Now my correspondent is reduced to torturing her children when she wants to speak to me.

At least that's the excuse she's giving me for torturing her children.  It all sounds a little far fetched to me.  On the other hand Tasmania is the state where the government's response to a water shortage was to dump several hundred litres of diesel fuel into the major remaining water supply so I suppose I shouldn't leap to judgement.