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Ofcom

If you decide to talk to the "new improved" UK radio regulator OFCOM, I'm sure you'll find the people there are well-meaning and will try to be helpful. However, they've been given a near impossible task in having to replace Oftel, and the ITC, and the IBA, and also the Radio Authority, as well as the legendary Radiocommunications Agency who were a hard act to follow!

As well as being expected to do all these functions previously performed by the various organisations, Ofcom are expected to do all this on a cost-cutting budget, and given targets which can't actually be met and instead can only be achieved by tactics designed to make the figures look better.

If you are looking for whom to blame, don't blame the people at Ofcom, because it's not their fault, and they are victims of government shenanigans as much as the unsuspecting public are. It was a government cost-cutting exercise about as well-founded as the idea of ceasing to paint the Forth Bridge on the basis it won't collapse through rust before the next election. The same government also went to war without democratic sayso, and tried to introduce identity cards, a huge imposition on personal liberty. Fortunately they were kicked out before they managed to do this.

The last time I heard from someone in the business, public complaints of radio interference were simply not being passed onto the agents whose job it was to investigate the problems, and could therefore be classed as "solved" because of the way the new rules were arranged.

Also, because of sweeping staff cuts, many people who had given many years of loyal service were got rid of to reduce the numbers on the payroll, and some were pensioned-off early and replaced by newcomers who could be paid less and didn't have the experience of how the business had been run so well and was supposed to be run. I have heard from reliable contacts that there has been a considerable amount of "hushing up" of the goings-on in the replacement of the old trusted agencies with the new variant Ofcom.

If you'd like to visit Ofcom, it's www.ofcom.org.uk . Good Luck!