I am delighted that Dr Alf remains confident of Cyprus’ upside potential and can cite world-class service industries. Let me try to address his open question, which arose following an extended phone call to his UK bank. For convenience let me restate it:

 Do you think that customer service in the UK utilities would be increased with greater competition?

To answer Dr Alf’s question directly the answer is ‘No!’.

It is not more competition that will improve customer service in the UK but a complete change in the mentality of the average Briton.

Essentially Britons with few exceptions are lazy, unproductive people, who imagine that the world owes them a living, long holidays and a free ride, whereby their lack of productivity can be explained away by the willingness of foreigners to work for nothing or very little and without safety standards.

They run small or large businesses to suit themselves, their shareholders and their favored staff, not customers.

The BBC, that great bastion of “fair and unbiased reporting” is tonight doing a hatchet job on Apple, supposedly showing how the company is breaking its promises and working its Chinese workforce into oblivion.

Try asking how much more money people will pay to get fairer conditions for Foxconn’s Chinese employees.

The answer is ‘nothing’.

Why?

Answer

Because they do not care about the Chinese workers, only about the quality of their I Phone and THEIR OWN working conditions.

To provide good customer service you have to be able to sort by others and not by self. We (in the UK) have not yet learnt that lesson, although the Americans have known it for years.

John Gelmini