Man attempts cable theft. Gets burned..

[BBKing]

These people don't work but sleep during the day and go out robbing at night, this is an activity that seems to be on the increase. It beats having a boring 9 to 5 job, you can work the hours to suit and be your own boss.

If you can take a break from the gypsy-bashing for a bit, who do you think buys the damn scrap? Honest, hard-working British scrapmen, one presumes...

If there wasn't a market for it, no one would nick it. The railways are suffering badly from this, too, even round here where there isn't mass unemployment and high crime. That copper is too tempting with the price where it is, and there seems to be no shortage of people willing to fence it.

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by BBKing

If you can take a break from the gypsy-bashing for a bit, who do you think buys the damn scrap? Honest, hard-working British scrapmen, one presumes...

If there wasn't a market for it, no one would nick it. The railways are suffering badly from this, too, even round here where there isn't mass unemployment and high crime. That copper is too tempting with the price where it is, and there seems to be no shortage of people willing to fence it.

I'm not exactly sure how this scrap gets into the system, I do know from personal experience that I have failed to sell scrap with 2 local dealers in recent years. On one occassion I had an amount of legit phosphor bronze that both local yards refused to take because I was not a company, even though the one yard owner knows me quite well. On a previous occassion many years ago I took some copper cable in to a scrap merchant who also refused. I was driving a company vehicle with the name signwritten on the side, and the yard would still not touch it even though I explained that it was not for personal gain, but the managing director had instructed me to carry out this task. It does appear that at least in my area it is not easy to offload scrap metal that at first appears to be dodgy in the majority of yards.

The majority of stolen cable in this area is generally burnt overnight, I know where the local gypsies carry out that activity out in this area.

I had a Gypsy encounter again last night, and that's probably what prompted me to mention them. I went with a customer into a pleasant looking pub on the outskirts Chester (Sealand) for a meal last night to find that it had been taken over by about 25-30 Irish Gypsies. (I should of known better seeing transit tippers in the car park)
The landlord couldn't apologise enough about the 'Evening Entertainment' as he put it, he explained that the best way he could deal with them from experience is cross his fingers and hope they dont do too much damage. From past experience asking them to leave will result in trouble and damage.

My customer wanted to go elsewhere, but I stood firm and said **** em. The landlord thanked us for not just walking in and straight out like the majority of customers had done. It was difficult to have a conversation with their brats running around throwing things, the adults shaping up to one another for a fight, and a few of them shaking the living daylights out of the one arm bandit.

What a lovely bunch of people

Originally Posted by Stuart C

Derbyshire Police are looking for a badly scorched man after someone tried to cut and steal the main power line into a village called Cresswell. The village was plunged into darkness, and when they investigated, they found a hacksaw embedded in the cable, and a blowtorch nearby...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02..._copper_thief/

No idea if this guy is a potential Darwin Award winner, but if he isn't, he will be soon..

BTW, I put it in current affairs as it is current in more ways than one..

Not far from me Creswell, round our way we've had a spate of copper thefts in recent years, my work place I'll use as an example, last year we had the power cable cut in 3 places, three lengths of cable were taken, we got the cable replaced and 2 days later they'd been back and cut it again taking 4 lengths this time, at £6,000 a time for new cable and installation it's not a cheap job, in the end we had to dig across the yard and sink the cable 2ft under concrete at a cost of £10,000+, the remaining cable didn't stay very long before it all went. We went to the local scrap yard where we thought the copper was being sold to, true to form all the copper wire had been took there by some junkies, he's stopped buying it now after a visit from the police.