TETRA :: Ecologist - October 2004
By Jay Griffiths
page 8
In September 1999, the European Commission severely criticised the Home Office, proposing that the Home Office had unlawfully limited the contract to tenders that could supply the TETRA standard.(24) The system was secured under Public Private Partnership and the contract was given by the Home Office to BT (which has since hived off the "Airwave" contract to 02) with the American company Motorola.
The Public Accounts Committee scrutinised the deal and were underimpressed with Airwave as a system, and with the behaviour of the Home Office. The Committee concluded that Airwave might be more sophisticated and expensive than it really needs to be.
They commented In negotiating a deal with 02, PITO and the Home Office failed to secure any clawback for the taxpayer of additional profits if... the system is sold by 02 to overseas governments... Failure to negotiate a clawback agreement was a product not just of 02 being in a powerful position as the only bidder but also the inability of the Home Office to bring the fire service and other safety organisations on board...
They also commented It was by no means clear to us who will bear the risk if concerns about the effects on health of using the Airwave system prove to be real.
(25) This is the political scandal; that the Home Office should apparently put the interests of a huge private company before the safety of the police and the public.
The TETRA Industry Group admits on its website that they have their eye on the lucrative market of security, construction and transport industries. The industry dearly wants to sell the TETRA system to many countries around the world, as the newsletter Electromagnetic Hazard and Therapy reports.(26) Trower quotes some thirty-two countries: I know because I've spoken to most of them, and they're worried,
says Trower. And, he tells me, one country to have rejected the TETRA system for their own emergency services is America.
The industry seeks the endorsement of the British police force, seen as conservative, safety-conscious and well-equipped. For the industry, it is a kind of celebrity endorsement: As Seen On The Bill. That,
says Dr Grahame Blackwell, is a strong selling point. It's a very cynical use of our emergency services.
Blackwell shows me extracts of e-mails about TETRA from a Crime Scene Examiner in Lancashire which grow increasingly desperate over the weeks, describing how all but one member of their team are suffering from symptoms ranging from headaches/toothache/neuralgia to high blood pressure and even a cancerous tumour in the throat... It is the tumour which has finally been the last straw...
This officer, says his colleague, had been very pro TETRA radios needless to say he's changed his mind since finding out he has cancer.
As I finish this article, an e-mail arrives. The officer is now dead. As his colleague remarks: We are a group of people who love our job and we are not "trouble makers" but we are genuine in our belief that these radios are killing us.
Meanwhile, around the country hundreds of local campaigns have sprung up and are linking nationally. In Llanidloes, the spirit of the Chartists lives on. Fighting for the rights of ordinary people to make the decisions affecting their lives, Chartists faced imprisonment and transportation for their part in a popular revolt. But ultimately they won. So, in the end, will Llanidloes.
