"Denis McMahon" wrote in message
.com
On Wed, 28 Dec 2011 03:11:34 -0800, furnessvale wrote:

Indeed! Now all we need is government prepared to bring the law on
scrap metal out of the days of Dickens and into the 21st century and
courts prepared to believe the offence is worth more than the
miniscule scrap value the thief gets........but don't hold your
breath.

Maybe it's about time BT and Network Rail started taking civil actions
against the thieves and the scrapyards for the consequential costs
caused by their actions.

A civil judgement for the compensation costs incurred by NR for a 6
hour shutdown on the ECML would probably be enough to close the
scrapyard that paid for the signalling cable involved.

BBC London ran a sting operation a few weeks ago. They found that some
dodgy scrapyards wouldn't buy obviously stolen BT cable (provided to the
Beeb by BT), but did give sotto voce advice to the thieves on how to
disguise the origins (ie, to burn off the insulation and melt the
copper). They even suggested a quiet location where to do it. Once
that was done, it's pretty hard to prove that it was originally stolen,
and from whom/when/where, and so the scrapyards would then buy the
anonymised copper from the returning 'thieves'.