My internet went down yesterday. It’s been farting me about for some weeks now, largely on the dimension of not working when my phone is connected. That does, let’s be clear about this, kind of remove the longstanding advantage of having a router capable of dealing with both voice and data at the same time.

Orange – which does my internet here, but also owns France Telecom, which provides voice – makes a cast-iron promise to its customers that, if one loses internet, they will get to you within the hour.

Unless of course, that hour is lunch…in which case, they won’t. In fact they didn’t feel the need to get back from Chez Francois or wherever until 4.10 pm, at which point the only help on offer was a string of bollocks that you just know is the standard excuse.

“Ah monsieur,” said the bloke, “I am desolate at having to give you this news, but there has been a storm to the West of you, and nobody has internet at the moment”.

“Really?” I replied, adopting an air of innocence, “So, has this storm been there for the last five weeks? And is this storm somehow capable of avoiding my neighbours – both of whom have, even as we speak, full internet and phone service?”

The remote liar spluttered a little, and passed me on to another department.

The lady in this other department seemed to be slightly more of this world. She listened, and said that an engineer would be with me perhaps later tonight, or failing that tomorrow morning. Which, in real time, this being Wednesday, was three hours ago. But he still isn’t here.

“Will this engineer reach me within the hour?” I asked, employing my most cunning politeness.

“I’m not sure,” the lady in this other department replied.

“But Orange promises to get to all customers who have lost internet within the hour,” I suggested.

“Yes monsieur,” she countered, “but there has been a storm to the West of you, and nobody has internet at the moment”.

Silly me. I’d forgotten about the storm.

Further enquiries this afternoon have revealed that there is no longer a storm to the West: now, there is a problem at Orange Central.

“Why should that impress me?” I enquired, “That’s your problem. My problem is that I lost a scoop yesterday because you’re more interested in your f**king problems than mine. I have neither phone nor internet. WTF has my lack of voice phone line provided by France Telecom got to do with Orange Central, juice, peel or marmalade?”

I was passed on to another department again. This time, the disinformation was historic.

“I want you to send out an engineer to my house please, as per your contractual obligation,” I began, the edge in my voice clearly discernible.

“That will not be necessary,” asserted the next rubbish-talker, “the problem is at this end and we will have to give you a new modem.”

“Since when,” I enquired, “was a new modem for internet data remotely likely to solve the lack of a voice landline?”

“We have looked into this, and I can assure you…”

“Je m’en fou au sujet do vos assurances monsieur,” I yelled, “parce qu’votre gueule n’emite que des conneries”.

“Monsieur, I am only trying to help” he sighed, infuriatingly.

“I want an engineer out here now please,” I countered, “That is your customer promise, and I want it fulfilled.”

“What you need is a new modem,” said the Stepford Robot once more.

“When will you supply that?” I asked.

“I cannot say at this juncture,” he replied pointlessly.

I found a message area among the pop-classical options a little later, and left a filthy message threatening Class Action suits.

This is the third time in fifteen months that the Dysfunctional Duo of France Telecom and Orange have left me without any means of outside communication, forcing me to rely on mobile phone voice and SMS, neither of which will work here unless I stand on a bench down towards to herb garden at the south west end of the property.

But somebody somewhere listened to the filth, and this evening at 6 pm I got a response from a chap saying he would be here without fail Friday afternoon. He listened attentively to the case history. There was no mention of storms to the West, problems in Central, or new modems. So one waits to see the outcome.

What is it about globalist multinational companies – especially comms companies – that they would rather take time composing a barely credible pack of lies than simply living up to commitments made?

The first part of the answer is that there are a number of highly intelligent idiots walking about in such companies, and they’re called accountants. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, “An accountant is a man who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing”.

The Cost Accountant is employed to chisel every supplier and every aspect of product quality until the correct margin has been achieved in order to convince the stock markets of the world that a 25% return on the gross, year after year (even in those years with lots of storms to the west of people) is a realistic thing to demand.

He in turn reports to the Corporate Accountant – almost always an over-promoted flake with aspirations to be a PR – who “liaises with the markets”….corporate argot for “tells them as many lies as necessary to keep the share-price high”. (Of late, this chap has become redundant, given that Messrs Bernanke and King have been spending oodles of our money anyway to keep the markets sureally high – come Hell, high water, or storms somewhere to the west of us).

Between them, what globalist marketing and numbers Johnnies do is degrade the product and its promise until nobody trusts the brand any more…at which point they do a deal with multiple retailers to supply their own-label brand. The analysts are then informed that this is the new paradigm and it’s all abut volume. The analysts recommend the shares as a Buy, and soon thereafter Omnivore Foods of Ohio takes the company over at top dollar, hiring several merchant banks to handle the multivariate market doubts about the idea of buying a crock…..more often than not using the excuse of storms somewhere to the west.

The string of descriptions available to summate this ‘system’ of doing business is…well, as long as a piece of string: insane, mendacious, counterfeit, injurious to socially sound levels of employment, disastrous for shareholder value, criminal, myopic, greedy – and increasingly lacking in any credibility.

Except that now, there are real storms: to the East in Russia and China, to the South in North Africa…and to the West in south America. In 2014 we inhabit a world in which plus ca change….mais rien reste la meme.

The globalist multinational company is about as antithetical to stable, ethical communities as it is possible to be…..which means it fits like a glove over the underhand nature of monopolism masquerading as neoliberalism.

Such companies turn every service value on its head: “The answer’s a lie, now what’s the question?”