To the Editor,
Re: Safety of smart meters questioned, Dec. 6.
B.C. Hydro’s Ted Olynyk blames Ashley Suggett’s house wiring for her smart meter-induced meltdown, fire and power outage.
When her house was built, an electrical inspector said it was up to code. Hydro agreed – they put an analog meter on it.
Can a house suddenly not be up to code just because Hydro plunks a new meter on it?
Suggett’s lucky; she just lost her groceries and maybe a few appliances.
Some houses in Nanaimo still have knob and tube wiring – I bet they’ll just go up like dry tinder. Maybe someone will die as a result.
Will Olynyk blame the dead victim for not moving fast enough or being too poor to rewire?
Olynyk’s attitude reminded me of Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram’s 1961 pain experiment.
An ‘authority’ told a volunteer to apply increasingly severe electric shocks to a hidden subject (actually a collaborator), no matter what the subject said, whether he cried in pain or claimed he was having a heart attack.
Milgram wanted to prove that only ‘evil’ people would do something morally reprehensible and claim they were just doing their jobs.
Instead, he found that 65 per cent of people followed orders because an authority told them to.
I wonder which authority has told Hydro staff just to do their jobs, no matter the personal cost, because they’re being paid to be wilfully ignorant?
Once you know something, having seen and heard the truth with your own eyes and ears, how can you not know?
I wonder which authority has removed the ethical, empathic, thinking, and logical parts of their brains and produced zombies in Darth Vader suits to attack Hydro’s own customers and owners?
Will we, B.C. Hydro’s customers and owners, get billed for their psychological counselling to deal with the gnawing sensation of guilt and shame deep within their souls?
Christel Martin
Nanaimo