Plot
Bob Hunt (Robert Hays), a social worker, has a client, Dr. Martha Louise Rogers (Jane Mallet), whose electricity is cut off because she cannot pay the bill. She is assisted by contributions by her neighbors and friends, and the bill is paid entirely in coins, though the clerk is belatedly told that payment is not accepted in such a large quantity of coins.
Unfortunately, the electric company fails to reconnect the power due to a communications snafu, and the elderly woman is taken to hospital suffering hypothermia.
Hunt sets off on a vendetta of revenge, sabotaging assorted support systems. Attempting to evade detection at one site, he flattens himself against the wall with wet paint, with a finger sticking up, and leaving the impression of a hand with one raised finger in the paint. The news media find out this detail and the unknown saboteur is nicknamed "The Finger."
When the phone company is hit, it issues a public statement denying that, due to the sabotage to its billing records, long-distance calls can be made without a charge. Promptly, the movie depicts people making outrageous use of long distance, which in 1981 was still quite expensive. One girl calls overseas and plays a Styx double album over the phone.
In a long, climactic courtroom hearing, a rate-hike proposal by Kenneth Knight and his utility company, Eastern Gas & Electric, is to be voted on by a public commission. But first a number of protesting citizens are given an opportunity to speak, followed by Hunt, who confesses: "I am The Finger." At that point, many others in the courtroom, Spartacus-style, rise to claim they are The Finger.
Just as the commission is about to approve E, G & E's rate increase, police officer Marion Edwards bursts in, there to make an arrest. Hunt expects to be placed in handcuffs, but she reveals that Knight has been destroying his own substations in an effort to achieve public sympathy. The lights of the city go dark as spectators in the courthouse celebrate.
A rotary dial is a component of a telephone or a telephone switchboard that implements a signaling technology in telecommunications known as pulse dialing. It is used when initiating a telephone call to transmit the destination telephone number to a telephone exchange.
Milton "Bill" Finger was an American comic strip, comic book, film and television writer who was the co-creator of the DC Comics character Batman. Despite making major contributions as an innovative writer, visionary mythos/world builder and illustration architect, Finger was often relegated to ghostwriter status on many comics—including those featuring Batman, and the original Green Lantern, Alan Scott.
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Phone fraud, or more generally communications fraud, is the use of telecommunications products or services with the intention of illegally acquiring money from, or failing to pay, a telecommunication company or its customers.
Samuel Insull was a British business magnate. He was an innovator and investor based in Chicago who helped create an integrated electrical infrastructure in the United States. Insull created holding companies that purchased utilities and railroads. Insull was responsible for the building of the Chicago Civic Opera House in 1929. Due to the Great Depression, his vast Midwest holding company empire collapsed, and he was accused of profiting personally by selling worthless stock to unsuspecting investors who trusted him because of his position and reputation. Following a seven-week trial, he and 16 co-defendants were acquitted of all charges after two hours of jury deliberation.
Commonwealth Edison, commonly known by syllabic abbreviation as ComEd, is the largest electric utility in Illinois, and the primary electric provider in Chicago and much of Northern Illinois. Its service territory stretches roughly from Iroquois County on the south to the Wisconsin border on the north and from the Iowa border on the west to the Indiana border on the east. For more than 100 years, Commonwealth Edison has been the primary electric delivery services company for Northern Illinois. Today, ComEd is a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation, one of the nation's largest electric and gas utility holding companies. ComEd provides electric service to more than 3.8 million customers across Northern Illinois. The company's revenues total more than $15 billion annually.
Northwestel Inc. is a Canadian telecommunications company that is the incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) and long-distance carrier in the territories of Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and part of Northern British Columbia. Originally established in 1979 by the Canadian National Railway from CN's northern telecommunications assets, it has been owned by BCE Inc. since 1988.
The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 (PUHCA), also known as the Wheeler-Rayburn Act, was a US federal law giving the Securities and Exchange Commission authority to regulate, license, and break up electric utility holding companies. It limited holding company operations to a single state, thus subjecting them to effective state regulation. It also broke up any holding companies with more than two tiers, forcing divestitures so that each became a single integrated system serving a limited geographic area. Another purpose of the PUHCA was to keep utility holding companies engaged in regulated businesses from also engaging in unregulated businesses. The act was based on the conclusions and recommendations of the 1928-35 Federal Trade Commission investigation of the electric industry. On March 12, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt released a report he commissioned by the National Power Policy Committee. This report became the template for the PUHCA. The political battle over its passage was one of the bitterest of the New Deal, and was followed by eleven years of legal appeals by holding companies led by the Electric Bond and Share Company, which finally completed its breakup in 1961.
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The Alabama Public Service Commission, commonly called the PSC, was established by an act of the Alabama Legislature in 1915 to primarily replace the State Railroad Commission. The PSC's responsibility was expanded in 1920 to include regulating and setting rates that utility companies charge their customers for electricity. The legislature expanded the PSC's responsibilities in later years to include those companies that provide gas, water, and communications, as well as transportation common carriers such as trucking and air carriers. The PSC effectively determines the rate of profits that most of these companies are allowed to earn. However, some of its traditional responsibilities have passed to the federal government with the passage of the Federal Aviation Act of 1994 and the Federal Communications Act of 1996.
The Public Utility Commission of Texas is a state agency that regulates the state’s electric, water and telecommunication utilities, implements respective legislation, and offers customer assistance in resolving consumer complaints.
Christmas Night with the Stars is a television show broadcast each Christmas night by the BBC from 1958 to 1972. The show was hosted each year by a leading star of BBC TV and featured specially-made short seasonal editions of the previous year's most successful BBC sitcoms and light entertainment programmes. Most of the variety segments no longer exist in accordance with the BBC's practice of discarding programmes at the time.
The Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) is a statutory organ of the state government of Georgia; elected among five commission districts, the board consists of a Chairman, a Vice-chairman, and three Commissioners. PSC regulates telecommunications, transportation, electric and natural gas services in the U.S. state of Georgia. Commissioners are elected in partisan elections statewide, though they must reside in a district.
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Peterloo is a 2018 British historical drama, written and directed by Mike Leigh, based on the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. The film was selected to be screened in the main competition section of the 75th Venice International Film Festival. The film received its UK premiere on 17 October 2018, as part of the BFI London Film Festival, at HOME in Manchester. The screening marked the first time that the festival had held a premiere outside London. Leigh said he was delighted that Peterloo would be premiered "where it happened".
