The Night Mail

[Dave Hunt]

36 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

That would be the "efficient" private sector!  Having worked roughly 50:50 in public and private sectors, I don't see much difference in terms of efficiency, the private sector just calls waste something different

 

I can't think of a single thing in the RAF that when privatised didn't go downhill fast in efficiency and effectiveness.

 

Dave

[Northmoor]

29 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

I can't think of a single thing in the RAF that when privatised didn't go downhill fast in efficiency and effectiveness.

 

Dave

When the MoD agency I (and Mrs Northmoor) worked in was privatised, we continued to provide exactly the same service we had provide to the Armed services the previous year.  The main difference our customers saw was that our charge-out rates had immediately risen by about 50%.  I can promise you that increase definitely didn't trickle down to our salaries.

[Happy Hippo]

41 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

A friend of mine was teaching a class of 15 year olds when one of them started arguing with him and came out threatening to punch him. He made a lunge at my friend who put out a hand to keep him away and contacted him on the chest. On the basis that he had 'struck' the boy, whose scrote-like parents formally complained, he was suspended for weeks until eventually some of the other pupils told the truth and he was reinstated. He said that had none of the other pupils come forward he would probably have been dismissed or worse and as a result took early retirement as soon as he could. 

 

Dave

When I was working in one of the secondary schools in the area, I was threatened by a young man who advanced upon me waving a pair of scissors.  In my defence he was actually about to stab another pupil, and I stepped in to try and protect the pupil who was the object of the scissor wielder's attention.

 

Three times I told him to put down the scissors:  He declined, continued his advance so was then given his very first flying lesson.

 

He didn't enjoy the flight, which was rather short and he crash landed upside down onto a desk.

Edited August 17, 2023 by Happy Hippo

[PhilJ W]

19 hours ago, woodenhead said:

You'd be surprised that a lot of councils insourced the work back later, some still do use outsourcers but a lot have set up their own organisations or taken them completely back.  There are still elements that it makes sense to outsource but a lot is now back under council control.

 

15 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

I can't think of a single thing in the RAF that when privatised didn't go downhill fast in efficiency and effectiveness.

 

Dave

Back in the 1980's the Thatcher government ordered public bodies to put a lot of what was done in house out to tender. The council I worked for put the building maintenance out to tender and the council had to accept the lowest tender. The manager* of the department pointed out that the lowest few tenders would not cover the costs. Not long after the private company took over my office and several others was due to be redecorated. As well as the normal inconvenience of 'having  the decorators in' they only turned up on one or two days a week and the redecoration was taking ages. I cornered the boss man and he freely admitted that he had used the redecoration as a loss leader to get the council contract. 

*The manager concerned was 'off the tools' and knew his business.

Edited August 18, 2023 by PhilJ W

[J. S. Bach]

Night Owl from the Piedmont.

[iL Dottore]

7 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

I can't think of a single thing in the RAF that when privatised didn't go downhill fast in efficiency and effectiveness.

 

Dave

There’s nothing wrong with privatisation per se, provided it is done correctly (and it can be: look at how the Japanese have privatised what was the nationalised JR).

 

But to do, so, it presupposes that there are a number of the following in place:

• Very clear contracts, delineating what has to be done and to what standard it will be done, written by - or with the input of - those who actually know what they’re doing.
• Appropriate contracts: whereby fair market prices are paid for goods and services with clearly defined bonuses for performance that goes above and beyond expectations and with punitive clauses for poor, sloppy or tardy performance.
• The willingness of the commissioning body to build up to a spec and not down to a price.
• An attitude amongst the outside contractors that working for the MoD (or whatever it happens to be) is not only an honour and privilege, but also an opportunity to showcase their abilities and not an exercise to rip off the government in any way they can.
• The ability and the willingness of the commissioning body to properly oversee, track and supervise the outsourced work (it helps a great deal when the person/persons overseeing such a contract actually know what the contractor is supposed to be doing and the supervising people do not regard a contract as a sort of mysterious black box where money goes in one end and some sort of outcome comes out of the other).

One easy way to improve outsourced, performance and quality is to abandon this whole “go for the lowest bidder“ nonsense.

 

In my line of work, I have seen a number of really ridiculously low quotes submitted by CROs (Contract Research Organisations) who wanted the job of monitoring one or more of my clinical trials. However, in my line of work outsourcing is generally an issue of insufficient in-house capacity rather than a political decision (one company I worked for always staffed for trough and not for peak drug development portfolio activity - so sometimes it was necessary to bring in outside contractors when we had an upsurge in portfolio activity)

 

Another wheeze contractors employ when trying to get a generous contract is, during the bidding process, to wheel out for the bid defence their “A Team* and then – when the contract has been awarded – assign their “Z team” to the project!

 

* usually, their “A Team“ is comprised of very experienced and knowledgeable people – in some cases probably the only experienced and knowledgeable people in that organisation.

[Oldddudders]

13 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

Another wheeze contractors employ when trying to get a generous contract is, during the bidding process, to wheel out for the bid defence their “A Team* and then – when the contract has been awarded – assign their “Z team” to the project!

 

* usually, their “A Team“ is comprised of very experienced and knowledgeable people – in some cases probably the only experienced and knowledgeable people in that organisation.

A similar trick is played by security firms. The doorman who turns up on Day 1 is smart, intelligent, effective - hey, we made a good choice with this firm! Within a fortnight he has moved to the next new contract, and the chap is now the latest no-hoper numbskull from the labour exchange. 

[SM42]

One of the nain issues  with outsourced work is staffing. 

 

Win the contract with the glitzy presentation and low bid and then realise there's only you, five full time employees, the cleaner and the tea lady to fulfill the £5 bn contract you just won. 

 

The net result is a lot of subcontracted or agency labour who have no particular interest in how your company performs, they just want to get paid and if you go bust then ho hum, just move onto the next job. 

 

The alternative is casting a net over the world to try and recruit talent very quickly, which can be a two edged sword.

You need the staff, but will you get the best, the just good enough or someone who knows a bit but doesn't have all the skills and knowledge needed and thus needs a lot of investment in  traiining. 

 

The overall result is that your contract promises get watered down as the costs go up and profits start to shrink towards losses and you are reliant on a staff of variable quality and attitude or sub contractors and temps who couldn't really care beyond pay day what happens 

 

Due diligence is a skill that seems to be lost in many instances 

 

Andy

 

[Winslow Boy]

8 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

 

Back in the 1980's the Thatcher government ordered public bodies to put a lot of what was done in house out to tender. The council I worked for put the building maintenance out to tender and the council had to accept the lowest tender. The manager* of the department pointed out that the lowest few tenders would not cover the costs. Not long after the private company took over my office and several others was due to be redecorated. As well as the normal inconvenience of 'having  the decorators in' they only turned up on one or two days a week and the redecoration was taking ages. I cornered the boss man and he freely admitted that he had used the redecoration as a loss leader to get the council contract. 

 

Compulsory competitive tendering or CCT and it wasn't just building maintenance that it played havoc with. Grounds maintenance was effectively split into two. What was really annoying was that the 'savings' weren't allowed to be kept, but went back to central government. So funds that in theory could have been spent on improving things such as a back log of maintenance repairs etc in effect disappeared.  I don't want to go too political, but once the government changed, the 'regime' was 'adjusted' so that so long as the council could 'prove' that the service was cost effective it could be kept in house. The weird thing was that there was a definite North -South divide as you would expect, but also you couldn't always say which councils were more enthusiastic based on there political persuasion.

Edited August 18, 2023 by Winslow Boy

[AndyID]

Fortunately I'm utterly clueless about politics in the UK these days. It's hard enough keeping up with what going on here.

 

Soooo....changing the subject slightly, did I mention I'm a skier? 😀  The problem is nearly all my former ski pals have either chucked it or croaked. I can ski on my own but it's a lot more fun to ski with others.

 

I got quite excited when I noticed on Facepuke that a group of, let's just call them "older skiers" from the East Coast, are planning a trip to the West for the upcoming ski season. I thought I could maybe meet up with them in Colorado, Utah or Wyoming for a couple of days skiing so I found their website and and posted a message asking if I might tag along.

 

Poking around on their website a bit more I discovered that the destination of their trip to the West is a ski hill not far up the road from here that I must have skied 20 or 30 times 😅  The problem is it's not all that high there and the snow can be a bit unreliable (as in wet). Not only that but it's prone to fog. I've been there quite often when it was crystal clear for the first 200 foot from the top then fog for the rest of the way down. (Fog is one of the worst conditions to ski in because it's extremely disorienting.)

 

I'll probably say nothing and hope they are lucky. It can be great there when conditions are good.

[Dave Hunt]

I went skiing once and on day 4 broke my ankle. I had just come off the top of the chairlift and was waiting for for my friend when a woman lost control and ran into me. I fell over but the binding on my right ski didn’t give and crack went my ankle. I was casevaced out in a thing like a bathtub on runners with skiers fore and aft and taken to hospital. That was the end of my skiing career.

 

Dave

[skipepsi]

4 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

There’s nothing wrong with privatisation per se, provided it is done correctly (and it can be: look at how the Japanese have privatised what was the nationalised JR).

 

But to do, so, it presupposes that there are a number of the following in place:

• Very clear contracts, delineating what has to be done and to what standard it will be done, written by - or with the input of - those who actually know what they’re doing.
• Appropriate contracts: whereby fair market prices are paid for goods and services with clearly defined bonuses for performance that goes above and beyond expectations and with punitive clauses for poor, sloppy or tardy performance.
• The willingness of the commissioning body to build up to a spec and not down to a price.
• An attitude amongst the outside contractors that working for the MoD (or whatever it happens to be) is not only an honour and privilege, but also an opportunity to showcase their abilities and not an exercise to rip off the government in any way they can.
• The ability and the willingness of the commissioning body to properly oversee, track and supervise the outsourced work (it helps a great deal when the person/persons overseeing such a contract actually know what the contractor is supposed to be doing and the supervising people do not regard a contract as a sort of mysterious black box where money goes in one end and some sort of outcome comes out of the other).

One easy way to improve outsourced, performance and quality is to abandon this whole “go for the lowest bidder“ nonsense.

 

In my line of work, I have seen a number of really ridiculously low quotes submitted by CROs (Contract Research Organisations) who wanted the job of monitoring one or more of my clinical trials. However, in my line of work outsourcing is generally an issue of insufficient in-house capacity rather than a political decision (one company I worked for always staffed for trough and not for peak drug development portfolio activity - so sometimes it was necessary to bring in outside contractors when we had an upsurge in portfolio activity)

 

Another wheeze contractors employ when trying to get a generous contract is, during the bidding process, to wheel out for the bid defence their “A Team* and then – when the contract has been awarded – assign their “Z team” to the project!

 

* usually, their “A Team“ is comprised of very experienced and knowledgeable people – in some cases probably the only experienced and knowledgeable people in that organisation.

You missed out the demand for 20% profit cararillion , crapita et al.

[iL Dottore]

17 minutes ago, skipepsi said:

You missed out the demand for 20% profit cararillion , crapita et al.

No, I didn’t. I was putting forward what I think should be a better approach to outsourcing. The second bullet point clearly stated “fair market prices” (also see the fourth bullet point).

 

If a contractor is not happy with the profit margin on a well specified contract (one that defines exactly to what level/standard every step of the outsourced operation should be done) then they don’t have to bid for the contract.

 

Unfortunately, it does seem like there is - at certain levels - a far too intimate a relationship between those in charge of the commissioning with certain contractors - with the almost inevitable result that the only people getting shortchanged are the tax-paying public.

 

If I had to set up a contract with some of the wideboys that pass for contractors in the UK nowadays, I would make sure it specifies everything that needs to be done and how it should be done. Even (with certain contractors) to the point of specifying laser printer type and printer paper type and cost per page of printing documents (you’ll be surprised, or probably not, to find out how much printing off a document can cost).

[Tony_S]

6 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

a contractor is not happy with the profit margin on a well specified contract

A service owned and run by a local municipality can do all the things a private company can like raise finance but profits if any can be reinvested in whatever the service is. I can’t even get any information about the performance criteria the people who now service our streetlights had to conform with from the County Council contract. You used to phone up and someone would replace the light a few days later.  Now they have a nice reporting website but it takes months for a bulb to be replaced with no indication of when. The privatisation of local services did not reduce our rates bill (local taxes). It did not increase efficiency . Our local taxes are now being used to pay for the profits distributed to shareholders of the private companies.  
However we live in a democracy and people get what they voted for. 

[Willie Whizz]

13 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

 

Back in the 1980's the Thatcher government ordered public bodies to put a lot of what was done in house out to tender. The council I worked for put the building maintenance out to tender and the council had to accept the lowest tender. The manager* of the department pointed out that the lowest few tenders would not cover the costs. Not long after the private company took over my office and several others was due to be redecorated. As well as the normal inconvenience of 'having  the decorators in' they only turned up on one or two days a week and the redecoration was taking ages. I cornered the boss man and he freely admitted that he had used the redecoration as a loss leader to get the council contract. 

Back in the Noughties I regarded one of the greatest achievements of my working life as getting the particular City Council Directorate in which I worked to see and accept that "Lowest Price" and "Best Value" were very often not at all the same thing.  That view took a long while to percolate to the other 'silos' in which the LA operated though.

 

As for "small businesses", from my original career culminating as a bank manager piano-player in a House of Ill Repute, I came to have a great respect for the work ethic, creativity and independent spirit of many of my small-business customers; but it has also to be said that a fair proportion of them would have struggled to progress, or even to be employable for long, in a larger organisation where 'doing your own thing in your own way and never mind anybody else's point of view' was not going to be an appropriate or acceptable approach.  But then, that's how they liked it and why they preferred that way.

Edited August 18, 2023 by Willie Whizz

[Tony_S]

Trains again. 
I haven’t had many train journeys this year, so it was rather nice to travel up to Whitechapel yesterday. It was post rush hour!  The weather was very pleasant, and on the journey towards London there were families off to see the Tower and other day out destinations. On the way back people were clearly off to Southend for a day on the beach (or Adventure Island). I chose to transfer to the underground (although it is above ground there) at Barking as it just involves a walk across the platform, rather than over a bridge at West Ham. The connections available at West Ham and Barking to lots of other destinations in London are perhaps something to explore one day! 
To give some indication of how easy it was to get home from Whitechapel yesterday. My hospital appointment was at 11.40, the tube I got on  at Whitechapel arrived at Barking at 12.15, I got in a train, a couple,of minutes later, and Aditi met me as it arrived in Benfleet at 12.46. Slight cheat on times as consultant saw me at 11.30! Since the Elizabeth line opened the Entrance/Exit of Whitechapel has moved back to the old location opposite the hospital entrance. 
Tony

[Northmoor]

14 minutes ago, Willie Whizz said:

Back in the Noughties I regarded one of the greatest achievements of my working life as getting the particular City Council Directorate in which I worked to see and accept that "Lowest Price" and "Best Value" were very often not at all the same thing.  That view took a long while to percolate to the other 'silos' in which the LA operated though.

 

My Dad says one of the most important things he learned early in his civil engineering career, was for small, simple contracts (where Price is likely to be the discriminator), always pick the second lowest bid.  A bidder cannot then put in a silly low winning bid and try to demand contract changes afterwards, while it also screens out those who clearly didn't understand the question.

[Happy Hippo]

I regret to report that my granddaughter's  pet Guinea Pig, 'Fluttershy' was put to sleep this morning.  Of course there will be another, as 'Fluttershy' had a companion, who is already very lonely.  It was made worse by the poor little thing falling ill whilst the family where away on holiday.

 

In less tragic news, my new outdoor woodworking room has arrived and is currently living in three large boxes stacked against the side of the garage.

 

I can guarantee that the floor, which has to go down first, will be in the box that is closest to the garage wall, so I will have to shift the other two first!

 

Construction will probably start tomorrow afternoon, and should be completed on Sunday.

 

It will then take the rest of the year to populated this mini palace with all my woodworking kit and spare timber.

 

Only then will I have enough space in the garage to breathe whenever I walk in there🤣.

 

[Dave Hunt]

5 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

Construction will probably start tomorrow afternoon, and should be completed on Sunday.

 

It will then take the rest of the year to populated this mini palace with all my woodworking kit and spare timber.

 

Only then will I have enough space in the garage to breathe whenever I walk in there🤣.

 

Does that mean that when you say, "Look at this," and point across the garage that it will take less than half an hour to find it Richard?

 

Dave 

[Hroth]

2 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

Does that mean that when you say, "Look at this," and point across the garage that it will take less than half an hour to find it Richard?

 

Dave 

 

It probably means that once the shed is filled to the brim, there will be enough room in the garage to start sorting the stuff remaining!

 

[Dave Hunt]

Today is 'take a breather' day between granddaughter then dinner guests time and the next influx of visitors and remaining grandchildren so I was planning a day in the shed. Sadly, so far my sciatica has refused to co-operate so I'm reading, hanging round RMW and swallowing industrial quantities of analgesics instead. I'm reading about the North Staffs Railway and have learned that one of the architects who had a hand in Stoke station and surrounds was named Hunt so no wonder I find it an attractive place. I'm now about to look at booking my ticket to London for a do in September so I'm hoping to be able to do it online without too much hassle. A cockeyed optimist? Me?

 

Dave

[Tony_S]

20 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

regret to report that my granddaughter's  pet Guinea Pig, 'Fluttershy' was put to sleep this morning.  Of course there will be another, as 'Fluttershy' had a companion, who is already very lonely.  It was made worse by the poor little thing falling ill whilst the family where away on holiday.

Matthew’s first hamster “Zippy’ died while we were in holiday. The owner of the hamster hotel where Zippy had been booked in while we were in Devon had been unable to contact us for a few days, there wasn’t a mobile signal where we were were staying. She asked us what we wanted to do with Zippy. I asked what she had done and she said Zippy was currently in the freezer. So we collected her  when we returned home. She was the first in what was a small pet rodent graveyard. 

[newbryford]

34 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

 

 

Construction will probably start tomorrow afternoon, and should be completed on Sunday.

 

It will then take the rest of the year to populated this mini palace with all my woodworking kit and spare timber.

 

Only then will I have enough space in the garage to breathe whenever I walk in there🤣.

 

 

Will it have a first aid station?

 

 

[PhilJ W]

14 minutes ago, newbryford said:

 

Will it have a first aid station?

 

 

Why, is he expecting a visit from @grandadbob?

[Winslow Boy]

23 minutes ago, newbryford said:

 

Will it have a first aid station?

 

 

 

Only if a table saw is required to be used.