How not to do a basement extension

[Huge]

All I want is for people to come to an acceptable arrangement with their employers. If the people in my team want to come in 5 days a week, they're welcome.

[JimK]

/All I want is for people to come to an acceptable arrangement with their employers. If the people in my team want to come in 5 days a week, they're welcome./q

With your 'people skills' I'd expect it to be quite quiet....

Jim K

[Capitol]

So you are unsuited to working from home. That doesn't matter as many others can cope with working as a singleton, telephone management of an international operation and lot's of international travel when the local management role goes pear shaped.

[john james]

Someone ask for examples of the cheapest houses available in here about a year ago and it was quite surprising how few of them were anything even remotely like cheap in the entire country. Unfortunately groups.google is now so difficult to use that its hard to post a link to that thread now.

[Nightjar]

On 18/03/2015 10:27, Tim Watts wrote: ...

The Bavarian dialect may be a bit impenetrable, but I like the food. Not sure about the winters though.

[Nightjar]

Quite difficult in manufacturing, although I did allow flexible working hours. Until the Lone Worker Directive upset things, I had one chap who came in at 3am as it let him be at home to look after the kids while his wife was at work. Where employees had to work in teams, the team had to agree working hours between them and let me know what they had agreed.

Personally, I don't get on with working at home. I find far too many other things to do when I'm at home. I have to rent a small office in town and set aside a couple of hours each week when I go there to get the office work done.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Judging by those judges, some find far too many other things to do in the office too, if 'working' unsupervised. ;-)

[Tim Watts]

Wasn't very bright of them really...

[tony sayer]

In article , Tim Streater scribeth thus

Umm ... the ones who made those comments were managers not workers....

[Vir Campestris]

It also cuts off demand for social housing.

Council tenants who buy their houses aren't on the waiting list.

Andy

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Nor were they on the waiting list if already a council tenant.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I haven't seen anything implying BCO was not correctly engaged.

Structural Engineers were engaged and did the design. However, it was left to the builder to do the design for the temporary structural support during the work, and the builder apparently didn't support the building when starting underpinning piling, and that's when it collapsed.

The owners sued both the structural engineers and the builders. The structural engineers were cleared - they had not been engaged to design the temporary structural support during underpinning. There was a slight criticism of them as the builders also engaged the structural engineers to check the first pile. The engineers then realised the builder wasn't competent and had to tell them to redo it, but didn't warn the owners. It was deemed they were not strictly required to do so because they were being engaged by the builder, not the owner at that point.

The builder was found fully liable, but has no assets.

[Andrew Gabriel]

That can apply to some employees too who haven't worked from home before, and initially feel guilty if they aren't at their desk 9-5. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, it's not suitable for everyone, and not necessarily all the time. It's important that people do actually meet those they work with - a face-to-face is necessary from time to time and builds a level of respect which is impossible to achieve only through phone/email/IM contact.

That age/breed of manager has fortunately got to be fewer and fewer throughout my working life. "Manager" itself is an outdated term. It's about being a "leader" - enabling and encouraging your staff to get the best out of themselves. In most cases, giving them as much control over their working environment as you can (within obvious constraints - legal, team working, trust, etc) enables them to adjust to working in the best way that suits them - i.e. they "manage" themselves to some extent, but you "lead" the team.

[RJH]

It keeps it as social housing, and not an 'asset' to inherit. Of course, it depends on your POV.

It's still a fact. 660,000 voids in the private sector (c.82% of homes).

29,000 in the LA sector (c.9% of homes).

I suppose we're all guilty of extrapolating from anecdote from time to time, but really, the facts aren't difficult to get.

[RJH]

RTB cuts off demand for council housing? Never heard that before. How so? Cuts off supply - of course.

Those who buy were not on a waiting list in the first place. Maybe the transfer list.

[RJH]

Yes, and that was because LAs were allowed to borrow. Even as late as the mid 70s LA/HAs were churning out as much as the private sector.

My mid-70s point is a reference to the closing down of public sector borrowing. Almost an act of spite, as the construction of council housing was at very little cost to the tax payer.

'They' = the private sector (well, 80%+). If land in the right place was cheap enough, the private sector would be developing a good deal more.

Ah well yes, I'd be with you there, at least to a point.

If councils could borrow, that'd be far more likely to lead to released green belt. But as that's not going to happen until I get into power, the least worst option is to start releasing land.

I'm surprised that post-79 governments haven't done it - one of many predictions I've got spectacularly wrong ;-)