Lack of maintenance (Rant)

[Frank Erskine]

Well presumably you can't blame the drivers, who don't actually have any say in the matter...

Your posting does seem to imply that they are to blame.

[Windmill]

And they seem to sit with a huge diesel idling and creating almost subsonic noise, noise which if you're unlucky will resonate in some room cavities and which can be oddly disturbing.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

A rule obviously written by one with no clue. What is so special about the 'got in bloke' who does the repair?

[Tim Streater]

Well obviously not. My intent was to highlight a fundamental defect of trains: they can't easily overtake one another.

[Derek G.]

He's the Dalai Lama ?

Derek G.

--

This Looks like Finito Ruperto.

[tim....]

He's the guy who won the contract by being 5p per hour cheaper :-(

tim

[Nightjar]

Page 4

Colin Bignell

[stephen.hull]

The bloke who fixed or supplied the vacuum cleaner works for the same supermarket but I don't know in what category as he was wearing the same store uniform as everyone else and not the official electricians name or logo.

Stephen.

[stephen.hull]

There's truth in that statement, its all about cost cutting IMO as contracts have recently been awarded to cheaper tenders.

Stephen.

[Hugh - Was Invisible]

like the school that asked for tenders for window cleaning. Accepted lowest quote without realising that it included only exterior windows. Cost them a fortune to get the inside windows done.

or

two plumbers talking in local pub.

Savvy plumber: I got that big local authority contract by tendering at xxx per property.

Naive one: I couldn't make a profit at that price.

Savvy plumber: But I know that 35 percent are non-standard and I can charge what I like for those.

(I used to deal with a household name civil engineering and building firm. They quoted below cost for the basic contract but had a team dealing with all the extras for unforeseen ground conditions, amendments etc.)

[tim....]

Oh I know there is (that's why I made it).

Used to work for a company that tendered out all of its travel to the agency who offered the biggest rebate of their booking commission (when such a thing existed).

Travel costs immediately when up 50% as said travel agency would only make bookings at full rack rate because rooms/flights/car-hire sold through discount channels didn't pay any commission.

tim

[Tim Streater]

You mean they didn't read the quotes properly.

The local authority didn't read the quote properly. And they should be writing the contract.

You mean *you* didn't read the quote properly. :-)

[stephen.hull]

We have the suit/bean counter guy who has come in to try and save the company money by paying him a million or some such ludicrous amount, then after a year or two he will leave the company and the aftermath.

Stephen.

[DerbyBoy]

We have the suit/bean counter guy who has come in to try and save the company money by paying him a million or some such ludicrous amount, then after a year or two he will leave the company and the aftermath.

Stephen.

"Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble". Henry Royce

....and people believe this is a profitable business. The only profitable businesses are those that really add value by taking raw materials and producing something of higher value. Too many are getting a quick buck from creating a service need and moving it to themselves.

[Nick Odell]

Thanks. Makes jolly interesting reading.

All the numbers in the document come from verifiable government sources. Unfortunately they are all different government sources and aren't joined up in any way. What's happened here is that the analyst has taken the total amount of taxpayer input to the railways and divided it amongst the the total number of freight tonne/kms carried and then taken the taxpayer input into roads and done the same there. Then, and quite separately and I'm sure without any intention to mislead, they have taken the same total amounts of taxpayer inputs and divided it amongst passenger/kms instead. Clearly, the whole pot can't be divided in it's entirety into freight and then divided again in its entirety into passengers so something must be wrong and I'd suggest it's all wrong.

Sorry to have butted in: I was just flicking through the rant on my way to something else and those numbers gave me a vision of a goods train chugging south with the driver throwing handfuls of twenty-pound notes out of the window and since those numbers are so spectacular I guessed that something must be awry.

Nick

[Hugh - Was Invisible]

Snip

Sorry I wasn't clear. I did not contract with the company. I had other dealings with them. Making profits out of amendments etc. is or at least was pretty standard.

[Huge]

Sounds like my current employers.

Travel got all sniffy when I undercut their quote for a business class ticket to the USA by £600.

[Huge]

Ah, a bungie consultant.

Or ...

Q: Why are consultants like seagulls?

A: Because they have big bills and hover around squawking at you, before crapping on you and flying off, leaving you with a mess.

(Amusingly, while Googling for this joke, I found a firm called ... Seagull Consultants!)

[Nightjar]

I am aware of the shortcomings of the figures, as presented. I suspect, from my own problems in pinning them down, due to any hard data on how to split the expenditure accurately. However, they do show that, although road and rail get similar amounts spent on them, the expenditure on roads is significantly less per unit km carried, which makes it better value for money.

Probably heading North, then running out of notes, given that London and the SE get the lion's share of transport expenditure:

and since those numbers are so spectacular I

Colin Bignell

[Tim Streater]

Depends how the contract is written and who writes it.