Today's job.

Harry likes to remind us occasionally how he had a career in the NHS on the maintenance side, He may have trained him in the art of doing bugger all while pretending to be important.

GH

Public sector. Bill

Indeed.

Outside there's a man with a digger moving a pile of earth from over here to over there, and another man standing watching.

Local council.

And it's not on the highway or anywhere with access to the public, so they don't need "guarding"

Owain

Having a lookout is not unique to the public sector, you see plenty on jobs undertaken by private contractors with lookouts. For all we know it might be a health and safety requirement in any circumstances where mechanical digging is taking place, perhaps someone in the know might enlighten us. At the end of the day it is probably cheaper to pay a guy to stand there rather than a payout to some phone zombie who has got clattered with the bucket, then there is always the professional compensation seeker eg Uncle Albert - Only Fools & Horses.

Richard

Not surprised as NHS are not known for their logic in such situations. Its a bit like the lift in our local guild hall, some of us go there regularly and know the lift code to the inner sanctum rooms upstairs its not been changed in years. I was standing in the Foyer last November talking to a friend when along comes the security man with a visitor and after attempting to call the lift for a while started asking about the thing. A chorus of us answered him with the code. Nobody seemed to think this situation unusual in the slightest. So if the security man does not know the code but all the external people do, what would you think about the security of the building?

Yes me too, but I gave up long ago trying to contact anyone who could sort it and the code is still the same.

I suspect its just how things are in statutory body world. Brian

The watching man is now sitting in the van with the lights on (and presumably the heater and engine running).

Owain

Most "security" is really theatre. However pointing it out immediate makes you a suspect, so it's best to keep mum ....

If he was a professional H&S person he would have both hands in his pockets :-)

Quite farcical I thought on BBC News last night from Brussels. A presenter there to ask a question of the European Editor who could easily have given her comments without the question and then there was the Chief Political Correspondent who was also asked a question by the presenter and equally she could have just commented without the question in the first place. Nothing she said couldn't have been said by the European Editor. So 3 people doing a job which only required one and to of whom had gone to Brussels solely for this purpose. And now they want over 75s to pay for a TV licence.

In the EMU unit for eledrely people with dementia that my mother died in, the code to the rear entrance was given to every guest and written on the wall of reception....

'They dont remember what it is even if they read it at the desk, so they can't just wander off'

Yeah they should enterc pi with all it;s 31 trillion digits, I;d say that would be pretty secure ;-)

The care home were my mum was has a 4 digit code and that was the month and year so this months code would be 0319.

I did wonder whether or not all the care homes that the company owned used the same system.

But I admit the same as really passwords are hard to remember and we are often told not to record them anywhere, which means they need to be something memorable in the life of the person concerned, so if somebody knew me intimately they could probably get it in three or four tries. Brian

I have at least 30 passwords, of course I can;t rememebr them all. But while they say don;t write them down, I do. Now I'll give an example of one I can remmerb that I have written down.

if someone takes my computer and backup stuff they won't find this pasword unless they also steal the toilet cystem as I used to keep some passwords in their in a water protected bag and box.

Now the chances of someone wanting my PW might well take my computer thinking I;ve written it in some file, so unless they took my raid my toilet cysten too they;d be out of luck and even if they did, it's in my own cryptic code anyway. SO some letter/digits are missing and only I can guess what they are, of course the theif might get lucky, but on watching last night ITV IIRC how easy it is for people to scam bank cards.... well .

Depends how intimately :-<>

And so you should given that you are likely the only ones watching TV anymore.

Same here - and I even keep them on my PC in a text file named Pw.txt!

It contaibs a list of clues, such as the first 4 digits of the address I was living at when PostCodes were first introduced.

This might be followed by xxx meaning the name of the road, all in lower case, Xxx if it starts with a capital x*x if the relevant letter is replaced by a symbol (but not an asterisc!), nnxx if it starts with the house number, nnXxx or nnx*x are the same variants as before, xxxxR if Road is appended, etc.

The beginning of another PostCode points to an STD code from

xbt is a letter followed by a bt phone number we gave up 30 years ago.

xyzemp is my employee number from when I worked for xyz many years ago. This number got longer with several different mergers, etc, and the version I use is nothing like the final one!

None of the source data to which any of this is based will be found anywhere on my PC or laptop and you would need to know an awful lot about me to come anywhere near guessing any of them. The only person who might have a fighting chance is my wife but I doubt she'd crack more than a few.