Annetje

The word 'Dodgy' is not acceptable in the House of Commons ...
On the other hand, being 'Dodgy' is ...
Good for Zarah sticking to her point !

Lion in Winter

Good for her. And people get called a lot more than "dodgy" in the Commons.

I wish there were more MPs like her.

DaveLovesDee

Lynn R

Levelling up, they said. When Boris Johnson was first elected PM he claimed he had a plan to fix social care. Turns out it means that six in ten older people (those with assets below 186k including the value of their property) will be worse off, and those with assets of 106k worst affected of all. It will also affect those in the North more unfavourably than those in the South where property values are much higher, so children there will be able to inherit a higher proportion of of their parents' assets. This is not my idea of fairness. It remains to be seen how many of the "Red Wall Tory" MPs will vote against this plan as this article says they may.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/...from-costs-cap

macliam

Anyone expecting the Tories to extend social fairness or to limit the greed of their buddies is looking at the wrong party. Their idea of "fairness" is to introduce tax cuts that save you 25p and Rees-Mogg £100,000, or to introduce flat-rate taxes that cost the rich less in real terms or taxes on consumables that ensures the poorest have to pay. Then to bat away any criticism by pointing out that "everyone is better off!". Or price caps that vastly favour those with the most to protect...... who'd have guessed?

philat98

A master class in avoiding answering a question.

dave_j

Yeeeesssss HS2.

Some might say that high speed rail will be too expensive.

Others will say that it's not really needed.

But many will say that it demonstrates an utter disregard for the north and an admittance by a tory government that economic activity doesn't exist to the north east of Manchester and certainly won't be given any help to.

I think that this will help ensure that, not withstanding a lack of visible labour leadership, the northern voting public will be shoved into the labour camp for reasons very similar to those that produced the brexit protest vote.

Starmer might have come out of his shell and protested but it'll be the likes of Rayner, who if she's any sense will exaggerate her Stockport accent and seek to capitalise on this, a well spoken Starmer had better watch out.

The tories are busily creating red bricks to rebuild the red wall with and they're all stamped with the tagline "Johnson doesn't care", a three word headline that could very well catch on.

scrubbedexpat098

It would've been nice to have a high speed link right up the guts of the country to Scotland, in the early days that was the vision. When you consider that short haul flights are becoming more and more unpopular , a high speed line should be exactly what's needed and wanted. I'd even consider flying back to build it, incredible projects to be part of

macliam

The problem with all these projects in the UK is that they seem to topsy out of all reasonable control. I don't know whether it's to to with the planning process or planning in general, but they all seem to start with all the bells and whistles, underestimate inflation pressures and/or contingency when quoting a first price - and then busily add extra bells and whistles until the original quote becomes meaningless and the overall affordability comes into question...... at which time thay have already spent or committed eye-watering amounts for little real return.

It makes me wonder how any infrastructure ever got built - or how other countries seem able to achieve things without the constant focus and reappraisal of the concepts. I think of the TGV system on the continent, the many, many urban tram/metro systems implemented in recent decades and the incredible evolution in road connections. Perhaps it is caused by the "open" nature of such projects - the more attention drawn to them, the more questions asked, the more doubt cast, the less likely they are to conclude successfully......

scrubbedexpat098

Railway projects are always going to be a pain in the arse, especially high speed ones, with new improved signalling systems and higher standards that really cop issues. I did alot of my training in France so I was used to the improved working process.

The government let out tenders, usually with unrealistic time frames and budget restrictions. The construction companies say yeah we can do that and here's our price, knowing that the government haven't done their due diligence, and the contractors can make a mint on variations.

This happened during Sydney metro, George Street (the main street) was listed as green field (virgin ground) because it had no railway on it previously. In reality though, we had to identify and relocate over 10,000 buried services, and the company put a variation in for, and made a profit on, every one.

Every big project I've ever been involved with has had bean counters and overenthusiastic engineers on one side saying it can be done, and the people on the ground saying ' you're taking the piss mate' and with afew exceptions the people on the ground are right. It becomes like a 6th sense, I can tell a job will go over time and budget before a shovel hits the ground .

I can't wait to retire

Annetje

Love the bold bit ...

macliam

'twas ever thus..... in telecoms and IT the same is true - except that, where salesman are involved, all sense goes out of the window! My rule of thumb, when asked to estimate a project, was to speak with "the people on the ground" to get some idea of what the REAL issues would be - and mitigations. Invariably this ended up with my quotes covering areas that others hadn't anticipated.... and my record was to bring in all projects close to time and budget, as long as the issues reported at the outset were addressed.

Then again, I wasn't in it to ratchet up the revenue...... and I met plenty of those like you describe, who would quote low, but charge high for any later changes.
Real project manafement is not a well supported skillset in the UK.........

Lion in Winter

Seems fair.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...box=1637183668

And Johnson's performance was more appalling than usual.

dave_j

Absolutely.
I started with the maxim that "People NEVER know what they want until they see what they don't want" and this applies to so many projects.
I'd quickly generate a skeleton framework and present it to the client, who'd immediately realise that what they really needed was something completely different, it's so much easier to criticise a complex system that exists, if only rudimentally, than to discuss and agree about something yet to exist.
It's a mistake for any client to ask themselves what they need from a project, to present a detailed specification and to then disappear and expect to be given what they really need because it'll need revision, but that's what happens when you have shit for brains in charge.
A contracting business I worked for estimated that they could increase the cost of any project by 100% because the client would never anticipate or describe adequately what was really needed, in other word they didn't understand how the contracting business works, if you ask for A then you'll get A but you'll have forgotten B and that's expensive.
This is complicated so many times when you realise that where government is the client then civil servants who'll be given the task of overseeing such work will rarely have sufficient experience to manage it well and will probably be rotationally replaced by another set of ne'er do wells after 6 months or so.
Add to this corruption, sleaze, squabbles, infighting and a bottomless treasury and you inevitably end up with horrendous cost overruns and delays.

macliam

So true.... I trained as a Systems Analyst with the old NCC - one of the key points to "pass" was to show you had the cojones to tell a manager that his pet project was not worth doing! Other than that, as a PA or a project manager, it was a case of dragging the real requirement out of the customer - and as you say, they never knew what they wanted, but always knew what they didn't want!!