8. I would just have just LOVED to be at that meeting when the WOD invented this term.
MP: “How the bloody hell are we going to swing this one through without them noticing? You know, get them to buy into the crappy in-efficient eyesores that don’t work and nobody wants and we don’t need.”
WOD: “Err, well we could do what we normally do. You know, sort of con them and bribe them a bit.”
MP: “How do you mean?”
WOD “How about we don’t call the crappy eyesore power stations, power stations. What about ‘farms’? After all, we are trying to ‘harvest’ some energy. Oh, and let’s pay the silly bleeders 4 times the going rate for the odd electron they manage to squeeze out. Guaranteed for the next 25 years”.
MP: “Brilliant – have a 400,000 % pay rise with immediate effect”.
It must be absolutely fantastic to be able to just piss about with other people’s money on such a monumental scale and not give a toss.
9. HRA – that reminds me; under option 1, scrap it in full the instant we are elected.
10. Oh go on then – drink yourselves into a coma. Just make sure you make a very quick transition to the other side. We don’t want to be pissing about with loads of expensive life support machines.
16 - Roundabouts, Red Tarmac and Chicanes
What never ceases to amaze me is how, even when public money is supposedly extremely tight and in many places cuts are made that possibly, or even probably, shouldn’t be made, you can still look around and see money just being frittered away in other areas. And the likelihood is that there will be at best very little benefit, and more often than not, no benefit or even a dis-benefit. So let’s just have a casual meander around how, in our neck of the woods, money gets spent on roads, and stuff to do with roads. Like repairing potholes, new mini-roundabouts and exciting stuff like different coloured tarmac.
So, if we are strapped for cash, in my world, I think my thinking in respect of roads might have gone something like this.
“Not got much dosh. I know, what we’ll basically do is stick with what we’ve got. But if it pisses with rain and then freezes and creates the odd pot-hole, I’ll give Jim fifty quid a pop to go out, slap some tarmac in and stamp it down a bit.
Right, that’s it then. So no new 500 million quid motorways on our patch. No new super duper doughnut or hamburger style roundabouts with 10 million sets of traffic lights so nobody has the faintest bloody clue which lane they need to be in. Or whether they can turn left, or right, or both, or chuck a U’ie up their own arse. No new double mini-roundabouts to make the probability of pile ups equal to one. No new idiotic red tarmac with white gates either side on the verge as you enter all 15 million towns, villages and hamlets. No new chicanes and sleeping policemen every ten yards. And no more bloody speeding, sorry ‘safety’, cameras.”
JUST basically keep the roads we’ve already got, vaguely capable of enabling a metal box with 4 wheels able to travel down it, simultaneously enabling all 4 wheels to stay vaguely attached to the box. And preferably enabling the attached wheels to remain capable of a motion commonly referred to as rotation.
“There you go, Mr Chancellor. We don’t need the 16.75 billion quid this year, about 17 ½ grand should keep Jim and his transit with a bit of tarmac going for the year; is that a big enough saving for you? Would you like me to have a quick look at welfare for you; see if I can knock a few quid off there as well?”
That’s what any sane rational member of the human race would do. Any householder for instance:
“Cancel the new super fancy three foot thick reinforced concrete drive with fancy block paving effect plastered on top I intended having. It’s going to be a bit tight for the next few years, so can I just have half a tonne of gravel instead?”.
Of course, we are not dealing with sane members of the human race. And so what you actually see is, Jim and his truck sent packing, let go because of the savage central cuts.
“Sorry about the pot holes, could you just all slow down to 3.75 miles per hour in order to keep your vehicle not completely knackered; only partially knackered. And no you can’t have any compensation; we’ve no money left because of the nasty central government cuts”.
Meanwhile, bloody hamburger style roundabouts with fly overs and tunnels spring up with complete abandon. And they all have at least a 156 sets of traffic lights on, each with 17 different sequence settings. And the only guaranteed deliverable in all of the changes is that the traffic, before, at and after the new roundabout will be about a 156 times worse than before it appeared.
But even neglecting the big major developments (I refuse to use the word improvements), millions are wasted on minor developments, that, but for the fact that they will screw up your journey to and from work each and every day, could easily go unnoticed.
Just fathom the logic.
“Houston we have a problem. Local yobs in Crapville are racing too fast down that long straight road between Arsehole Street and Queens Avenue at between 02:45 and 04:30 in the morning over the weekend. They keep waking up all the locals and occasionally rearranging the front of Mrs Jackson’s two up two down. Also, it is upsetting for some of our officers when they have to scrape the brains of the Dimwit twins off Mrs Jackson’s front wall and pick up their balls that landed in the Dog and Duck car park 3 streets away”.
So, I can accept we have a problem that needs sorting. It’s just their methods that baffle me a bit.
You see, here, on Planet Me, I think my solution might sort of involve nobbling a few rozzers and telling them that they are going to get paid treble money at night next weekend to plonk their arses in an unmarked V8 turbocharged Corsa fitted with 007 sub-machine guns and an automatically ejected spikey tyre deflation thingy just before Mrs Jacksons two up two down in Crapville. Then, when the Dimwit twins came screaming past they would have two discretionary options at their disposal:
Option 1 (best make this sort of the preferred one): Eject spikey tyre deflation thingy and when they grind to a halt or smack into something gently drag them out of the car by their dangly bits and cart them off to the local station. Then, humanely electrify them. Gently, with 135 megavolts. With real feeling, sentiment, consideration and respect.
Option 2 (back up option in case the spikey thing doesn’t eject or they manage to avoid it): Machine gun the bastards. Then go out and pick up the bits.
Unfortunately we are not on Planet Me. We are on Planet Complete Dick Head at the Local Authority. So their solution goes a bit like this:
Ignore fundamental issue of specific timings and specific persons involved. Assess problem as cars travelling too fast down that long straight road between Arsehole Street and Queens Avenue in Crapville.
Without further ado, immediately order:
- 228 tonnes of tarmac.
- 575 kerb stones.
- 75 fluorescent black and white stripy bollards with a guaranteed life expectancy of 15 ½ minutes.
- 150 bright red reflective disks compete with bollard attachment brackets.
- One 7 ½ tonne JCB.
- One dumper truck.
- Eight 6 tonne skips.
Then procure the services of the extortionate thieving Management Consultant who wrote the specification last time for the construction of the traffic calming chicanes on How Do We Fall For It Avenue. 17 ½ weeks and a fee and 1.6 million smackers seems very reasonable for the all new Specification for the construction of traffic calming chicanes on the long straight road between Arsehole Street and Queens Avenue in Crapville.
Then ring Paddy and give him the job of constructing 75 chicanes down the long straight road between Arsehole Street and Queens Avenue in Crapville. The usual reasonable payment terms of £1.35/h, payable within 6 months after the end of the month in which the final chicane is completed; all materials and equipment supplied by the Local Authority.
At the same time (to improve efficiency), award Paddy the contract to go out, not more than
one week following the completion of the construction work, to pick up 75 completely shagged and demolished bollards and reflector bits, extract any of what remains of the kerbstones and raised tarmac chicanes and make good to the original road finish.
This last bit is always required, because what the idiots at central control don’t seem to be able to fathom is that if you remove, in an alternating fashion, half of a roads throughput capacity two things result:
At the weekend between 02:45 and 04:30 in the morning the Dimwit Twins (they must have just had their brains popped back in and their balls stitched back on) just LOVE your new features and challenges. It’s just like proper racing, all that braking, swerving and accelerating.
During the week at between 07:00 and 09:00 in the morning and 16:30 and 18:30 in the evening, when all the poor bastards that pay your wages are trying to get into work to carry on paying your wages, the queues will build up for 18 miles in both directions. After precisely one morning and one evening of this idiocy, a big fat seriously pissed off geezer in a 47 tonne HGV will go out at 02:45 in the morning and flatten 75 off of your finest vertical black and white knob ends, complete with reflectors. All ready for Paddy to get your call.
So once again another Local Authority success story:
1. You only slightly missed the main problem and then actually made it worse. The Dimwit twins managed to consume extra petrol and emit even more CO2, braking swerving and accelerating around your new features.
2. Likewise, petrol consumption and CO2 emissions were increased 145,000 % daily while the poor bastards queued to try and pay your wages.
3. UK productivity was reduced into the bargain while arses sat in your queue rather than getting on with inventing and manufacturing stuff.
4. A complete waste of 228 tonnes of tarmac, 575 kerb stones, 75 fluorescent black and white stripy bollards and 150 bright red reflective disks compete with bollard attachment brackets. Anybody up for reducing consumption, energy usage and emissions?
And it’s not just chicanes, the lunacy and incompetent extravagance on minor bits and pieces of non-required crap just goes on and on. Three sets of double mini-roundabouts in 350 yards?
“Sure no problem. Slap them in - it’ll be great. Make sure there are preferably only 3 roads meeting at the point where you decide to stick them. You know, the sort of junction that doesn’t even really need one roundabout let alone two. Maximum of 4 roads of course and extra bonus points for anybody who can slap a double mini-roundabout in the middle of a normal single road that has no junctions at all.”
“Oh and Rachel, can you just check that Kevin in purchasing did indeed put that order in for the 145,000 tonnes of nice red tarmac. If he has, just check when it arrives and then see if Jack on the 4th floor has any idea yet where we are going to stick it?”
“Sorry, Rachel, it’s not a very good line - you’re breaking up. Where did you say you thought we should stick it?”
Now, finally to my new novel and interesting highly technical experiment:
“What happens when 1.6 tonnes of metallic blue personal propulsion machine collides with the complete dick head at the local council who has a fetish for red tarmac and chicanes?”
17 - Prisons – My Dad’s Version
My dad’s a thoroughly nice chap. Not at all like me. I think I get my livelier, grumpier edge from his Father who I never met. Anyhow, Dad’s now in his 70’s, so even he, nice and calm as he is, can have his ‘moments’. And he too can get a bit ‘livelier’ and ‘edgier’. And this feature is my take, on one of his grumps that I happen to also thoroughly and utterly agree with. It’s about how to make Britain’s prisons economical to build and run and effective at keeping the geezers you want kept in, in.
Once again for this feature, all analysis and solutions are put forward in a pro-active way, to assist our beloved representatives, in improving efficiency, reducing waste and costs. Just make sure you are sitting down and have a large glass of CH3CH2OH containing fluid (alcoholic beverage anybody?) handy.
So, the prison problem(s) can be sort of summarised thus:
- Not enough places.
- Too expensive to keep people there.
- Too many problems with drugs inside.
- Too much re-offending when people get out.
- Too many suicides.
- Nasty prisoners keep burning the places down.
Well, they will very rapidly become ex-problems in me and my Dad’s world. Now this really is so bloody simple, even the lot in SW1 might understand. I’ll give the executive summary (short) version of the answers to the above statements in chronological order, then for completeness I’ll just elaborate some of the details for final clarification.
So, to the short version:
- Build more.
- Build cheaper prisons that are very cheap to run.
- See design of new prisons below.
- Don’t let them out.
- Good.
- See design of new prisons below.
Got that? It’s a complete piece of piss. Even for you know who.
So, now to elaborate a bit. Put a bit of flesh on the bones so to speak. It all becomes, clear, once again if you focus on the big strategic issues. This, I am good at. It is also clearer, if we deal with the fundamental issue first, because then, all the rest just slots naturally into place.
So the fundamental issue? Simply, it relates to the design and construction of prisons.
So, the current (incorrect) design principles are sort of:
- Treat people kindly.
- Give them space.
- Serve them nice food.
- Provide satellite TV.
- Let them play snooker.
- Give them outside exercise.
- Let them have visitors.
In a word: wrong; wrong; wrong; wrong; wrong; wrong; wrong!
So, to the new improved prison design. It’s small, meets the basic requirements, is non-combustible, cheap (to build and run), makes it difficult to commit suicide (but this feature is variable according to personal preference and local conditions) and has a whole new feature. Namely, that once the specimens are deposited inside, there is no need whatsoever for any further direct contact until you need to send a nice officer in to sweep out the remains all ready for the next guest.
So what does it look like, this new prison design? Try a fenced site, of specified size surrounded by twenty foot razor wire fencing with occasional submachine gun posts. And some good lighting - so you can continue to easily shoot people even at night.
And inside the fenced area?
- A specified number off of individual completely re-inforced concrete pens (floor, walls, slight pitched roof).
- One reinforced concrete lockable entrance door.
- One food entrance slot.
- One rear, horizontally mounted circular pissing/shitting hole fed into an externally sited sewage outlet system.
- Internal 6’ 6” x 2’ 6” non-flammable reinforced concrete sleeping slab.
- One pair of bright pink boxer shorts for bloke inmates and one hessian sack with head and arm holes for any chicks.
And that is it. Total cost per unit £27.65.
Operational costs:
- One bloke to wander round putting teddy bear picnic finger food (my youngest son loves these - they’ll go down great) through the food slot three times a day.
- One bloke and one machine gun.
And. Err, no. I think that’s it. Call it £50k a year staff costs.
Additional costs? Food, 70p a meal, three times a day for a thousand prisoners per prison; say about £760k/year.
So, less than a million quid a year all in. £1000/head per ANNUM.
No visitors. No drugs. Nothing to burn. And no re-offending because everybody comes out in bits in a small tin box.
Then, Mr Home Secretary, you can run a nice big advert explaining, in words of one syl
lable, that you do not care how many prisons you need, you will never run out of places for all the nasty arses. And since each prison costs about 10p each, you can afford to just keep building them (right up to the 68 million inmate mark if necessary). And there’ll be no satellite TV; or snooker; or sly nooky with any visitors (or fellow inmates); or drugs.
However, I do have a slight suspicion that after you had built and operated the first few, demand for your new establishments might become somewhat reduced. Reinforced concrete compact residence manufacturers might see a significant reduction in sales volumes. And vacancies for Prison Bits Sweeper Uppers, might sort of dry up.
Now, do you see just how easy it is when you focus on the fundamentals?
19 - The French System
Now I’m sure I must be just imagining all this - but France - how does it work? How do the numbers possibly add up? Put simply, how the hell do they get away with it? I just can’t get my head around the collective suicidal way the ‘French system’ as a whole appears to manage things. Anything. Anywhere. Anytime. Just none of it should work the way they run things. And now it seems, the brown stuff might be just about to make close proximity contact with the large rotating circular object. Les poulet’s might just be coming home to roost11.
For the first 20 years or so after leaving home for university, meeting my girlfriend (now my first wife), starting our jobs, having our first son, we went abroad on holiday. Mainly to Greek or Spanish Islands for some summer sun and different food and drink, occasionally further afield to America or Australia.
Over these years we went maybe a couple of times to France, but only for a day trip or so to top up on cheap booze. (Before the EU decided to do away with our Duty Free). On the whole, we flew straight over France to somewhere much friendlier and sunnier.
I am not sure what changed this pleasant state of affairs, but change it did. In reality it was probably a combination of:
1. The fact that the aviation industry did its utmost to make sure that flying anywhere, for any duration, became the most tedious, crappiest, time consuming, godforsaken form of travel that no sensible living organism of any form, no matter how basic or simple it’s cell structure may be, would ever volunteer to partake in.
2. The fact that some 11 years after we had our first son, we had our second, and this made the pure unadulterated delight of air travel even less appetizing;
3. The fact that some friends of people we know packed in working for one particular completely ill-conceived, incompetently managed heap of crap government organisation, moved to France and bought a farm house with some Gites. I call them Gits, but the frogs (not the little green squashed ones) tend to get a bit upset.
Whatever the reason, the fact is that ever since our youngest son was born 12 years ago, we have, each summer, extended our ongoing experience of France, up from an original 2.6 days for the first 40 years spent on planet earth to something exceeding a hundred times that in the last 12 years. This often involves driving down through France to our friend’s farmhouse for a while and then maybe spending a week or so at a campsite on the coast somewhere.
For the avoidance of doubt all of the following is, I am absolutely sure, just my vivid imagination; a sort of wild hallucination. I am not really saying any of the following; no, not at all.
So I like FRANCE the country. The fields. The vineyards. The food. The wine. The sun (reasonable, if you go far enough south and are not unlucky). The rural spaced out-ness. The all dark clear starlit skies. The roads (as long as it is not anywhere circumnavigating any of the major cities, especially Bordeaux or Lyons, or ANYWHERE in France travelling south on the first weekend in August or travelling North in the final weekend of August/beginning of September).
I certainly don’t dislike the French people, as individuals. However, what, I cannot get my head around, is the collective, suicidal way the French system as a whole seems to manage things. Things like:
- Toll booths.
- Restaurants that close at lunchtime or in the evening, or often both.
- Restaurants in major tourist areas that close and put signs in their doors saying Ferme 15 Julliet – 7 Septembre, so they can sod off on holiday. For anybody not fluent in French, I think the bit in italics can be roughly translated along the lines of:
“Eff-off you bastard (mostly English) potential customers. We just aren’t interested and have gone on hols. Oh, and we enjoy going out of business (annually).”
- Restaurants that say they serve food at lunchtime until 2:30 pm, but, if you dare to even think of entering and sitting down after 1:25 pm the chef will come out with a 17 foot long knife and yours and all your family’s livers and kidneys will be on the evening menu for the next three nights.
- EC funded museums in the middle of nowhere that must have cost upwards of 1.4 billion Euros (sorry, Deutsche Marks) to construct and receive 0.76 visitors per fortnight but are staffed by about 147 tour guides, each fully multi-lingual in French and err, French.
- Tourist attractions in any major city in France, where they know approximately half the world’s population are guaranteed to visit every year, including English, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Turkish, Indian, Russians and the rest, but every single sign and linguistic tool available will be in any language you like, so long as it’s French. The main sign giving the summary of the attraction will be about 1.4 square miles in size with 1500 detailed photographs all annotated in French. There will, of course, be a 0.35 square centimetre portion in the bottom right hand corner of the summary sign, probably written in Swahili, allegedly presented so that the Frogs could qualify for the 176 billion Euro EC grant that demanded that the facility be open and available to all, of any ethnic background or nationality. It always amazes me that the EC officials that seem to hand over the 176 billion Euro’s never appear to be puzzled by the fact that on final inspection, what they have actually received for their money is a 15.6m x 17.8m tin shed keeping the rain of a few old bricks and chipped tiles that were put there, completely free of charge to the French (and the EC) by the Romans a good few centuries ago. There must also be, I imagine, a good few (at a guess, 117,500 or so) very happy, very fat, extremely drunk, French officials.
I could go on. And on. And on. But for all of the above reasons, I just can’t imagine how France works. Or how it pays for itself. Or doesn’t.
Just think about it. Apart from the tourist industry, that consists of:
- A few campsites dotted around the coastline (net total economic value per annum - about 17 euros 45 cents).
- Some dilapidated farmhouses and Gites dotted around the countryside (say a few million euros).
- A range of hotel establishments decorated in that quaint 1960’s blue vinyl flowered wallpaper style that if anybody even attempted to get away with outside of France the hotel would be out of business within about 45 seconds of the first guests arriving (and leaving) (economic value un-measurably small).
- The restaurants that close when anybody is likely to be around and remotely wanting to eat anything (lets be positive, say 100’s of millions of euro’s; mainly spent on fine shellfish and Dame Blanches).
- The vineyards (I don’t know - probably in excess of 200 billion euro’s).
Everything, EVERYTHING else, appears to be financed, owned, run and apparently (mis)managed, either directly or indirectly, by the French state:
- The road system.
- The (mainly nuclear) power industry.
- The car industry.
- The railways.
- The airlines.
- The inefficient over-subsidised farming industry.
Everything.
Now, when it comes to organising a piss up in a brewery, I would not recommend any UK government or government related organisation as being remotely up to the job. But the French system appears to be in a completely different league - a premier league of one - of incompetence c
ompared to their equivalent UK organisations.
So, all the bureaucracy and inefficiency that comes with any state management runs virtually the entire French system. Well over 50% of the Frogs are employed by the state. Do the maths – well less than half the people work, to get taxed to the hilt, to pay 100% of the salaries of the (over) other half who line their pockets while pissing about. All allegedly cooking the books and fleecing the EU so they can pretend that it all works just fine.
They all seem to retire at 60 or less, on generous, free for all, fat pensions. They don’t turn up or open for business for much of the year. They mostly start late and slope off nice and early for some quality family time.
When they are present most of them are probably pissed most of the time. At the drop of a hat, the entire country will go on strike and do their absolute utmost to make sure that anything that was working in their economy is irreversibly and completely screwed. And, if they can screw up their neighbours economy’s into the bargain (think closing French airspace, blockading every port into and out of the country), so much the better.
And nobody blinks. Everybody just marches on regardless. Does anybody, ANYWHERE sit down and scratch their head and think - this just doesn’t add up? The EU? The Americans? The Japanese? The Russians? The Chinese? Us? Nope. Nobody even pauses for breath.
The Frogs appear to be able to run their own little unofficial system, presumably with a good number of not so prominent French euro printing presses quietly humming away in dark barns squat up and down the countryside, while the powers that be in Paris, Brussels and Strasbourg quietly quill their latest work of artistic fiction: The Official French Accounts and Annual Reports.
Now we know how good the EU is at adding up and maffematix type stuff; having never managed to even get a set of audited accounts signed off in the last 17 years. Just take that in, the EU, PAYING huge fees to sets of auditors that in the past have waved through the great and the good including ENRON and the rest, cannot get a signature on the dotted line. It’s all allegedly something to do with the entry somewhere in the small print12 that says something along the lines of: “Miscellaneous Uncategorised Expenditure: Euro 184.6 Billion.” So I certainly wouldn’t recommend that we got the EU’s cronies in to tackle the French piss up in the vineyard, but come on. Somebody else can surely get in there and have a bloody good grope around in their French drawers.
Unless, of course, everybody else is just as bad?
“Now there is a thought”.