Pay to drive.

tut · Post by **tut** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 2:38 pm

I am actually all for getting people and their cars off the road.............

As long as it is not me of course.

tut

robin · Post by **robin** » Sun Dec 03, 2006 12:38 pm

PhilA wrote: Did u know that theres loads of money for this government that isnt used properly?
They couldnt manage to open a door without hiring 1 person and making them start from South Africa with 2 million quid and making no deadline.

Precisely, so you don't want them in charge of developing any new scheme - so, evil though the private sector is, making a market out of something gives you the best chance of making it cost effective for the consumer, even though logically you wouldn't expect a for-profit system to generate better value than a not-for-profit system. Even then the government and taxpayer are going to get ripped off for sure.

It's easy to carp on about government inefficiencies as though they are all stupid and incompetent and why oh why oh why don't they fix, but the problem is so much more complicated than that.

Or perhaps I have missed it - is there a simple solution?

Perhaps the government should offer some sort of compulsory civil service customer experience program, a bit like jury service. Everybody (or a randomly selected subset) of working age gets to serve 2 weeks each year in a randomly selected department - you might be a road sweeper, or you might get to shadow the chancellor of the exchequer. At the end of your time, you get to volunteer any suggestions for improving both the service and the lot of those delivering it. Between us all we must have the solution for most problems!

Also the government could approach those people that provide the most imaginative suggestions and offer them some sort of consultancy position to help trouble shoot other areas ... all for free of course, your duty as a citizen to make the country a better place for us all to want to stay in.

Cheers,
Robin

Post by **simon** » Sun Dec 03, 2006 12:53 pm

The problem with all these suggestions the government keep coming up with is that they do bugger all to improve public transport. They're so keen to force people out of their cars but when the alternative costs more, is unreliable, uncomfortable and takes twice as long then why would anyone want to use it?

I used to get the train to work from Carnoustie to Dundee, which took roughly 15 minutes. I stopped a few months ago because it was often late, packed with people and when I include walking to and from the stations, took me just short of an hour. Compare that with jumping in the car, driving into Dundee and getting out at work warm and dry after only 25-30 mins. It also costs me less in petrol (probably more once you add insurance, tax etc.) to drive.

So there's currently no incentive to make me get out of my car and until there is a decent alternative or I'm priced out of it, I don't think I will.

Unless I can start working from home which would be fine apart from the fact that I think I'd just fanny about all day <BG>

robin · Post by **robin** » Sun Dec 03, 2006 1:26 pm

simon wrote: Unless I can start working from home which would be fine apart from the fact that I think I'd just fanny about all day

LOL.

Working from home is not really going to work out for everyone - either because they need to go to work in order to switch out of fannying about mode, or because the house is full of pets and children that provide ample distraction from working!

That's why I think the government should look into funding satellite offices that you can rent by the day or even the hour. They need to be kitted out with power and good networking so you can just plug your laptop in and with proper VPN software you should be no different than if you're actually at work (from the point of view of IT and telephony). If they also provided some good sound proofing for each booth and a good quality camera then given sufficient bandwidth you could also appear to be there in person ...

Meetings are also doable with video conferencing (it's getting better all the time), though actually the country wastes too much time on pointless meetings, so maybe distributing people will remove the focus on posturing about in meetings and put it where it belongs - on adding value!

It would only take some support from a couple of the big banks and financial companies to make this a viable business in itself, actually!

Cheers,
Robin

dezzy · Post by **dezzy** » Sun Dec 03, 2006 4:48 pm

robin wrote: though actually the country wastes too much time on pointless meetings

Sooooooooo true! Most of my working week is wasted in pointless meetings that I'm either providing nothing to or getting nothing from, when I could be getting on with the real work. At the moment, I keep getting invited to meetings where I'm asked if I've finished such-and-such task for that project and I would love to respond: "Maybe if you didn't invite me to these fecking meetings, I'd have time to do the tasks you keep asking me to report on at the fecking meetings!!! "

Since most of these meetings are with my customers, it would unfortunately be kinda inappropriate for me to say that though!

Rich H · Post by **Rich H** » Sun Dec 03, 2006 6:00 pm

confused? Don't know what to do? Need to do something but can't work out what? If in doubt hold a meeting! Everyone will get something to occupy their time while the argue about where and where it will be held and who will bring the biscuits....

Sanjøy · Post by **Sanjøy** » Sun Dec 03, 2006 11:30 pm

I will have one of those flying car thingys by the time that one of the big consulting companies gets awarded the contract!

(SP (mate is working on the ID cards project and you have to hear teh stories to believe them)

Post by **simon** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 12:18 am

Sanjoy wrote:mate is working on the ID cards project and you have to hear teh stories to believe them

I don't!

Working on the big NHS project faction