Chaos ( hopefully ) in London and the South East.

[Pontius Navigator]

I would counter that it's the other 70% of Americans who seem fact-resistant. The metrics of well-being, all things considered, mitigate in favor of the Trump administration these days.

And commented on in UK business press.

The US seems to be in a continual election cycle. . . . But I do like the idea of short election campaigns. I get an average of three polling calls a day asking my political opinion already, and the election is 17 months away.

Polling is a job. Short campaigns don't pay the bills. In UK we have spending limits, in the EU I have no idea. In the US you have massive campaign chests; you need to spend it somewhere.

[Pontius Navigator]

Off thread slightly, many years ago a US President had a poor press in UK. I visited an American's office and commented on the photograph of his Commander in Chief on his office wall. He was proud to display it.

Is the current US CinC similarly displayed today?

[FD2]

Full recovered and able to resume royal duties at Horse Guards after a bout of virtue signalling, sorry, I mean absence on baby leave:

[4mastacker]

That hat reminds me of something you might see in Wallace and Gromit.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Agreed, I've always thought the Blues & Royals hat pretentious

[barkingmad]

‘Scuse me, guv, got any spare change onya?

I got this hole in the grand and it’s supposed to be an in-use railway but I’ve been having problems getting my act together and it’s all turned to ratsh1te.

Don’t worry, it will only be delayed another year and all I need is an extra £1,1000,000,000 to get it done and dusted.

Seriously though folks, look out for the latest news on Crossrail and weep as you dig your hands into empty pockets.

[OFSO]

My former employer - I worked there from 1968 to 1993 - would plan a billion euro job fifteen years in advance, it would be finished on time and on estimate and have a lifetime often three or four times longer than planned. So it can be done.

[Pontius Navigator]

OFSO, is it not possible that the workers are quite happy working on a project? No incentive to complete and put yourself out of a job.

[1DC]

Our local council, whilst still employing all the maintenance staff, now have a contract with a separate engineering company who think up jobs, plan them and execute them. The result is a small job now requires about ten men a jcb plus a couple of trucks, hole watchers and traffic control people and takes at least a week. When it is complete the rate payers then play the game of guess what they did when the road was shut. Twenty years ago the same job would have been done, in house, by two men and a barrow.
A couple of years ago they repaired the paths in one lane in our village. It took two months, I was having a bit of banter with some of the guys doing the job and said it was taking forever. They said it was only a ten day job but they were controlled by the planners who gave them the amount of work for the day which they were not allowed to exceed. If they hit a snag, they were not allowed to resolve it until some one came from inspection, looked at it,liased with the jobsworth's and then said what to do. An hours work remedying the problem would take days..

[OFSO]

Pontius, my colleagues and sometimes myself, would turn up and work at the weekends for free, " because it was fun".

[barkingmad]

My former employer - I worked there from 1968 to 1993 - would plan a billion euro job fifteen years in advance, it would be finished on time and on estimate and have a lifetime often three or four times longer than planned. So it can be done.

Oh how things have progressed since those halcyon days!

For anyone waiting at London Euston station, keen to get to Birmingham 20 minutes faster, be reassured that the train won’t actually depart from Euston and there may a delay message flashed up on the departures/arrivals info boards.

And get that warm wet feeling on hearing that;

“A DfT spokesperson said: “Spades are already in the ground on HS2, with 350 construction sites, over £20bn invested to date and supporting over 28,500 jobs. We remain committed to delivering HS2 in the most cost-effective way for taxpayers”.

£20bn in laymans’ terms is £20,000,000,000 lest we forget!

The ‘full’ picture yesterday from the Grauniad newspaper;

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... birmingham

IIRC once upon a time there were scheduled flights from Thiefrow airport to/from ‘Brum’ but long ceased & forgotten?

[llondel]

Our local council, whilst still employing all the maintenance staff, now have a contract with a separate engineering company who think up jobs, plan them and execute them. The result is a small job now requires about ten men a jcb plus a couple of trucks, hole watchers and traffic control people and takes at least a week. When it is complete the rate payers then play the game of guess what they did when the road was shut. Twenty years ago the same job would have been done, in house, by two men and a barrow.
A couple of years ago they repaired the paths in one lane in our village. It took two months, I was having a bit of banter with some of the guys doing the job and said it was taking forever. They said it was only a ten day job but they were controlled by the planners who gave them the amount of work for the day which they were not allowed to exceed. If they hit a snag, they were not allowed to resolve it until some one came from inspection, looked at it,liased with the jobsworth's and then said what to do. An hours work remedying the problem would take days..

I had a manager like that once. After wasting a day deciding what to do to resolve a problem (which was probably a 30-minute fix), the team came to an unwritten agreement that in future, we'd only tell him about a problem if we couldn't figure it out by the end of the day, otherwise what he got was a report "slight problem with X, now fixed".

Of course, this is what a good manager really wants, a team that is proactive in solving problems with minimal oversight.