Bishop Hill The bureaucracy's media defenders
Jan 3, 2014 Bureaucrats Media The news this morning is that the Environment Agency is going to cut 1500 jobs in a bid to cut costs. In response. the mainstream media are beating their breasts and wailing about impending disaster. But there are flood warnings in force! Storm warnings! It's as if the whole metropolitan media elite are leaping to the defence of the public sector workers.
This news does, however, give me an opportunity to link to Inside the Environment Agency, a blog set up by agency insiders to expose the corruption, inefficiency and graft that goes on inside the agency. It's an amazing read and I thoroughly recommend it.
They recently featured a post comparing the agency to its counterparts in other western European countries. I've reproduced the critical table here.
| Environment agency |
Area covered (km2) |
Population(m) | Employed | Staff/'000 km2 | Capita-staff |
Budget £m |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| England | 130,395 | 53 | 11,400 | 87 | 4,649 | £1200 | |
| Germany | 357,021 | 81 | 1,400 | 4 | 57,857 | £84 | |
| France | 674,843 | 65 | 820 | 1 | 79,268 | £540 | |
| Sweden | 449,964 | 9.5 | 530 | 1 | 17,924 | £33 | |
| Austria | 83,855 | 8.5 | 477 | 6 | 17,819 | £36 | |
| Denmark | 43,094 | 5.6 | 450 | 10 | 12,444 | £103 |
While I can accept that there might be different responsibilities, the differences are startling. The possibility that the agency is grossly overstaffed is therefore real and the failure of the mainstream media to consider the possibility makes them look very foolish.
Reader Comments (93)
To dig a hole.
Jan 3, 2014 at 2:04 PM Radical Rodent.
Well yes, but THAT list would be endless.It includes the people who would have been employed to do the job but are now overqualified with their degree and feel it's beneath them; the people employed to try and get them back to work; and the people employed to manage how many people come in from other countries to actually do the job AND provide taxes for pensions and unemployment benefit for those who don't.....
Harry Passfield
I was a regular boater on the Avon since 1976, mainly summer but occasionally autumn.
In a discussion with the owner of the firm we hired our boats from (who had been in the business since the Upper Avon was re-opened) I commented that we had had more problems since the start of this century than in the previous 20-odd years and asked if he had an explanation since I was not much of a supporter of the global warming argument but there had to be some reason.
His reply was enlightening. In the first place (and he provided the evidence) the years from 1968 onwards were on average markedly drier — certainly along the Upper Avon and its tributaries — than the 20 or 30 years previous. This situation came to an end in the late 90s by which time, he pointed out, there had been considerable building on the flood plains upstream of the Arrow and Stratford.
"Remember," he said, "as long as Coventry exists so will the River Avon. We get the water after they've finished with it."
His views on AGW were much the same as mine. The main causes - building on flood plains and increased development in general without proper thought to run-off combined with a reversion to an earlier, less benign (in that sense) weather pattern.
(He did have some views on the EA as well, but this is a family show, as they say!)
The Inside the EA blog has been updated with coastline data and data for the US EPA and Canadian EA... startling for a small nation like England to rival these massive countries.
Jake Haye, Stephen Richards et al
Of course when I mentioned nurses etc it wasn’t to defend the EA or bloated bureaucracies or the public sector as a whole. That would be to mirror the error of Mailman and others who tend to turn any discussion of the failings of the BBC or state institutions into a left/right issue.
There is a natural tendency for public sector bodies to turn into oligarchies. The same thing can happen to privately owned companies in the absence of competition. Labour is largely to blame for the unresponsive, top-heavy state sector, just as the Tories are largely to blame for the excesses of rip-off capitalism, and Blair, Prescott and co are to blame for muddying the waters by reproducing the worst of both worlds.
What’s admirable about the blog under discussion is the way it details the workings of the EA without trying to score political points. If every large organisation, public or private, had such a resource, we might go a long way towards understanding how to run a complex society.
Ivan’s point about the local nature of such work in France is worth thinking about. Much environmental work is devolved right down to the level of the commune, which may be a village of a few hundred people.
The trick the French have come up with is to give the Greens their own ministry, the Ministry of Ecology. This does sweet frog all, but it only costs a few million, and it presumably stops them from infiltrating into the areas of government that actually have to do stuff.
ssat
indeed - the original is from France - somebody pasted over the French job descriptions - the fellow in the hole is Ahmed.
In the UK a real situation The Highways Agency change a light bulb on the A30
And the EA - not wanting to be left out give us this publicity shot not a lightbulb in sight.
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen ain't the half of it - try this - note it's not published on 1st April
I have a certain amount of sympathy for some of the footsoldiers but among the mid and senior level managers there are a considerable proportion of bad apple non jobbers.
One really distasteful antic that I have some knowledge of is tormenting recyclers by bait and switch - one official gives the OK to a procedure (usually verbal) and they're changed out and a second one turns up and nails the recycler for the activity OK'd by the first one - kerching! £30K The list of abuses in long and frankly a bit depressing - a lot of it's on the site and some considerable complaining from people who have been "done unto".
A large part of the problem is that there is no recourse to complain outside the courts - as in none... in reality the only course of action is to Judicial Review - a daunting prospect for most people We did that - and the EA hid evidence and even then they lost the judicial review - but - they have
refusedyet to act on the instruction to them in a court order almost 2 years after they were instructed by the court to discharge their obligations "in a timely manner" These people really do believe they are above the law and untouchable.From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
In a previous incarnation I found myself top man of a supposedly profit making QANGO with about 500 staff that was, of course, making a loss. As a result, instead of being photographed handing cheques the size of posters to the government I spent much time creeping up to the Kremlin to obtain funds. The rest of the time I spent fighting a political battle, and the organisation ran itself in the way it had prior to my arrival. There was a plan that management consultants would 'do us over', but. being broke we could not fund it ourselves and government wouldn't step in pending settlement of the war of which my battle was part. In due course I lost my battle and my successor lost the war and with the situation thus clarified government came up with the cash for the consultants.
As a result of their work staff was cut to about 200! And the organisation makes profits and its current supremo hands poster sized cheques to the government!
Shame on me!
Have management consultants working for who- or what-ever is responsible for the Environmental Agency (not the Agency itself!) examined the agency? If not, it is probably time that that who- or what-ever put one in.
In the cozy rush of the day to day business of an organization like the Environmental Agency that cannot express the value of its work in accounting terms, it is too easy to miss inefficiencies and to misdirect organizational effort into unworthy tasks. And not to know how bad things are. Ignorance is bliss.
The problem is the difficulty in quantifying the Agency's output. If that could be done it could be privatized. Not that that would free us from problems because we would then surely substitute a new set of problems for the ones we now have.
Woe upon us for expecting too much from any government!
It is worth pointing out that the problem is likely get much worse as our population burgeons against the will of its inhabitants. There will be much more building on flood plains and other unsuitable places. Basically all the 'safe' river/coastal locations were probably built on by the mid 19th century. Defending new property will almost certainly impact on existing property.
tonyb
There is a danger of this general attack on the public sector.
It’s clear that there are a number of Tories posting so I guess it suits them fine.
The global warming hysteria is a unique event and there is no general link to so called socialism or bureaucracy.
There are just as many right wing fatcats pushing the global warming agenda.
Don’t forget Thatcher and her pivotal role is starting this scam.
Let’s remember a golden age when the Nationalised Power Sector could without fuss build nuclear power station Coal power stations and an efficient grid.
People did not have to choose between eating and heating.
Let’s hear it for go old British Rail whose prices did not require a second mortgage,
The National Health Service and respect for Education.
Let’s also remember the private sector brought us the World Banking Crisis which is bleeding working and middle class Britons.
Bryan
I agree entirely. Not everyone here is a Tory, but it helps when attacking a government-promoted monster like global warming hysteria to have a clear libertarian ideology (or at least a streak). We socialists are a minority without a well-defined position - the underdog’s underdog - but I see no contradiction in attacking a bloated bureaucracy like the EA while defending the principle of nationalised energy and transport systems.
I am sorry to see the mire the EA has apparently sunk into - I spent several years working as a consultant there in a specialised area of IT. At the time I was there, although some of the management were sedentary generalists who were keener on talking about 'modalities' than engaging in specific actions, there were many hard-working staff who were genuinely committed to the EA's role in mitigating the effects of adverse events, in planning, warning of and coping with the results.
I was aware of the anomalies caused by the inherited NRA structures and time-servers, and at the same time the increasingly EU dominated orientation of the whole organisation, but I did not at that time anticipate what appears to have become a case of strangulation by bureaucracy. All very sad, and thank goodness I am well out of it now.
Having also worked for the Cabinet Office, and for what was then HM Customs & Excise, I have to say that nothing at the EA compared to the shambles I have seen elsewhere in national government. Especially one HQ where I have witnessed (and had my own work made impossible by) a level of corruption that staggered me.
Now there ('Bryan') writes a man who never had to suffer under British Rail. Nor under 'Post Office Telephones'!
As for the Environment Agency, I live in an area more or less overrun (you might say ruled, if you were feeling a touch paranoid) by this body, as it is both coastal and prone to serious flooding. Most of the local farmers have nothing but contempt for the EA's 'managers' and 'specialists' and nothing but praise for the poor buggers who have to stump out in their wellington boots at three in the morning when something goes wrong - usually in February.
My own experience of dealing with the EA suggests that, as they usually are, the local farmers are right. Moreover, I'm not very impressed by the vast number of EA branded Japanese 4x4s that seem to breed yearly. My impression is that it is run by an unholy menage of eco-hippies and venal, zomboid 'management' types.
Geoff Chambers
Sorry about late response but I've been out of internet connection since this time last night.
One of my other hobbies relates to things naval, about a year ago the Royal Navy had more Admirals than ships in service, now if that isn't a bloat and waste of money it's hard to say what is. I'm not sure if the situation has improved since.
"Woe upon us for expecting too much from any government!" Thus sayeth, the Ecclesiatiacal Uncle.
Woe betide us, if we allow big government to carry on growing bigger, unaccountable and wasting oodles of our money, small government equals good governance.
I believe that, the French have Local government and local authorities dedicated to individual catchment and river basins, never, never leave anything to a supranational agency which is good for nothing but generating non jobs and paperwork.
Some might call the EA's bureaucracy dystopian. In our case two licence (both for the same type of licence) applications 60 metres apart were determined by two offices nearly 200 miles apart in what appeared to entirely arbitrary (perverse?) allocation of tasks. As part of the planning process there is supposed to be some consideration as to the surroundings of any development - the two offices didn't communicate and as far as we are aware weren't aware of each others actions....
We have over 1000 pages of FoI that elaborate incompetence, contempt for the law, conspiracy, lies and more.
We would not deny the need for an organisation responsible for many of the tasks that the EA performs - we'd just prefer them to be competent, honest and abide by / be aware of the limits to their mandate as a statutory public body. Sadly - really - over the course of 4 years we've seen our faith in them as a specialist, authoritative, well intentioned and competent public body shredded pretty much beyond recovery. We paid £152 for a licence application that should have taken 4 months tops (yes or no) we're now 4 years down the line and our MP reckons that the cost to the public purse alone - is in excess of £1,300,000 and still relentlessly ticking ever upwards.....
25 years and five governments later and it's all Thatcher's fault. Give me Sunny Jim, Foot and Kinnock any day of the week. They really knew how to ru[i]n a country. [/s] (Do I really need to add that?)
Geoff,
Not sure why you have such a bee in your bonnet but I can assure you I'm not getting stuck in to the SIX MILLION plus public servants just because it's a left wing labour voting political machine! No, the reality is there is no difference between the damp squib labour lead morons and the spineless morons masquerading as the Conservatives!
However you cannot sit there in all seriousness defending the SIX MILLION plus public service as it IS grossly over staffed, inefficient and is only a left arm short of being a dictatorship. You might not like my bluntness but the reality is the public service does require trimming down so that money and resources can actually get to where it's most needed, teaching our children, looking after the sick and enforcing the law.
The chances of that happening, nil. The chances of the EA growing even bugger, absolutely guaranteed!
Regards
Mailman
SandyS
I thought it was somebody's Naval Law that the number of admirals had to be in inverse proportion to the number of capital ships.
I remember reading — many years ago and I now can't remember where — a report comparing the number of civil servant vs naval personnel vs fleet numbers in 1913 compared with 1955 (or similar dates). Quite revealing.
Bryan
geoffchambers and I glare at each other (politely) from opposite sides of the political divide and I think usually find more that unites us than divides us. Personally I think in many respects traditional Conservatives are closer to Old Labour than many on both sides are prepared to admit.
New Labour? Now there's a different kettle of (stinking) fish!
I did read somewhere that the British Army now possesses more horses than tanks - a reflection of the peaceful times we live in...?
Any bids on the Royal Air Force?
Having worked for various large organisations - including the BBC - in the past, I can confirm that most tend to the EA's performance. Why? Because they are staffed by human beings, a large proportion of which are inherently lazy and dishonest. If you don't have an honest and efficient manager...
Thanks Geoff and Mailman :-) our busywork culture irritates the heck out of me but it’s not just government that are guilty.
I worked for a company that went bust because of the price of energy. It was an old and once large organisation. Because it was failing, it continuously shed jobs in an attempt to keep afloat. The work got spread between the dwindling manpower. At no point did the senior management come to the conclusion that they could no longer act like a FTSE 100 company. There were no meetings where we were asked what were our core activities. Instead of just meeting our legal requirements on health, safety and the environment they wanted the gold plated versions that had won them plaudits while the company was still successful. The job losses were unavoidable but the workload that the remaining people were given was untenable. I was once asked in a survey what key skill my job entailed – I put ‘working out which balls I could drop with the least repercussions’. Whenever voluntary job losses were offered, nearly everyone applied.
This is the way governments deal with overspending. They don’t slim down the workload of the department first, they just cut the money and expect them to keep doing everything as before. The quality of the resulting department is in the hands of the person left in charge and authority managers are not necessarily promoted for their ability to streamline their procedures or work on a shoestring. Protecting colleagues often comes ahead of serving the public because their budget is not tied to a happy public. The BBC has demonstrated this in spades.
Nearly every department needs to be stripped back to the basics and the public should be asked ‘what do we really want from these people?’ Get the basics right first and then add the niceties back in, as money and manpower allow.
But it’s not going to happen so we’ll just keep muddling along and if it gets really bad we throw a bit of money at it and it improves for a few years. This will work until or if the country starts going broke. Some might say that this has already happened but we’re less broke than others and that seems to work.
Jan 3, 2014 at 4:52 PM | Unregistered CommenterBryan
Quite agree. I spent much of my professional career working for the (nationalised) National Coal Board - subsequently British Coal.
I could write a substantial book about all the things which I think were wrong about the NCB / BC (of which, interference by political numpties - or the malicious, like Maggie - heads the list).
I could, however, write two or more substantial books about all the things I think were right about the nationalised industry, which (on balance) I was proud to serve.
After privatisation, I went on to work for 17 years in the privatised industry, after which I retired but still do some consultancy work.
At the end of 1994, everyone was telling me how much better I would find things in the private sector. But I fear that this was not my experience at all. Yes, certainly some things were better. But a lot of things were just as bad, worse and at times significantly worse.
The UK deep mining industry is now on its last legs. There are now just three significant deep mines left:- Thoresby, Kellingley and Hatfield. None are in robust shape by any means. A lot of the blame must be firmly put on every Government since the (1985) end of the miners' strike (not to mention Arthur himself), on the EU and the cAGW nonsense of which we are all very well aware. But that is only half the story. Incompetent management also played a major part.
I will admit that the coal mining industry is probably atypical. But there are plenty of other examples of private industry incompetence (as well as the other, obvious problems). There are also private firms that I have worked for (or with) that are well run, effective, socially aware, responsive to their customers and make decent profits.
My experience suggests that most people are less concerned about whether enterprise X is in public ownership or private, and more concerned about whether the quality of management provides decent goods and services at reasonable cost.
I am certainly NOT convinced that private ownership is a panacea, although there are industries where it certainly does work very well. But large quasi-monopolies (water & energy spring immediately to mind) are usually crap.
of some 53mil people around SIX MILLION (according to the BBC) of that population are civil servants! This IS a problem because each and everyone of these jobs sucks money out of the economy instead of creating real wealth (ie you have to tax the fewer and fewer people in real jobs to keep these non-jobs going!)
I see people have attacked this because of those six million public servants most do decent jobs. That's not the problem with it.
The problem is that it assumes, based on a very out-dated view of economics, that the more people involved in making things the better the economy. That they should be doing "real work". We left that world behind half a century ago. Now the less people are involved, on average, the better things are made.
In most of the world agricultural production would be vastly increased by doing what the British have done, and getting people off the land, so that it can be properly machine farmed. If you want to make cars efficiently you need to go the Japanese route and make them with robots. Only an idiot would suggest production is improved by adding people. Yet those public servants should be doing "real work"? In fact they would all enter service jobs, if they found any at all.
The key is that the economy of a modern western society is entirely uncorrelated with the number of people making things. Industrial production goes up even as the numbers involved in industry goes down. So cutting the civil service would have not the slightest effect on the economic strength of the country. It's not like those people are entrepreneurs and engineers, just chafing to do "real work".
If parts of the public service is over-staffed, then they are over-staffed. But let's not kid ourselves that those extra people, when fired, will add even a penny to the national coffers. Industry, agriculture etc are driven in the modern society by tax and monetary policy and the legal framework of the nation. The number of people involved will never again come close to the majority of citizens.
A more useful analysis would be that more of the civil servants should be teachers, soldiers, road builders etc and less of them policy analysts and sustainability officers. Just wanting to reduce them in number, because the number is "too big" is really just asking for a higher unemployment statistic.
(For those with a sense of irony, you will notice that the economic thinking of the "sack 'em all" follows quite closely with Marx's "labour theory of value" -- i.e. that only making things is useful economic activity. Yet the Left has mostly given up on that, and it is not the loony Right that rants about not enough people are involved in "industry".)
Northcote Parkinson predicted that the number of RN admirals would outnumber ships:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Northcote_Parkinson
...Parkinson's Law, ... satirizing government bureaucracies. ... This collection of short studies explained the inevitability of bureaucratic expansion, arguing that 'work expands to fill the time available for its completion'. ....suggested that the Royal Navy would eventually have more admirals than ships...
What a thread! If names were put to the companies and people in the stories recounted here, you’d have a rich oral history of post-war Britain.
I’d promised myself to avoid politics here, because it inevitably derails the discussion, but you lot have given me the glimmerings of an idea of how socialism could be made to work in Britain: - 1945-style nationalisation, closely overseen by a committee of BH regulars - how’s that?
Mailman:
Once again, when you get down to particulars, I agree entirely.
Harry Passfield:
Foot never ran Britain, though he was running ahead of Maggie in the polls throughout her first term, until she sank the Belgrano. Sunny Jim brought inflation and unemployment down. Maggie put them up again.
Geoff: I know Foot never ran Britain, nor did Kinnock, thank God. My point was that these are the people who aspired to run it and would - IMHO - have f*cked it up a damn sight more than someone who has become a hate icon to so many. Well, you can't do much about people who hate, and even though I had trouble liking her, I would much prefer to have a competent, strong leader than a weak, vacillating one (sound like the two sharing the job right now?).
Will the UK ever achieve full employment? The heady days of 90%+ employed?
If so then fine. If not....
Surely we should be paying those who choose not to work? The way we are (an island that doesn't sustain itself much above 30% of the year) we could 'give' all those who don't aspire to a foreign holiday every year, classic car (collection), private schools for their children, private healthcare, their 'own' home, steak for breakfast (or anytime of the week), etc, a 'decent' payment to stay out of the way of the rest of us?
If we are taxed, taxed on what we spend the remainder and unable to 'save' due to low interest rates then 'giving' a percentage of the people anything will result in them spending it. Immediately.
Quantitative Easing would have produced immediate results if it had been spread amongst every family in the land - say £1000 per person. We would have spent it. Immediately. Granted, mostly frivolously. It would be in circulation in UK inc.
Instead it all ended up offshore. Festering.
Sorry, bit drunk and pissed off that so much 'work' is anything but industrious.
Mooloo, the problem highlighted in these posts is that the people in non jobs actually hinder the productivity of those who work in the private sector, where transactions are of voluntary exchange, in which - by definition - both sides win (selling poems or clearing a river course, whatever). If you really believe that these employees are such jobsworths that they would, if sacked, simply remain inert on the dole, then that is probably best place for them (they have a permanent paid holiday) and for the productive part of country also, who are not wasting time satisfying bureaucrat's stupid demands, and would be bleeding less tax to support wasters, cash that would otherwise reward and encourage the productive classes .
Classical liberal class analysis explains the European miracle in terms of the productivity of the productive classes growing more strongly than the parasite - something that had not previously occurred in human history, as the necessary accumulation of productive capital had been impossible.
( http://mises.orgmedia.aspx?action=category&ID=65 lecture 1 - for those with an interest )
IanH
Thanks for the link to von Mises. We lefties wasted 20 years of our lives in economic ignorance because Maggie made us hate the very names of Adam Smith and Austrian economic theory.
Put your ideas together with those of Henry Galt in the previous comment and you have a welfare state which could immediately shed 4 million unnecessary bureaucrats and satisfy both Mailman and me.
Alas, I have in my close family someone who has put these ideas into practice, at a cost to the British taxpayer (not me) which doesn’t bear thinking about.
IanH,
Well put and exactly what I was trying to get at! I think Mooloo's thoughts are rooted in the 19th century and are no longer relevant in todays economy/society where quite literally you can do pretty much any job anywhere on the face of this planet right from the comfort of your home.
Regards
Mailman
Geoff, I donated towards Tony Blairs first victory, I was a Grauniad reader and took the BBC's stance as balanced and unbiased. The opinion we had of Magie and her supposed teachers were the only reasonable ones people viewing that projection could reach, rather like the chaps looking at the flickering images on the walls of Plato's cave. Then came the internet. I have since got rid of my 'tv receiving apparatus' to avoid paying the BBC to do what they do. The old gatekeepers of history and opinion have been bypassed. Times are going to change.
I live close to an EA depot. For ten years at least, every time it rains, the road passing that depot develops a huge puddle extending half across the road. Their 4X4's go past outwards of a morning and back again of an afternoon. Just a silted up ditch, a minor inconvenience, but symtomatic of a cultural malaise. I'm sure they prioritise the major sluices and pumps etc on the main dykes and rivers but I've never seen them routinely clearing the minor culverts and ditches like in days gone by. And what does that local depot's webpage boast now? This:-
http://www.clickgreen.org.uk/news/national-news/12531-solar-project-begins-selling-energy-to-national-grid.html
Guido Fawkes is onto it as well fwiw
Let me give you attempt to explain where I and just about all my family come from Geoff.
Over four generations, I and my extended family through the years past and continuing [before then we were farmers] have all worked in private enterprise, SME's some would term them, we do not skive off the state and we pay taxes albeit grudgingly.
Since, the Bliar madness and with Brown seated in the treasury, the snow storm of idiot regulation and red tape became a blizzard.
Much of it originating in Brussels and via transnational bodies and boldly gold plated by our own set of wonderful civil servants - overheads and costs rise, fuel taxes and energy costs rise and guess what we have to pass these on - Miliband raves, stamping his little feet mouthing on about "cost of living" but very conveniently forgets how much damage he help inflict and his part in causing it.
The biggest headache we all have, apart from the obvious - selling our various wares and skills, is - government.
Government, is the enemy.
The machine of government, to small business comes in all 'forms' shapes and appearances, from the snide apparatchiks checking elf and safety apparatus and bogus procedures. Then such glories like; emissions efficiency, equality and diversity quotas and right down the size and stiffness of the brushes which we have place in a dark orifice as we all jump through hoops to please these snotty nosed kids who have never gotten their knees brown in their very short and opinionated miserable existences.
Red tape, Bureaucracy is a rapacious, eternally devouring fiend.
A monster, the EU just adds more pain, green energy, the green agenda and such just is the icing on the bloody cake - after you have paid wages and business rates, rents and recycling bin costs - then the water company comes knocking, energy bills et flipping cetera. Enacted by bonkers Theresa or some idiot but actually it was all the fault of Mad Hattie's equality legislation tells you; what sex and designates, dictating the melanistic shade of and type of minority quotas of people you must employ. Then the reps - but that's another story.
OK a certain amount of regulation is necessary but I wonder why we still bother sometimes - because at the end of the day - your business - unlike the heyday, go day, God TF it's half day flexi-time this and every Friday - you take it home with you.
When one sees how Google, Amazon and the rest run rings round the Inland revenue-Treasury - I tell you all of my clients and business colleagues despair, and the same question is asked, who are we working for? Because, for 80% of the time [tax year] we seem, or, form filling - we are doing the governments' job.
btw, It does have some rewards although my fingers are down to the bone. Plus, it is a lean and getting leaner consolation but something we were all so proud of, in that, we are value boosters to the UK economy.
Not at all like the public sector sponge - which only subtracts, leaving aside some useful pen pushers [can't think where but there must be some] and of course; the police, nurses and doctors, Armed forces and not forgetting the street cleaners.
Pharos on Jan 4, 2014 at 12:24 AM
I followed your link and read:
"The Environment Agency’s largest solar project, at the Scots Float depot in Rye, East Sussex, has been running since April and has generated enough energy to power eight homes for a year."
So it only needs to increase this EA's largest solar project by a factor of 1,000,000 to supply 8,000,000 homes, about 40% of British homes!
How long did it take to generate "enough energy to power eight homes for a year"? About one year, one might expect!
And then we have:
“This scheme at Scots Float is one of the biggest in the country. It is able to generate up to 50Kw of energy an hour.
What is a 'Kw'? It it a kW, even though it should be more like kWhr per hour, or just kW!
And to think these people do not even realise they do not understand the basics of energy and power and their units!
IanH on Jan 3, 2014 at 9:54 PM
Yes, thank you for your response.
You could also have mentioned that dole is cheaper for the taxpayers than an inflated salary and pension, along with removing the spectacle of powerful, dysfunctional management posing as role models, probably along the lines mentioned by geoffchambers on this thread on Jan 3, 2014 at 10:46 AM, who quoted John Green.
In the Gregory Peck/Ava Gardner movie "On the Beach", the world is mostly gone except for a few people in Melbourne Australia.
They, too, will be gone soon.
In a scene near the end, the ultimate in bureaucracy is defined.
A few people have lined up to get a suicide pill. There is a bureaucrat lady with the pills & a clipboard asking "Name, please?" and looking as if she has responsibility to ensure that nobody gets more than a fair share.
Since I saw that scene, I have never been able to talk seriously with a bureaucrat.
The ongoing problem is that each year, more and more of them act out this stereotype. Seriously.
Geoff Sherrington,
G,day.
In Britain this morn', rolling - we've had news 24 BBC reporting, Australian Met office - quote, "ave yearly Temps up 1.5º" - is this Aussie MO, CSIRO, WA Uni et al, the kickback against Abbot's - CAGW is political BS ethos?
Robert Christopher,
Why is the EA in the business of producing electricity? That, to me, seems to have absoluerly nothing to do with flooding and clearing waterways and protecting the environment?????
Regards
Mailman
Up to mid 70s The Water Authorities attracted high quality graduates from top universities, Bristol, Imperial etc, and obtained design and construction experience . Post 1988 privatisation , most engineers and scientists with responsibilities for water supply and sewage went to the water companies. The scientists with the responsibility for environmnetal monitoring went to the NRA ; some were very good ,some were useless and the water companies made sure they did not en up with them. From the mid 90s , many of the very good practical scientists have retired. Those entering the NRA/EA post 1988 and especially post 1995 have had less academic ability, examples would be a retiree with a Bristol/Imperial geology degree being replaced with someone with an environmental science degree from an ex-poly.
The EA sub-contracts out it;s science to many consultants. The new graduates have little or no design and construction experience compared to those who entered in the 60s and 70sand therefore are less practical.
There has been a massive increase in environmental regulation and many EA employees lack the fundamental maths, physics and chemistry skills plus experience to fully understand what they are doing. Consequently, long holidays and excessive flexi-time, a tick box culture, a slackness with time keeping amongst many, a gold plating of regulations ,a lack of flexibility born of a lack understanding of the fundamentals of science, a conceit that they are the "Guardians of the Environments" combine to produce a bloated bureaucracy . A human equivalent is someone who 50% or more of fat. The flexi-time culture means that the EA appears fully staffed only from 10am-12pm and 2pm to 4pm Monday to Thursday. Also there are people who only work part time. Therefore it becomes very difficult to contact people and it must be very difficult to co-ordinate staff who have very different work patterns.
Well with all the money paying all the staff and at least 25% just on the gravy train abusing power and well in excess of ONE MILLION POUNDS maliciously wasted on a £150 pound licence at avoncliff mill www.northmill avoncliff .And the director of operations David Jordan giving in writing that he has no interest in authenticity of paperwork. bear in mind that the ENVIRON MENTAL AGENCY not only deal with floods ha ha! but power stations .Owen Patterson happy new year do your job deal with them....
@Robert Christopher "What is a 'Kw'? It it a kW, even though it should be more like kWhr per hour, or just kW!
And to think these people do not even realise they do not understand the basics of energy and power and their units!"
This story in the Register shows how bad journalists are at understanding electrical concepts.
People-powered Olympic shopping mall: A sign of utter tech illiteracy
The last sentence in the BBC report :
Tractor statistics on a stick?
We'll make more in 2014 !!!