Britain's Disgusting Railways

[johnwhelan]

Having worked in government for many years and having been involved in government procurement, I can assure you that your response to Dean's post is total nonsense. If you choose not to believe that, avoid wasting further keystrokes on the matter.

Having worked in the Canadian Federal Government on the procurement for many years yes there is often political attempts to interfere with the process but generally speaking the civil servants work in the best interests of the tax payers. Here in Canada we had a problem with the quality of small suppliers from Quebec who were well connected politically. It's very difficult to specify quality but in this case one of my francophone programmers who is very patient went through the English and French manuals very carefully noting the differences. Documentation must be in both official languages. We threw them out on the quality of their French documentation. I wasn't a popular person for some time with the small suppliers but it solved the problem.

There are a few other stories I could tell you but over time the civil service usually wins. Take a look at Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister and you can see some of the games that are played.

Cheerio John

 

[wholbr]

Hi everybody.
Amigacooke, many thanks for posting the link to the legislation surrounding public procurement policy. I believe that anyone reading that document will quickly realize that comments in this thread in regard to the civil service “meddling” in government procurement are not in anyway possible.

Below I have included a link to the UK civil service leadership statement which furthers the above.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...-statement/civil-service-leadership-statementhttps://www.gov.uk/government/publi...-statement/civil-service-leadership-statement

That statement takes as its third paragraph the following:-
This statement of intent takes as its starting point the responsibility of the Civil Service for the effective delivery of the government’s programme and ministers’ priorities, living its values and serving the public. It highlights the 3 key characteristics that civil servants have indicated they expect from their leaders, and that we expect Civil Service leaders to live up to.

Below I have included a section from Wikipedia which simplifies the above statement and places in context the civil service links and responsibilities to the Crown and government.:-

As in other states that employ the Westminster political system, Her Majesty's Home Civil Service forms an inseparable part of the British government. The executive decisions of government ministers are implemented by HM Civil Service. Civil servants are employees of the Crown and not of the British parliament. Civil servants also have some traditional and statutory responsibilities which to some extent protect them from being used for the political advantage of the party in power. Senior civil servants may be called to account to Parliament.

The above makes clear that in terms of the procurement of such items of large expenditure as rail infrastructure equipment it is government through it's ministers who always decide on what is to be procured and from whom, with the civil service carrying out that procurement in line with government wishes.

Johnwhelan in regard to your posting at #51 of this thread, I believe the British civil service and government have moved on a very long way from the era of “Yes Minister” if indeed any thing such as was purported in those programmes ever took place even in those times.

Great sketch comedy and wonderful viewing tho.
Bill

 

[johnwhelan]

> Johnwhelan in regard to your posting at #51 of this thread, I believe the British civil service and government have moved on a very long way from the era of “Yes Minister” if indeed any thing such as was purported in those programmes ever took place even in those times.

It is still used as a management training tool. The same techniques to get things through such as a rush signature on a Friday afternoon for example, holding back a decision until the last moment so there is no choice but to sign off on it, and my favourite technique its just a minor change when in fact it is major but if you say its major it will never go through are still being used.

Cheerio John

 

[pfx]

Hi everybody.


Pfx, with every respect to your above posting, but if you have experience of civil servants carrying out procurement or operation without authority of government or parliment please expand on your above post. I worked alongside civil service employees only last year in regard to a serious theme park accident investigation I was involved in. I would have to say that I came away from that experience with nothing but the utmost respect for those civil servants and the manner in which they carried out their work on the leaders of the investigation teams behalf.

Bill

I think I already implied I have experience of this. I also said you should avoid wasting keystrokes on the matter if you chose not to believe it but if you truly believe elected representatives really pull the strings, I apologise for trying to suggest otherwise. Clearly I don't know what I'm talking about.

 

[wholbr]

Hi everybody.

It is still used as a management training tool. The same techniques to get things through such as a rush signature on a Friday afternoon for example, holding back a decision until the last moment so there is no choice but to sign off on it, and my favourite technique its just a minor change when in fact it is major but if you say its major it will never go through are still being used.

John, in regard to your above posting, in the context of the UK government and civil service structure, anyone would have to ask the question as why any civil servant would wish to engage tactics such as you refer to.

A civil servant is an employee of the crown (not the British government) and in that respect is appointed to a government department or ministry to act as its servant in carrying out government policies and ministers wishes.

Therefore in the above, it is very much in the career interest of any civil servant to ensure that the department or ministry that person is appointed to serve at runs efficiently and remains within cost totals and on budget.The foregoing should ensure that the any civil servant would very much wish to work with a government minister rather than work against that minister by way of the tactics you describe above.

However, should a civil servant decide he/she wishes to “thwart” the objectives of a department or minister by way of the tactics described, that person would without doubt run considerable work related risks to themselves and their career.

The first problem they would have to overcome would be in the form of the National Audit Office who are run as a tool of Parliament and in that inspect and audit all government department expenditure. The Audit office advise that they through inspection saved British taxpayers over one and half billion by way of questioning all aspects of any departments expenditure and procurement. Therefore the Audit Office inspectors in my humble opinion are hardly likely to accept that a procurement cost above than should have been the case, as the procurement documents landed on a minister's desk to late on a Friday to be signed.

Also in the above should the Audit Office find several cases of inefficiency in a government department, it will in all likelihood inform the relevant parliamentary commons select committee of those inefficiencies. Those select committees made up of house of commons MPs of all Parties have the power to summon heads of department, ministers and civil servants from any department of government to appear in front of them to be questioned.

Parliamentary select committees have substantial powers as the head of Network Rail found to his great discomfort only last week. The committees can in exceptional circumstances refer matters under its authority directly to the Crown Prosecution Service if it is felt necessary, although I believe it has never engaged in that action preferring to use other corrective action.

Therefore all the above begs the question, why would any civil servant wish to engage in the disruptive action as described in Johns posting above. What would he/she have to gain?

Bill

 

[BLACKWATCH]

its just a minor change when in fact it is major but if you say its major it will never go through are still being used.

Cheerio John

Something very similar was used by Gordon Brown .................
After signing the 'Lisbon Treaty' without consulting parliament or the people, he stated "it is just a tidying up exercise, nothing major".

We now know different, in fact it was such a large transfer of sovereignty, that parliament could & should, designate it 'Null & Void', as
gordon Brown did not have a mandate to sign it.

 

[wholbr]

I think I already implied I have experience of this. I also said you should avoid wasting keystrokes on the matter if you chose not to believe it but if you truly believe elected representatives really pull the strings, I apologise for trying to suggest otherwise. Clearly I don't know what I'm talking about.

Pfx I have not stated that I disbelieve that you have experience in working with members of the British Civil Service. I have only requested that if you have found examples of civil service members over stepping their brief, mismanagement or disruptive action then expand on that point by posting examples of that in this thread.

By the way, i do not waste keystrokes in postings I make, as those postings are always made by way of voice dictation on my smartphone or tablet, much easier

Keyboards, old fashioned things these days I feel.
Bill

 

[rjhowie]

I suppose it is easy when exercising a point of view to be sometimes a bit dismissive which borders on the holier than thou even sometimes whether it is a deliberate view or just a passing unintentional comment. Have worked in the civil service and local authority and have views on both although I would not dismis anyone who disagreed even if humour didn't work.

 

[pfx]

HAL is probably best placed to respond on my behalf. I'm not going to waste my time on this.

 

[johnwhelan]

>
John, in regard to your above posting, in the context of the UK government and civil service structure, anyone would have to ask the question as why any civil servant would wish to engage tactics such as you refer to.

A civil servant is an employee of the crown (not the British government) and in that respect is appointed to a government department or ministry to act as its servant in carrying out government policies and ministers wishes.

Therefore in the above, it is very much in the career interest of any civil servant to ensure that the department or ministry that person is appointed to serve at runs efficiently and remains within cost totals and on budget.The foregoing should ensure that the any civil servant would very much wish to work with a government minister rather than work against that minister by way of the tactics you describe above.

However, should a civil servant decide he/she wishes to “thwart” the objectives of a department or minister by way of the tactics described, that person would without doubt run considerable work related risks to themselves and their career.

@@@

Unfortunately that is not how the world works. In theory Ministers and the government set direction and the civil service carries it out. In any large organisation there will be people playing games. Some ministers may have a vested interest. Currently a number of politicians from Quebec are serving time for corruption. I seem to recall a UK government transport minister who owned a road haulage firm, a possible conflict of interest?

Sometimes an elected official doesn't understand the subject, Donald Trump for example. Locally we had a major from private industry who was going to cut taxes. It was a very frustrating time for both him and the city as he came to realise that there were service levels that had to be maintained and often other levels of government sources of income were dependant on these being maintained. The average time a minister in is power is about a year. It took me two years to introduce Internet Email and we were I think the very first government department to do it. Quote from a senior manager at the time "and this box here is our Internet gateway, I don't know quite what is but John worked hard on putting the email system together so we thought we'd let him have one." The local phone company had been wining and dining our Minister and senior management putting forward their idea of an X.400 gateway to connect our email system to the outside world. We did actually include one in the system in order to handle French accented characters but the traffic slowly dropped off.

I changed a type face once, that was real fun. We had documents in an xyz company proprietary format, they used Courier and Elite fonts. When we'd changed word processor before from Wang it had cost us $1,000,000+ to convert the documents. I worked out a process to do the conversion using software on a PC but I needed to test it. To fully test it it needed three items of equipment total cost $6,000. I had the PC side sorted out but the excuse given was to produce large print for a Ministers speech so he didn't need his glasses. However when we'd done the conversion that also allowed us to use Times Roman which lowered the printing bill by 25% plus the photocopying bill etc. The printing bill was $4,000,000 a year so it saved a million a year but the really big saving came when we had a meeting with supply services Canada. There was problem in the amount of time it took to buy something. It took eight months to purchase my equipment but they did save $2.53 on the price. Six months delay a on a project that saved a million a year? We changed the way that the government did procurement to allow purchases of under initially $5,000 to be made locally by the department. That saved much many millions a year.

What did I have to gain, well politicians generally speaking are good at talking they aren't good at detail and they aren't in place long enough to get their ideas implemented. Should I have not put in the Internet email gateway? Or having got the text out for the ministers speeches not have found a way to cut the printing bill?

Some managers like to control, they don't get on very well with me. Others step back and give me general direction, as one said once somehow things just seemed to fall effortlessly into place on my projects. I think that one I'd been working at for three years.

Cheerio John

 

[rjhowie]

Uh-ho someone before you has proved my point?

 

[amigacooke]

As is normal in real life, blanket assertions and simplifications do not adequately cover reality. It is possible for virtually every opinion in this thread to be correct to a certain degree. Large organisations are not peopled by clones and therefore are prone to all the triumphs, failures, expertise, ignorance, character defects that real life demonstrates.

 

[wholbr]

Hi everybody.

As is normal in real life, blanket assertions and simplifications do not adequately cover reality. It is possible for virtually every opinion in this thread to be correct to a certain degree. Large organisations are not peopled by clones and therefore are prone to all the triumphs, failures, expertise, ignorance, character defects that real life demonstrates.

I believe the above posting by amigacooke very much puts into focus the different sides of the debate that have taken place in the last few pages of this thread. Inline with John Whelan's recollections of his time in the Canadian civil service can I expand on how those thoughts could be placed into the context of the UK system of government.

As amigacooke points out, there are in any large organization employees those who are often judged as efficient, somewhat ineffective, cooperative, non-cooperative, leaders and those who are just happy to follow a path laid out by others for them.

Without doubt all British governments and its supporting civil service have contained over any number of years ministers and civil service employees who have all the above attributes. However, there is strong evidence that throughout a long period of time UK governments and the civil service have worked extremely well in cooperation and support of each other.

By example to the above, when the present monarch took the throne in 1952 Britain was fading imperial nation being written off by many at home and abroad as a “has been country” with no real future. However, in the sixty four years that this monarch has remained in her position Britain has transformed itself from that fading imperial image to become the seventh largest worldwide commercial economy where many from other nations seem to wish to come and live.

The foregoing would give evidence that Britain has had through its parliamentary structure good government which could only have accomplished that national transformation with a civil service cooperating and supporting the various governments of different colours it has had to work with. In the foregoing there have been many “hiccups” along the way, but overall those governments have maintained good cost control within themselves and their activity ambitions. In the foregoing action those governments have in the most importance brought forward conditions in which private commerce has been able to grow and thrive and through that maintain the services so appreciated by so many, such as the National Health Service.

All the above has been achieved in my humble opinion by having within those governments and its civil service the right people in the right positions at the right time which in the main the foregoing organizations achieved from within the ranks of the employees and party members all with various levels of skills and talents.

However, within any overall success there is always failure, and that in recent years has festered within Britain's railways more than any other organization. It can be argued that the railways have had to cope with a rapid rise in passenger numbers brought about by the equally rapid rise in Britain's population. However unprecedented government investment has been put into the the rail network but in many instances that investment has been badly mismanaged by way of poor leadership in the industry leading to desperately inadequate financial control.

Responsibility for the above has to be placed in the main at the door of Network Rail. That organization's latest “financial fiasco” being the cancellation of the electrification of the Great Western Mainline when almost three billion pounds of taxpayers money has already been spent. Network Rail then calmly announce that they will require another near three billion to complete the project when their own original cost calculation was below one billion for the whole project.

The foregoing is just one of the mismanaged financial failures brought about under the highly paid executive management of Network Rail. However the train operating companies must also shoulder a fair share of the responsibility for the managerial state of the UK's railways. Only this week a further series of industrial action over the peek traveling Christmas period has been announced by the trade unions on Southern

In response to the above Southern management seem to “shrug their shoulders” and carry on planning their Christmas parties oblivious to the need to get meaningful negotiations restarted with the unions or the traveling requirements of their passengers and taxpayers who have no other choice but to finance their enormous salaries.

The above is a case of Network Rail and the train operating companies not having the right people in the right positions at the right time. From within the ranks of the employees of these organizations there must be personal who could if recognised and encouraged come forward and carry out the management of Britain's railways by way of the above agencies in far better manner than the present totally incompetent management.

Aside from the well recognized problems of overcrowding and the inadequate and inappropriate equipment procured for Britain's railways, there is also the case of just what the huge wasteful finance spending could have done for other “cash strapped” organizations. What would the three billion already wasted on the GWML electrification do in the UK's overstretched hospitals. Or the near six billion Network Rail are demanding to complete the project do overall in Britain's great Health service.

The above is what at the present time makes for Britain's Disgusting Railways.
Bil

 

[cyberdongreen]

...I believe the British civil service and government have moved on a very long way from the era of “Yes Minister” if indeed any thing such as was purported in those programmes ever took place even in those times.

Great sketch comedy and wonderful viewing tho.
Bill

I'm not so sure about that Bill. However, if I maybe so righteous, I shall reproduce more of Mr Graham H and his observations of government Ministers of that era. It has to be read to be believed. (Incidently, it was Mr Graham H's predecessor who was the series political advisor for "Yes Minister.")

...(wearily), yes. What amazed me – being brought up in a modest way where self advertisement and vanity were punished – was the sheer arrogance of so many politicians. In Transport, we had to endure an annual rotation of Secretaries of State, usually to allow Mrs T’s next “favoured successor” to cut their teeth – we got to see a lot of “talent” that way. (Cecil) Parkinson was probably the worst; apart from caring a lot for his hair style, he thought he knew a thing or two – came back from a lunch at the Danish embassy complaining that all the Dane next to him wanted to do was talk about Kirkegaard – “Bloody intellectual”

“Actually, SoS, I think he was referring to the current Danish Prime Minister”.

Then there was the chap who found it difficult to keep away from the gin before lunch and nodded through a multi-billion grant settlement on the basis that the coloured photocopying (I’m going back before the Thatcher era here) was interesting. One “next Prime Minister but three” – a South Croydon MP – was so vain that he refused to wear spectacles even though he couldn’t actually read without them. How we enjoyed giving presentations and waiting for his Private Secretary to offer to go and get those specs… His preferred MO was to place one sheet of paper at a time on a high lectern on his desk and squint at it.

And what of Sir Keith Joseph – a little known (outside Whitehall) bulimic, famous for projectile vomiting during meetings? My then girlfriend, who was his Private Secretary, mentioned an incident in which he barfed over a brief being held out to him by one senior official - who responded by saying “No problem, SoS, I’ll bring another one up shortly”

The wit was lost on him. Happy days – you must stop me reminiscing when there is serious work afoot.

Cheers

Dave

 

[amigacooke]

I'm not so sure about that Bill. However, if I maybe so righteous, I shall reproduce more of Mr Graham H and his observations of government Ministers of that era.

Mrs T left government over a quarter of a century ago. Do you have anything a little more contemporary?

 

[teddytoot]

Even more disgusting with the price rises announced this morning.

 

[wholbr]

Hi everybody.

Even more disgusting with the price rises announced this morning.

Teddyfoot, you are quite right in your above statement. With the price increase of 2.3% applicable from January, the cost of a standard open return ticket from my local station (Yatton, North Somerset) to London Paddington will be two hundred and fifteen pounds.

In the above,you then have to add approximately ten pounds for the cost of tickets into central London by way of the underground, and you then have a grand total of two hundred and twenty five pounds (British Sterling) which works out at the stunning total of one pound per mile for the round trip

As you state teddyfoot the above is truly disgusting especially in view of the service passenger's receive. The problem in the foregoing is that anyone who has to arrive in the capitol by between 9 and 10am (normal time for start of meetings conferences etc) they then have no other choice but to use the railways if traveling out of the west country.

As the train I normally catch commences out of Weston Super Made at 6:30 am I can normally get a seat. However the train always fills to the capacity of its seating at Bristol Temple Meads. As the train then continues its journey, you witness passengers boarding from Bath Spa onwards having to stand for their entire ninety mile journey to London and paying two hundred pounds for the privilege in terms of the round trip

I believe the above circumstances could be retold by any number of other regular rail users using various commuter routes throughout the UK. The government has stated that on Southern where the situation is particularly bad that twelve month season ticket holders being given one month of free travel as compensation for the “terrible service”

However, as commuter's where informing BBC news in regard to the announcement that they did not want “gimmicks”, what they do require would be for the trains to run instead of being continually cancelled and furthermore for those trains to run on time.

Of course, the above failure is born out of many years of success by way of growth in the British economy leading to a rapid rise in the UK population, with the foregoing causing stress in several sectors of Britain's public services. However, none of those services has failed as spectacularly as the UK's railways.

As rail passenger numbers rise in several countries around the world, I believe that what has happened in Britain should be taken as a warning by other nations not to become over reliant on their rail systems as that can go badly wrong.

Bill

 

[BLACKWATCH]

With the price increase of 2.3% applicable from January, the cost of a standard open return ticket from my local station (Yatton, North Somerset) to London Paddington will be two hundred and fifteen pounds.

Probably be cheaper to drive in, park at the outer reaches of the underground & use that to access the city.

 

[clam1952]

Teddyfoot, you are quite right in your above statement. With the price increase of 2.3% applicable from January, the cost of a standard open return ticket from my local station (Yatton, North Somerset) to London Paddington will be two hundred and fifteen pounds.

Even more disturbing is that on the Radio this morning they said that some regulated may increase by up to 5% not sure where they got that from though possibly an element of Exaggeration.

 

[BLACKWATCH]

Even more disturbing is that on the Radio this morning they said that some regulated may increase by up to 5% not sure where they got that from though possibly an element of Exaggeration.

The radio report is most likely confused due to lack of research, apparently it's Virgin that are increasing their fares by up to 5.5%

"While regulated fares such as season tickets and off-peak returns, which are set by the government, are to increase by 1.9%, fares on Virgin Rail East Coast will increase by 4.9% overall. The rail firm said that would be hiking the fares it controls by an average of around 5.5%."

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/dec/02/rail-fare-price-rises-virgin-trains-east-coast