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I dont believe it!! - Boris (18th Jun 2018 - 21:24:11) Some time ago Tower Road was completely re surfaced. except for an area of the road upon which an unlicensed and abandoned vehicle sat. Many workmen and highways agency people looked at the vehicle, the police took photographs of it, and everybody decided that they would dig up and resurface the road around this car. Despite the fact that it was a small car, abandoned, and enough manpower was on hand to lift the car onto the pavement, and replace it when the work was done. Or to have arranged for the vehicle to be removed. Today the 18th June the whole road was closed whilst a whole section of road was dug up and resurfaced right across the width of the road, not just the unsurfaced area. Two steam rollers, a digger, a huge tar laying machine, water spraying vehicles, and other vehicles plus a company of white hatted engineers. The whole operation must have cost thousands. As Victor Meldrew would say " I don't believe it"

Re: I dont believe it!! - Ian (19th Jun 2018 - 11:59:52) Unfortunately I, and probably you Boris do believe it. When public infrastructure and / or utilities are outsourced and / or privatised the motivation is profit maximisation. Because, according to convention, maximising profits requires maximising efficiency, so the public get a "better service" at a lower cost, so privatise and outsource everything for the good of the public and it's purse. More for less...if only. Sadly this is plainly not often true. In the sorry example you highlight, "better to come back another day and get more revenue" (and hence presumably profit unless they are a loss making bunch of clowns aka Carillion) while blaming another agency for not clearing the highway, and possibly hitting your customer with some additional penalty for not complying with the contract. A little clear thinking and lack of "profit maximising" would have had the road done first time. In my example our lane was resurfaced about 2 years ago. The crew turned up and I pointed out the problems with flooding due to the poor camber (it is a rural lane). I also pointed out that I had put cobbles across my drive to "damn the water" so "don't resurface flush to the cobbles or my drive will flood". They chose to ignore this, my drive flooded, they sent an engineer, I suggested lowering the surface, "oh no, that'll look bad, we'll raise the cobbles". I warned them they were "very well concreted in and the surface would get ruined anyway". So they dug out the cobbles and re laid them. 2 men, 3 days and partial resurface. It was like a Ealing comedy, but more like a tragedy. Of course the delivery of any public good isn't simple and the way to do it well isn't black and white, but the more service for less money via outsourcing or privatisation only is clearly a fantasy. The outsource companies are bust (Carillion) or heading that way (Capita et al) while rail franchisees are handing back the keys (East Coast) as they can't make a profit or are failing to deliver in many areas of the country.

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