Whilst not getting too far away from the subject, I would just like to say that being a Polish immigrant in Lincolnshire ain’t always a barrel of laughs either.

This week a considerable amount of resource has been utilised in unravelling a quite nasty racially motivated attack on a Polish family.

Elements of this included a lady getting her face repeatedly bashed against a kerb stone.

Makes me proud to be British……….

You can never be certain of anything though, about 3 weeks back a couple of Polish lads took a severe beating in our town, much outrage on local forum and press, the police tracked down and arrested the perpetrators who turned out to be Romanian, sad old world isn’t it?

Quite possibly from the cyclists home Insurance Policy, if he has one.
Jim.
Lincoln .7

You’re joking, cyclists are NEVER :rolleyes: wrong, the cycling fraternity is busily campaigning for it to become law, that in any incident involving cyclists and motorised traffic, the driver is automatically responsible.

Don’t laugh this is already the case in some countries.

Union culture is a huge part of the problem. It’s self serving, with no regard to service levels. When these unions strike, it just inconveniences everyone else. Unfortunately, public sector workers seem not to realise that their only reason for employment is to service general society. When society looses money, the public sector must cut its costs accordingly. But unions don’t allow this.

Obviously there are pros and cons of both public and private sector businesses and services. I would argue that nationalising our aeronautical industry destroyed it. The same goes for our automotive industry.

Any strike is someone else’s inconvenience, but why do we have poor industrial relations and strikes? the answer is usually greed and mainly from the employer, I would agree that when funds are tight we all need to take our share, however this is not what happens, NHS staff have had pay frozen and/or cut over the last three years, management make idealistic comments regarding flexibility in work practices.

What they actually mean is cut staff by 10/20%, cease work in certain areas, which are then handed to contract staff on minimum wage and somehow expect the same amount and standard of work to still happen.

Our aviation industry was wrecked in 1956 by a certain Duncan Sandys, most certainly the aviation industry couldn’t continue as it then was, but that buffoon threw the baby out with the bath water, cancelled virtually every development programme, forced the amalgamation of all companies into just two, came out with the grandiose statement that the skilled design teams would be retained.

I for one never forgot his classic statement that from then on the future defense of the country would be undertaken by ground missiles and there was no need for fast jet interceptors, this at a when hitting the right county with a missile was a success.

What actually happened was that all the bosses were retained, the guys who actually built the planes were kicked out, to such an extent that Boeing set up a recruitment office in Manchester and cashed in on the availability of skilled workers.

Then of course the final fiasco to the shambles, TSR2, the plane designed and built by committee, a classic tale of too many Chiefs and not enough Indians, dogged by underfunding from the outset, engines and electronics nowhere near ready when required due to underfunding, delay after delay, the only surprise about that plane was that it actually flew and by the time it did it’s design role was virtually redundant.

Further. Public services are just far too expensive these days, and are hindered by general beurocracy, inefficiency/poor management and unions.

I hope other countries are looking on and learning from our mistakes.

You have a point when it comes to certain aspects of efficiency, but what actually happens when a private contractor takes on public service work, usually the service is reduced, staff are on temp contracts, minimum pay, everyone gets ripped off to put profits into contractor’s pockets.

Privatisation of public services is usually worse than what it replaces, simple example our hospitals are now a source of infection due entirely to handing cleaning contracts to private companies, staff levels reduced, pay levels at minimum, yet the costs have soared, wonder where the money has gone?

Don’t blame the unions apart from not being able to stop the wholesale destruction of so much of essential services, the cry goes up can’t afford, no money, costs to high, sphericals, all these contractors have no problem getting their sticky fingers on our money, but sod the service.:mad:

We need to either get our own act together damn quick or accept that we are a 3rd world country with a corrupt hierarchy

What are the contracts for? I’ve not heard anything about that.
Obviously as someone that wants to be a PCSO or PC, I wouldn’t want to see G4S involved in policing!

The powers that be were trying to make some way of handing traffic over to non-police, not surprising unwelcome, but the subject will come up again.

Prison and prisoner escort duties are mainly in the hands of contractors already, how far will privatisation go?.

Personally, my blood runs cold at the thought of a Romney victory. A neo con president let loose with both houses being under Republican control, coupled with a huge military machine, would IMO, be a very worrying scenario indeed, or at least it should be.

Better the devil you know etc. Personally, I don’t rate Obama all that much, but he would still be infinitely preferable to that other guy.

Agreed certainly don’t fancy having Romney with his hands on so much military strength, particularly when we seem to be dragged into military adventures with the USA.

We probably won’t have police for much longer, the government will probably give a ‘policing’ contract to G4S instead. :rolleyes:

That would be interesting, looking at their Olympics fiasco, not content with not having the numbers, many recruits didn’t speak or understand English.

Shouldn’t make jokes of this, this useless government is actually “negotiating” more contracts with their paymasters in the security field.

I do however agree with the tax comments…

One of the reasons why we pay high taxes of course is to help fund the Labour/EU MP’s expense accounts 😉

I take it duck houses, tennis courts, moats etc,etc are acceptable, sadly the fiddlers aren’t confined to any one or even a limited number of political factions.

The majority of politicians have never been as detached from reality as they are at the present time.