Put it where the monkey puts its nuts!

Those wonderful charitable, philanthropic people frequenting the palace of Westminster are misunderstood. They do a difficult job keeping tabs on the country and keeping everything hunky dory. You know, you don't have to worry about tax fiddles like  Starbucks and Amazon, and arranging cushy deals with Vodaphone. They will be keeping a weather eye on the bankers and their eye watering bonuses.

But there is only so far that one can go, before your local MP will run out of charity. So in a sop to stop you people worrying that they might well clear off and leave you in the lurch. The MP's have come up with a wizzard deal. A piddling little pay rise of a tad under £10,000 a year. Mp's basic salaries would increase from £65,738 to more than £75,000 in a move being considered by Commons officials.

MPs sit in Westminster for around 148 days a year, the equivalent of around 30 five-day weeks. The other 22 weeks are divided between holidays and party conferences. So that's pay amounting to £2500 for each five day week. Or a paltry£67.56 an hour for working a 37 hour week. Or alternatively £1.12 a minute. How do they make ends meet.

Why one senior figure said that "he feared MP's would be seen to be having  their ‘snouts in the trough and that voters may not like it." Correct - the electorate have never liked the idea of you with your snout in the trough.  

He also said "if you pay peanuts you get monkeys." Well thats it then the palace of westminster is full to the brim with monkeys - So just who is that lot, who are sat around in the tea room, busy gorging themselves on chocolate hobnobs and other expenses treats.

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), which is now in charge of MPs’ pay and expenses. dreamt up this little pay rise - just for those poor underpaid MP's who employ them to take care of their pay. Some officials believe a pay rise as high as 25 per cent – taking salaries to £82,172 – is needed to give MPs a much fairer deal. The prospect of a pay increase for MPs at a time when the government is encouraging austerity in the public sector makes you laugh. So much for this "We’re all in it together" campaign to encourage others to accept no increase or minimal rises of one per cent.

That man of the people and first class Speaker of the house - Mr John Bercow has already warned the Prime Minister not to block a big pay rise for MPs because he is independently wealthy. Mr Bercow said MPs resented party leaders blocking all increases in pay to ‘appease the public’ and urged them ‘not to feel the temptation to interfere’ with IPSA’s ruling. 

I can feel it in my water that another Gorbals Mick moment is coming. 

Mr Bercow said: "There is some historical resentment that party leaders who either had a higher salary by virtue of their office or who have had access to other sources of finance have been very quick to tell ordinary MPs what they should and shouldn't be paid. When you've got other means from whatever source, it’s quite easy to do that and I don’t think it’s clever or brave. When IPSA decides what the rise – no rise, or low rise, or high rise – should be, it should take effect immediately. The party leaders mustn't do what they've always done. The generals have always abandoned the troops and engaged in a Dutch auction to appease the public by saying, “Well of course, I won’t take a rise. I will tell my colleagues that they shouldn’t take a rise”.’

Mr Bercow previously said "MPs should earn as much as a GP or council boss, many of whom earn in excess of £100,000, as their job had comparable ‘breadth, scope and contact with the public."

A senior MP said: "We know we are going to see headlines of “snouts in the trough” but the issue of MPs’ low pay has to be resolved. We got into this mess 25 years ago because we were frightened of being criticised by the press and public for giving ourselves a proper pay rise. Instead, we were encouraged to claim more expenses under the counter. The expenses scandal ended all that and now we are left with a pitiful pay cheque. We are thousands of pounds a year worse off on a pay level that is a joke to any self-respecting London professional. Voters may not like it but if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Unless our pay goes up, the decline in the quality of people prepared to become MPs and Ministers will increase and the whole country will suffer."

The MP's could always walk away and go out and work for a living - after all - there are thousands of unfilled posts just waiting for someone of their caliber - isn't there?

Later...

Maintenance

In a perfect world all would be well, the rivers would run - the canals would have plenty of water, the silting up would be a thing of the past. Visitor moorings would be plentiful and lock gates would have no leaks. However, in the real world on the inland waterways, things are not idyllic.  Vince Moran wrote in Narrowboat World in "Condition of the waterways" about CaRT's corporate view and methods of counting, assessing the condition and then prioritising maintenance issues. I found this article gave some interesting insight and some idea of the methodology being used.

Click Here to Read!

Vince wrote about a scoring mechanism where the state of the waterways was classified in a range A to E. (where A is the best condition and E is where there is a very real risk that the asset is close to failure) Principal at risk assets were classified as numbering 10,000. Ten years ago 30% or 3000 of the assets were at real risk of failure. In ten years that number has fallen to 16% or 1600. The fact that the at "real risk" number has fallen is to be applauded. As Vince said, many of the at risk assets are ones that boaters are unaware of, simply because they are generally out of sight.

There is an old adage - out of sight out of mind!

Having 16% of your most important structures in the poorest condition is still not a good place to be. One has to presume that in the next few years the numbers in D and E will continue to fall. That the underfunded maintenance budget will remain the same in real terms, as the concerted effort to manage the "real risk" continues. However, a number of assets that have been in the A,B and C categories over the last 10 years and have developed faults and not been remedied will deteriorate even further and a number of them will migrate into the D and E grouping. 

You then get into a state where you will start to reach equilibrium and the the fall in numbers will taper off, and reverse. Its at this point where the methodology has to take into account a more proactive "stitch in time" rather than the current reactive maintenance. This will require a focus change and reducing the maintenance expenditure on the highest risk parts of the network. Widening the focal point to include C as well as D and E issues.

However, CaRT are never going to reach zero in the D or E category.

I think that what CaRT has achieved so far has some merit, but the more visible side of the maintenance backlog will still prevail and colour peoples expectations and perceptions. If you are underfunding the maintenance and you know you are underfunding the maintenance then what happens when it all goes wrong and someone ends up brown bread. Some may argue that a fall of 14% in the numbers of "at real risk" is not good enough over a ten year period. The argument might be instigated by a coroner, and settled by the courts. Now that the recent canal breaches have given the emergency fund a good kicking. What lies ahead and what will be cut to plug the funding gap so to speak.

If a lock gate is rusty, painting only the worst deep pitted rusty part and ignoring the other is not good maintenance. 

Later...

Nice work if you can get it!

A court judge in Stuttgart Germany has been asked to decide on a case of "honourable intention" in a situation where a man was hired by his neighbour to get his wife pregnant. Demetrius Soupolos and his former beauty queen wife Traute wanted a family. Demetrious however discovered that he was unable to father a child when the fertility hospital reported to him that he was unfortunately sterile. 

Beauty Queen Traute

Both Demetrius and Traute were disappointed at the news. Calming his wife, Demetrius came up with a cunning plan. Their neighbour Frank Maus was married and had two healthy good looking children. Demetrius asked Frank if he could help to get his wife pregnant and Frank agreed. Franks wife naturally had some serious misgivings about the whole venture and did not want Frank to take part.

Frank looked very much like Demetrius and so the pair decided to go ahead with the plan.  Frank was also paid around £2000 by way of encouragement. For the next six months, Frank would spend up to three nights a week trying to impregnate Traute. 

Frank tried desperately on at least 72 occasions to get Traute pregnant. Franks wife said that she was getting increasingly dubious about what was transpiring. Frank told her he was also getting to be quite desperate and he was only doing it for the money. He thought that his wife's concerns might be causing him stress which would interfere with his abilities. 

After six months, Demetrius was also somewhat disappointed and arranged for Frank to have a hospital check up which he duly did. The doctors announcement that Frank was also sterile which came as a shock to everyone, with the exception of Franks wife. Who then confessed that Frank was not the father of their two children. Believing herself that her husband Frank to be sterile. Franks wife had sought her own remedy to their situation.

So now Demetrious is sueing Frank for breach of contract in an effort to get his money back. But Frank is refusing to return the money because he did not guarantee conception would take place, only that he would give it a honest effort!

Well this urban legend has been doing the rounds since 2009. It's rather interesting to see how the story has been repeated and embroidered further. The latest version now adds:

Traute and Franks wife Ute eventually became close friends as each of them had a common bond that comes with the difficulties of trying to build a family with a husband who is sterile. Their friendship grew as their husbands one time friendship drifted further and further apart. In an effort to build bridges, Franks wife Ute decided to introduce her new found friend Traute (the once upon a time wife of Demetrius Soupolos) to the mystery person who had impregnated her. There was a relationship sparked between the pair and the outcome is that Traute and her new husband Wolf have started a family of their own. Traute, Wolf and Ute's children are now happy healthy siblings. 

As for the court case, that still remains to be settled.

Einstein is the answer.

Albert Einstein has the answer to the problems with CaRT.

Get some new thinking, in the Trust Management!

Tory swivel eyed loons

Is Feldman a swivel eyed loon?

The mystery Conservative has denied describing party activists as "swivel-eyed loons." The mystery Conservative said: "It's fine. There's really no problem. The MPs just have to do it because the associations tell them to, and the associations are all mad, swivel-eyed loons."

Cameron looks Back in Ongar!

Looking back, there was something of the African coup about yesterday's events. Leader on a foreign jaunt, troops mutiny while he's away, loyal generals go rogue, issues desperate late night promise to increase rebel pay, rebels tell him to get stuffed.