Saturday, April 25, 2009
The hand of government
Not impressed the other day to read of the case of a middle aged lady with a confused mother. It seems that the powers that be found it necessary to confiscate the confused mother from the home of the middle aged lady, a process which required the presence of 4 people from social services, 4 police officers and one of those contraptions for bashing down the doors of drug barons just in case. No doubt numerous vehicles, marked and unmarked. I dare it also needed to be done during anti-social hours so that all 8 of them could claim double time. According to the DT, this all came about because the social services did not think that the adaptions that the middle aged lady had made to her home resulted in an environment suitable for the confused mother. Now I dare say that there is rather more to it than this, but even supposing that confiscation was justified, was it really necessary to bring in such a heavy gang in the first instance? Would 2 social workers not have been a better opening gambit, with the threat of more if the middle aged lady proved difficult? Then escalate the presence if it proves necessary.
According to someone at TB, the fire brigade are quite keen on knocking doors down too. If you call them out, it is mandatory that they bash your door down with those evil looking axes that they use, whatever the nature, state or location of whatever it is that you have called them out for. But I think that factlet is well sub-DT, although not going to experiment with my own front door.
But another brush with government was more benign. Was moved to become a member of the government gateway, on behalf of the pension of the BH, partly because of having known people who were involved in its construction. Initially a little put off by the elaborate registration and signing on procedures, but found the pension forecast service to be well designed with nicely designed screens. I guess the people responsible for putting the gateway together must be a little disappointed that this splendid bit of software engineering has not managed to persuade many government services to put their services under their umbrella. A rather small ratbag (a word on which my OED offers no information. Rat has all kinds of odd meanings, only very vaguely to do with four legged vermin, for example it was the name of the wheel on which criminals used to be broken, and is part of all kinds of compounds, but no bags). So, for example, I can tune into the rent and repairs website for Lambeth or get into DEFRA's seed certificate game.
Not so impressed with the congestion charge website though. Don't start off a big fan of this thing and I have posted before my belief that the principal beneficiary is the computer services company which built and operates the thing. Which is perhaps overdoing a bit. Poking around the TFL website I find that in 2005-6, congestion charge revenue was around £250m and its costs were around £150. Not a very efficient tax, compared with the HMCR variety, but it does show a profit.
But yesterday was driving around south and west central London, more or less skirting the congestion charge zone. But not altogether sure whether or not I had crossed the line at some point, so I thought I would try logging into the congestion charge web site and ask it. It did not seem unreasonable, since it would quite quickly issue me with a fine if I did not pay, that it should be able to tell me whether or not I needed to pay. A TB resident thought that it did not, which spurred me on to check. Went to the bother of registering my new car (which it knew all about) and so forth, and then find, that as far as I can see anyway, that it will let me pay congestion charges in 57 varieties and pay penalty charges in 1 variety. But nowhere does it say what, if anything, I owe. A reasonably basic oversight to my mind. This is not that big a computer system and I imagine, that had this been thought of at the outset, the added cost of providing this facility would have been very small. Probably far too late now.
Not so impressed with the three ponds in the back garden either. Still no lillies but all three appear to have caught duckweed, despite the fresh start. Did they come with the plants? Does Franklin carry the stuff around on his feet? Ask Mr G. and the first site I come across - http://www.geocities.com/rainforest/canopy/3631/ - seems to think that duckweed is an important resource which we should make more of. They already grow the stuff industrially in Louisiana. Another site (there are pots of them) explains that duckweed usually overwinters in the form of little critters called turions which sink to the bottom of the pond during the winter, then rise to conquer in the spring. Presumably this includes lurking in the bases of water plants sold by garden centres. Goldfish seems to be the simplest form of control; they love the stuff. Must get BH onto it.
According to someone at TB, the fire brigade are quite keen on knocking doors down too. If you call them out, it is mandatory that they bash your door down with those evil looking axes that they use, whatever the nature, state or location of whatever it is that you have called them out for. But I think that factlet is well sub-DT, although not going to experiment with my own front door.
But another brush with government was more benign. Was moved to become a member of the government gateway, on behalf of the pension of the BH, partly because of having known people who were involved in its construction. Initially a little put off by the elaborate registration and signing on procedures, but found the pension forecast service to be well designed with nicely designed screens. I guess the people responsible for putting the gateway together must be a little disappointed that this splendid bit of software engineering has not managed to persuade many government services to put their services under their umbrella. A rather small ratbag (a word on which my OED offers no information. Rat has all kinds of odd meanings, only very vaguely to do with four legged vermin, for example it was the name of the wheel on which criminals used to be broken, and is part of all kinds of compounds, but no bags). So, for example, I can tune into the rent and repairs website for Lambeth or get into DEFRA's seed certificate game.
Not so impressed with the congestion charge website though. Don't start off a big fan of this thing and I have posted before my belief that the principal beneficiary is the computer services company which built and operates the thing. Which is perhaps overdoing a bit. Poking around the TFL website I find that in 2005-6, congestion charge revenue was around £250m and its costs were around £150. Not a very efficient tax, compared with the HMCR variety, but it does show a profit.
But yesterday was driving around south and west central London, more or less skirting the congestion charge zone. But not altogether sure whether or not I had crossed the line at some point, so I thought I would try logging into the congestion charge web site and ask it. It did not seem unreasonable, since it would quite quickly issue me with a fine if I did not pay, that it should be able to tell me whether or not I needed to pay. A TB resident thought that it did not, which spurred me on to check. Went to the bother of registering my new car (which it knew all about) and so forth, and then find, that as far as I can see anyway, that it will let me pay congestion charges in 57 varieties and pay penalty charges in 1 variety. But nowhere does it say what, if anything, I owe. A reasonably basic oversight to my mind. This is not that big a computer system and I imagine, that had this been thought of at the outset, the added cost of providing this facility would have been very small. Probably far too late now.
Not so impressed with the three ponds in the back garden either. Still no lillies but all three appear to have caught duckweed, despite the fresh start. Did they come with the plants? Does Franklin carry the stuff around on his feet? Ask Mr G. and the first site I come across - http://www.geocities.com/rainforest/canopy/3631/ - seems to think that duckweed is an important resource which we should make more of. They already grow the stuff industrially in Louisiana. Another site (there are pots of them) explains that duckweed usually overwinters in the form of little critters called turions which sink to the bottom of the pond during the winter, then rise to conquer in the spring. Presumably this includes lurking in the bases of water plants sold by garden centres. Goldfish seems to be the simplest form of control; they love the stuff. Must get BH onto it.
# posted by Jim @ 4:38 AM 
