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Defence Cuts
Topic Started: Oct 20 2010, 08:32 AM (3,659 Views)
Naebody
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Twat
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(As an aside, if you really want to look for places to cut government waste, a good place to start would be the Interception Modernisation Programme, which plans to perch on your shoulder when you're on Gmail or Facebook at a cost of up to £2bn. If you don't fancy that idea, there's one of those largely pointless web petition thingmies here.)
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Naebody
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Twat
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Conan the Destroyer
Oct 26 2010, 01:27 PM
Strictly speaking it was "them" that voted for it, but that's for another day.

Strictly speaking, it was us. If you want to see any particular subdivision of us as them, that's your choice, but the constitution doesn't. K? K.
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findus
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Jerry Kerr
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Naebody
Oct 26 2010, 09:28 PM
(As an aside, if you really want to look for places to cut government waste, a good place to start would be the Interception Modernisation Programme, which plans to perch on your shoulder when you're on Gmail or Facebook at a cost of up to £2bn. If you don't fancy that idea, there's one of those largely pointless web petition thingmies here.)

I envisage a future when VPNs and next-gen home privacy tools are either ubiquitous among the tech-savvy, or are banned.
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whatsthatonyourback
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Waldo Jeffers
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Alpha
Oct 25 2010, 07:01 PM
The program looked at how the MoD purchases it equipment. One example it cited was where the MoD had purchased body armour for troops were the material designed to keep the wearer cool was inside out. Yet the SAS had the ability to go to a local military hardware shop and purchase over the counter equipment that was better quality and cheaper than the stuff the MoD had on general order.

This could well have been an example of "waste" being avoided. Large companies usually sign contracts with major suppliers at preferential rates to "leverage" (hate that word, except when I'm trying to move a boulder) the size of their company. In my experience, this allows someone in Supply Chain to say - we bought 1 million thingies last year from the same supplier, and were able to negotiate 10% discount when we promised to buy all our thingies from them in future. The problem is that every factory or branch could usually source a thingy for less.

This can make sense for industrial parts or computers, where using the same thing all over your company makes maintenance and replacement easier, but for anything less regular such as office furniture, travel, hotels etc, it limits the choice to no particular benefit.

As an example, I used to travel a lot for work, taking four or five people with me (costumier, makeup, personal trainer, cigar roller, all the essentials for a good bit of traveling) and would arrange and pay for all their travel too. So, six folk going business class to Australia for three weeks is going to be expensive however you do it, but the company brought in a series of edicts where I had to book through Amex travel, only use certain hotel chains, a single car hire company, etc.

The price doing it the corporate-approved way would be eye-poppingly expensive. In one instance, flights to Oz were £7k, when a quick call to Trailfinders could get the same flights for £2.5k. That wasn't standard process of course, so you had to get several quotes, get them signed by the DoF and then forward to Regional Supply Chain Management for approval. To save over £20k for the sake of elementary shopping around that took 10 mins, followed by several days delay waiting for quotes and sign-off from various people. The temptation to go "the hell with it, it's not my money, £7k per flight it is" became stronger the nearer to departure dates we got and we still couldn't confirm our flights.

And six months later, non-standard travel arrangements like ours got audited, and we all had to dig out receipts and itineraries and price comparisons to prove we weren't taking the piss. And all the time I had booked as "arranging travel" would be clearly identifiable "waste" where someone could easily come back and say "why didn't you use the approved travel agent and save this wasted time?"

Some people always accepted the first quote from Amex travel to avoid all the hassle of getting it substantially cheaper, and I could totally understand that.
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Conan the Destroyer
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Naebody
Oct 26 2010, 01:35 PM
Conan the Destroyer
Oct 26 2010, 01:27 PM
Strictly speaking it was "them" that voted for it, but that's for another day.

Strictly speaking, it was us. If you want to see any particular subdivision of us as them, that's your choice, but the constitution doesn't. K? K.

What constitution?
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Skeletor
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I always find it baffling that every one of these political threads invariably lead to someone saying words to the effect of "That's just the way it is."
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Alpha
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Craig Brewster
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findus
Oct 26 2010, 02:06 PM
Naebody
Oct 26 2010, 09:28 PM
(As an aside, if you really want to look for places to cut government waste, a good place to start would be the Interception Modernisation Programme, which plans to perch on your shoulder when you're on Gmail or Facebook at a cost of up to £2bn. If you don't fancy that idea, there's one of those largely pointless web petition thingmies here.)

I envisage a future when VPNs and next-gen home privacy tools are either ubiquitous among the tech-savvy, or are banned.

Data encryption tools are effectively banned in that if you do not tell the police your password when asked its off to pokey for you.

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Naebody
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Twat
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Conan the Destroyer
Oct 26 2010, 03:33 PM
What constitution?

You're kidding, right?

Quote:
 
I always find it baffling that every one of these political threads invariably lead to someone saying words to the effect of "That's just the way it is."


Who has said words to that effect? Me?

No I didn't. I said that "waste" is an inevitable consequence of any organisation doing anything. Observing this was not equal to throwing my hands up and saying que sera sera. It was an attempt to suggest that "cutting waste" is nothing more than a mob-friendly way to say "cutting investment", because that's all it ever means.

There may well be a culture of waste in government departments, but how exactly does cutting their budgets address this? It's like treating cancer with starvation: you don't end up with a lean patient, you get a patient who's cancerous, emaciated and probably dead.
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findus
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Jerry Kerr
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Alpha
Oct 27 2010, 01:13 AM
findus
Oct 26 2010, 02:06 PM
Naebody
Oct 26 2010, 09:28 PM
(As an aside, if you really want to look for places to cut government waste, a good place to start would be the Interception Modernisation Programme, which plans to perch on your shoulder when you're on Gmail or Facebook at a cost of up to £2bn. If you don't fancy that idea, there's one of those largely pointless web petition thingmies here.)

I envisage a future when VPNs and next-gen home privacy tools are either ubiquitous among the tech-savvy, or are banned.

Data encryption tools are effectively banned in that if you do not tell the police your password when asked its off to pokey for you.

Though a VPN would encrypt data as it comes and goes, so there's no password as such to recover that sent and received data. Password for your computer/storage devices is another story, for sure, though I'm not convinced personal data has anything to do with the state either. That is, I'm not convinced that the state has any right (right as in ethically, not lawfully) to any of my data, whether on a computer or in my back pocket.
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Alpha
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Craig Brewster
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findus
Oct 26 2010, 05:52 PM
Alpha
Oct 27 2010, 01:13 AM
findus
Oct 26 2010, 02:06 PM
Naebody
Oct 26 2010, 09:28 PM
(As an aside, if you really want to look for places to cut government waste, a good place to start would be the Interception Modernisation Programme, which plans to perch on your shoulder when you're on Gmail or Facebook at a cost of up to £2bn. If you don't fancy that idea, there's one of those largely pointless web petition thingmies here.)

I envisage a future when VPNs and next-gen home privacy tools are either ubiquitous among the tech-savvy, or are banned.

Data encryption tools are effectively banned in that if you do not tell the police your password when asked its off to pokey for you.

Though a VPN would encrypt data as it comes and goes, so there's no password as such to recover that sent and received data. Password for your computer/storage devices is another story, for sure, though I'm not convinced personal data has anything to do with the state either. That is, I'm not convinced that the state has any right (right as in ethically, not lawfully) to any of my data, whether on a computer or in my back pocket.

No arguments from me there, I know it is slightly going off at a tangent, but I recently saw a report about P2P use I think it was related to these law companies that just fire off a bunch of letters hoping someone is dumb enough to cough up.

basically it showed a computer seeding a torrent and the IP address being tracked back to the University that was hosting the experiment. Turn on the VPN it then showed the machine as being in Holland ( if my memory serves me correctly ), and the machine in Holland does not store any records of IP`s that are connect / were connect to it.

So like you I see VPN becoming big in the near future.
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Naebody
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Twat
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So this is quite interesting. Barnet, the local council that's the Tory flagship for cutting waste and inefficiency, has managed to save £1.4m. Unfortunately, achieving that saving cost £1.5m.

http://t.co/NywePvs
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Skeletor
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Naebody
Oct 26 2010, 11:03 PM
So this is quite interesting. Barnet, the local council that's the Tory flagship for cutting waste and inefficiency, has managed to save £1.4m. Unfortunately, achieving that saving cost £1.5m.

http://t.co/NywePvs

"The council's funding shortfall is set to hit £15m next year, and the borough has tried to innovate through its "One Barnet" programme."


Looks like there's to be big cuts on hair to axe the deficit?
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Conan the Destroyer
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Naebody
Oct 26 2010, 05:20 PM
Conan the Destroyer
Oct 26 2010, 03:33 PM
What constitution?

You're kidding, right?

If you have to ask then it obviously didn't work.
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Setenza
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Naebody
Oct 27 2010, 12:03 AM
So this is quite interesting. Barnet, the local council that's the Tory flagship for cutting waste and inefficiency, has managed to save £1.4m. Unfortunately, achieving that saving cost £1.5m.

http://t.co/NywePvs

Quote:
 
This includes paying to develop a system of "life coaches" to persuade residents to reduce dependence on the state,


Well no wonder it didn't work. I'm just imaging then 'Oh go on, Go On. Oh go on. Go on'.
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