Head of Environment Agency - resign?

[bobh]

According to Wikipedia his appointment ends in july this year. If he lasts that long I can't see him being reappointed.

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Arbtalk mobile app

[difflock]

I near boked when I heard Lord Smiths plaintive reference to his 30 or 40 years of "Public Service".

Gee!

I did not realize he was working on a purely voluntary unpaid/unpensioned basis.

m

[csservices]

Government agencies are horrendously inefficient. What is needed is a few well paid ex private sector employees with real life/work experience to keep the costs in check and provide real value for money.

 

Two examples-

 

Public sector incompentence- Our local EA have a 13t digger which they use to clear trees fallen in the river. Great. What the morons don't have is a grab for it, so everything takes three times as long as needs to.

 

Private sector milking the public sector, allowed by incompetent/corrupt works allocators- We had some silt on the road from all the floods. A private company, clearly on 'emergency day rate' (despite it being a week after the silt was deposited) took over a week with men, traffic control, a dumper, grab lorry and, get this- a mini digger with a 24" bucket to clear the roads. Stop/go boards, a 3cx with a 4-in-1 bucket followed by a roadsweeper would have sorted it in a day. Serious piss taking.

 

The country is rotten.

 

Heard from a guy who worked for British Waterways a few years back that when he first went to work for them on grass cutting etc, they gave him a tractor and hedge cutter and an address for the job, job was 100m of bank to cut, left yard at 8.30 was there and done by 9.30 rang his boss to see where the next job was to be told that was his days work and to go find somewhere to park up out of site and not go back to the yard til 4.30 because if the higher up men in the chain found out they would get thier budget cut!

[Lee Winger]

Sack the wanker and hire a Dutch man

[NFG]

Sack the wanker and hire a Dutch man

 

+1

 

Strange how the national news now focusses on London now the Thames is flooding, clearly this is causing a lot of grief for people but Somerset has been going on since Christmas

 

N

[TGB]

Thames valley has more money in general and probable more conservative voters. Somerset by comparison is sparely populated, so less voters to pump for votes.

[Inoff the Red]

I think it has more to do with the EA, like so many other public bodies, losing sight of their function and purpose.

The latest revelations about EA in todays newspapers are about the amount of money they spent on sponsoring a Gay Pride event and Gay Awareness merchandise for its staff……you couldn't make it up.

 

 

Lord Chris Smith spent £639 on gay rights mugs | Mail Online

 

 

 

Now I accept that the amount is peanuts in the overall scheme of things but like the huge amount spent on a bird sanctuary, the people supposedly leading the EA were getting involved in pet projects…..I think Smith's predecessor came from the RSPB (hence the spending of an obscene amount of money on a bird sanctuary).

Smith is gay and so instead of worrying about whether EA should be dredging, he was promoting gay rights.

[ArthurBottlesworth]

Thames valley has more money in general and probable more conservative voters. Somerset by comparison is sparely populated, so less voters to pump for votes.

 

The thames valley is constituency of defence minister

So military called in as soon as there was a problem ...

 

Is this what they call "joined up thinking?"

[NFG]

The thames valley is constituency of defence minister

So military called in as soon as there was a problem ...

 

Is this what they call "joined up thinking?"

 

Hi,

 

Indeed, there has been a complete lack of thinking, joined up or otherwise.

 

I know the levels & yes, one could say its silly to live on a flood plain, but the UK is very densely populated & building land astronomically expensive, its about 25 Euros a metre here, so a nice sized building plot is around £20K.

 

However, in this day and age, when one can land a man on the moon, it seems pathetic that the UK fails to adequately control flood water, particularly after the last 5 years.

 

N