Miss a day out and this is what happens :)

Ouch ..... Missed a single update day and it seems that everything happens at once, so this could turn out to be quite a long one. I'll try to keep it as light as possible today     :)

Yet another pensions fiasco

It's always good to see success stories in the news, especially in these times of recession, and what better success story than the news that overpayments in pensions for some ex-NHS and Services personnel totalling £100 million or more will simply be written off. 

After all it's not the pensioners' fault that the government give out multi million pound contracts to companies that prove they are far from up to the task, it is also not their fault that the government departments are more interested in media hype than auditing their contractors properly. 

So of course the pensioners shouldn't be subject to bailiff action simply to paper over yet another financial fiasco ..... but neither should the tax payer have to foot the bill, as is clearly the case by the fact that the overpayments are simply been written off. Proper controls need to be put in place to ensure that if this sort of situation does arise, that it is the contractual responsibility of the company involved (in this case Xafinity Paymaster) to cover the losses, rather than being able to enjoy a totally risk free golden egg which ends up being completely underwritten by the tax payer.

Business as usual

Goldman Sachs, one of the banks that received aid to bail it out earlier on this year (£6.5 billion US government aid) has announced that its bonuses to staff this year will total around £4.3 billion. It is indeed good to see that they put the welfare of their staff as a high priority, but in the current economic climate it shows that they are also out of touch with the real world ..... what good are highly paid staff if the company they work for is making a loss and cannot cover the value of their bonuses out of its profits? Surely they cannot count on government aid every time they need a little extra pocket money?

Are we to lose one of our last bastions of Britain

Ok, so the Royal Mail are certainly not the company or service that they once were, but they are one of the last recognisably British services that we have left. But under plans unveiled yesterday (Unpopular plans I hasten to add), half of that service could soon belong to either Dutch firm TNT (most famous for losing millions of child benefit records) or German firm DHL.

Surely the government should have learned by now after farming out our power services, which resulted in Britain being used as a European piggy bank for the power companies, despite promises to the contrary. If they sell off half of Royal Mail, exactly the same thing will happen to the price of our postal services.

By all means let these companies set up competitive mail delivery systems, but lets keep Royal Mail as it is ..... hell, the competition might even spark some improvements within RM itself, and that could only be beneficial to the public and the service.

BBC in Trouble Again

Looks like the BBC have done it again, another phone in scandal where their allegedly precious viewers are being walked over in favour of getting the figures they think are deserved simply due to being the BBC.

After ripping off their viewers in such low profile programmes as Sport Relief, Comic Relief and Blue Peter, they now turn their attentions to Strictly Come Dancing ..... allowing all 3 contestants to advance to the final instead of one being voted off (which has quite rightly incensed many fans of the show, and prompted them to again shout the dreaded F word ..... Fix).

I must admit, however, that watching the news on this subject is often more interesting and enjoyable than the actual BBC schedule, and listening to Producers and the BBC top brass trying to worm their way out of it is almost as good as watching the comedic talents of Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin combined with a little Laurel and Hardy.

But on a more serious note, surely this form of phone in shambles is akin to fraud in the real world, and is something that would simply not be tolerated if it were done by anyone but an organisation of this sort. We are taxed on our televisions by way of the Licence Fee, the least we can expect from the BBC for this is that we get a decent service ..... including the elimination of this sort of con.

I mean, what's next? Game shows where only BBC employees can play?