HS2

[corneliuslundie]

There was a time when a position in the Civil Service was a prized career, with an exam to take before one could get such a position. I assume that that must no longer be the case. Or have they dumbed down the exam as much as some degrees have been dumbed down?

Jonathan

[DK123GWR]

Anything with job security and decent pay is a prized career. Exams just filter for a particular thinking style, and that's influenced mostly by education. As in politics, going to a private school then Oxbridge, and meeting the right sorts of people along the way, matters far more than anything else when it comes to career opportunities at the top of the Civil Service. It always has. How much do you suppose the average Oxford Union officer knows about running a railway?

[jjb1970]

I don't know about now but last time I looked civil service roles used competency questions to screen applicants. I don't mean competent in the sense of competent to do the actual job, but the sort of soft skills competencies much loved by HR. They asked a series of questions along the lines of 'using not more than 500 words describe a time when you were nice to somebody in the workplace'. Over the years I've been encouraged to apply for several roles but each time when I looked at the application process I said 'stuff that' as to do it properly was probably going to consume my evenings for a week. And at the end of it my application was more likely to be binned than taken forward anyway even if I had been asked to apply by people in the hiring department.

 

Maybe that is a sign of the system working as some might argue if I'm so committed to the idea of a civil service career I don't see it as worth my effort to waste a few hours of my time on the application then I'm not a suitable candidate. Other might argue that when there are better paid alternatives out there with potentially better development pathways why would anyone mess about jumping through hoops to join the civil service? I guess that one is entirely a matter of opinion. I don't deny the importance of soft skills, but it's part of the job of the interview panel to get a feel for an applicants character and the purpose of a probationary period to provide an exit route if it goes wrong. In my experience competency based processes don't seem to have any success in identifying people with the right soft skills (or if they do, the civil service very quickly beats those skills out of people).

 

I genuinely wish the problem was incompetent (in the sense of being incompetent to perform their duties) civil servants, for the simple reason that if it was then we could start to solve the problem with a mass firing campaign to get rid of the idiots. Unfortunately my experience has been that it is not incompetent people but a dysfunctional system. Now DfT is slightly different (I do question that department) but my experience working with the MoD and MCA (Coastguard) is the people were generally very capable and under slightly different circumstances would have been excellent. Some of the MoD guys in Bristol are borderline genius and really do know their stuff but they are confined by a system which demands conformity, strangles initiative and actively promotes kicking difficult and awkward decisions down the road. You could put them in a different environment and they'd be outstanding, equally you could drop a superstar into the civil service and they'd very quickly conform to the civil service culture.

 

Even the most prosaic things seem dysfunctional. In the early 00's I was on a ship in Egypt and we had a crew member who was seriously ill. The master called the British embassy for advice on a good doctor or hospital given that in Egypt not all hospitals are equal and the ships agent was just as likely to use one he had an arrangement with (sorry for the seeming prejudice, but unfortunately at that time at least it wasn't prejudice but experience). The British embassy basically told him to stop wating their time and look in a phone directory. Being a Danish company he decided to try the Danes, they sent a car and took the crewman to the hospital they used in Alexandria if anyone needed medical attention.

[Bernard Lamb]

Regarding the previous post and comments on the people in the MoD.

I worked with a chap for many years who was an MoD official and on top of his job. I had an insight as to how things were done.

Put it this way. Without him the Falkland's war could have had a very different outcome.

We would no doubt have won, but it would have taken much longer with far more casualties.

Moving mountains would be an understatement. he banged a few heads together, with no authority to do so and things just happened. In the circumstances the rule book was torn up. He knew that nobody dare object.

To some extent it depends on the minister. I have had dealings with a few and some have been brilliant and have allowed their staff a lot of leeway. Others have been ars...... and their staff have reacted accordingly.

Bernard

[corneliuslundie]

Sorry if i have said this before

It is worth reading the biography of Woolton during the Second World War. He was not from the government establishment, but a businessman. He was appointed Minister of Food, and basically also tore up the rule book and just did what needed doing (including at one stage buying food on the black marker in Egypt). But the country and the forces got fed. At first his civil servants hated him but he won them over. And was it Beaverbrook who was also an excellent minister at that time?

I fear that these days if the head of any organisation, public or private, is poor you will not get good people under him/her because he/she will not want any competition/challenge. That leads to a downward spiral. And it is not just in government. How often have we seen someone leave a senior position in industry or commerce for another senior position only to leave chaos behind them, though apparently they were doing an excellent job (by their reckoning presumably).

But I have no solution.

Are we seeing the equivalent of the decline of the Roman empire?

Jonathan

 

[woodenhead]

On 19/04/2023 at 08:43, Edwin_m said:

And presumably then they then sit for a couple of years doing nothing, in a confined and possibly damp environment.  And are expected to work perfectly thereafter, without any possibility of pulling them out for maintenance.  

Maybe they could keep them spinning, you know slowly and so they don't get stuck perhaps inch them along a few feet (a day) and then leave some concrete lining so the soil doesn't fall onto them. 😁

 

In other news, when I arrived into Euston yesterday there was plenty of activity still going on at the site - pile driving, cranes lifting stuff, people working on the bracing for the side walls of the existing Euston approaches, a whole army of orange doing various stuff. 

 

The other side to this is that Euston is on reduced capacity because of the work, delaying it two years adds to the impact of that reduced capacity as it was meant to be replaced with the added capacity of a HS2 station.  There seem to be a lot of people working within the existing station boundaries and of course outside are all the blocked off roads, walking routes and general mayhem of a massive building site that will be there at least 2 more years than planned.

[Foulounoux]

Some idea of how the civil service has developed

 

Working at the MOD purchasing organisation I found that one of the vacant positions I was covering was vacant due to the incumbent being promoted

 

The pass mark for the exam was 20%

 

More about him later.....

 

3 of us as contractors were covering 13 vacancies

Historically the section had never been below 2000 order lines overdue

We started with over 2500 overdue

Within weeks the 3 of us identified some of the issues and by the time I left the overdue lines were below 1500

 

The exit interview was interesting with the admiral who was in charge asking how we did it

One of the permanent junior civil servant replied well they work all the time....

 

And thats without the potential fraud scenario I uncovered,. The response when I questioned the CS involved was why are you worried it's just government money..... He literally had no idea that taxes pay for spending 

 

There were some genuine hardworking civil servants in the team but the culture was do as little as possible so they struggled to achieve

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bernard Lamb]

1 hour ago, Foulounoux said:

 

One of the permanent junior civil servant replied well they work all the time....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh so very true, in some quarters.

At one time there was a chap at work who was the MoD contact.

There was a company joke that he was the only person who had a monthly expenses claim that was more than his salary.

Mod work was a spratt to catch a mackerel. Once you were seen as a main contractor you picked up the overseas orders at much highher margins.

Bernard

[Davexoc]

A few shots at the site Calvert station showing the old GCR alignment, and the PFW station.

 

 

 

And the new EWR bridge over HS2 in the northerly direction.

 

[Ron Ron Ron]

.

Burton Green - cut & cover (so called "Green Tunnel"),  looking north from the old bridge..............

 

 

 

 

 

Looking south of the old bridge........

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[jamie92208]

2 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

.

Burton Green - cut & cover (so called "Green Tunnel"),  looking north from the old bridge..............

 

 

 

 

 

Looking south of the old bridge........

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

Thanks for that. Having watched one of the videos from that area. The tunneis hoi g the dug out after it's built. Those parallel lines and rectangles are the walls and centre roofolsupports for the roof slab. 

 

Jamie

[Ron Ron Ron]

An aerial view of the Chilterns.

From the north portal of the Chilterns tunnels, at the bottom of the photo, towards Wendover and Aylesbury.

 

 

 

 

[adb968008]

4 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

An aerial view of the Chilterns.

From the north portal of the Chilterns tunnels, at the bottom of the photo, towards Wendover and Aylesbury.

 

 

 

 

Environmentalists would have a fit and seize on the PR oppourtunities of that.

[Compound2632]

11 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

Environmentalists would have a fit and seize on the PR oppourtunities of that.

 

The intelligent environmentalist* will understand the long-term environmental benefits of increased rail capacity, whilst also wanting to see short-term environmental damage minimised.

 

*That is to say, most environmentalists, since it requires some intelligence to see the necessity for an environmentalist stance. Don't be bamboozled by the hyperbole both of some who declare themselves environmentalists and of some, less intelligent, who persist in a knee-jerk counter-reaction.

[adb968008]

Environmentalism is a great way to earn money.

 

You have extremists who do the pre-sales, hype and hysteria, often the great unwashed volunteers who dont realise they are being played.

 

Then the commercial, who come up with pacifying solutions, and break deals that can produce considerable revenues.

 

That picture is a pre-sales gift, to the point I could even sell it.

.

 

[Pacific231G]

On 17/04/2023 at 09:55, corneliuslundie said:

"Donations, I should think. Chiefly of labour and time."

Yes, the labour and time of slaves.

So who is volunteering to be buried at OOC?

Jonathan

The army of workers/slaves idea seems to have been knocked on the head for both the pyramids and Stonehenge. It was Herodotus in about 500 BCE who claimed that a hundred thousand slaves built the pyramids (in the sort of scenes depicted by Cecil B deMille etc) but he was wriitng a couple of thousand years after the event and it's now estimated that only around 10 000 people took about 20-30 years to build each pyramid but they were honoured workers (they were buried with grave goods) and  probably the grunt work was done by peasant farmers working for pay or rations during the off-season for agriculture with a smaller number of specialist craftspeople doing the skilled work. 

This is what English Heritage says about Stonehenge

Stonehenge is a masterpiece of engineering, built using only simple tools and technologies, before the arrival of metals and the invention of the wheel. Building the stone circle would have needed hundreds of people to transport, shape and erect the stones. These builders would have required others to provide them with food, to look after their children and to supply equipment including hammerstones, ropes, antler picks and timber. The whole project would have needed careful planning and organisation.

However, an experiment by UCL's Institute of Archaeology suggests that it would only have taken about twenty people to move each of the large stones from the nearby Marlborough Hills and it was only the smaller blue stones that were brought, possibly from an earlier stone circle, from Wales. So, if the building was carried out over a long period the actual number of people who carried it out may have been relatively small and drawn from local communites possibly as a devotional act (as may the pyramids)  .

 

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

So, if the building was carried out over a long period the actual number of people who carried it out may have been relatively small and drawn from local communites possibly as a devotional act

 

Compare, for example, the medieval cathedrals.

[melmerby]

3 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

So, if the building was carried out over a long period the actual number of people who carried it out may have been relatively small and drawn from local communites possibly as a devotional act (as may the pyramids)  .

It's a fact that the pyramids were built by ordinary workers (not slaves) mainly during the inundation, when they couldn't farm.

They were well looked after with ample provisions and medical facilities, in purpose built work accommodation.

[martin_wynne]

23 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

Stonehenge is a masterpiece of engineering, built using only simple tools and technologies, before the arrival of metals and the invention of the wheel.

 

To do all that without inventing the wheel strikes me as pretty dim-witted. The very first thing you are likely to need is a wheelbarrow. Did they at least use log rollers under the stones?

 

Martin.

[woodenhead]

23 minutes ago, melmerby said:

It's a fact that the pyramids were built by ordinary workers (not slaves) mainly during the inundation, when they couldn't farm.

They were well looked after with ample provisions and medical facilities, in purpose built work accommodation.

So not aliens then 🤫

[Pacific231G]

22 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Compare, for example, the medieval cathedrals.

The actual building of medieval cathedrals didn't take as long as most people think- a  matter of decades, perhaps fifty years (Chartres Cathedral was built in thirty years). There would be between 50 and 100 skilled craftspeople and it looks like the total workforce on site at any one time was in the low humndreds rather than thousands The reason why so many were built over centuries was because of the need to fund them- a bit like HS2 really!

[Pacific231G]

1 hour ago, martin_wynne said:

 

To do all that without inventing the wheel strikes me as pretty dim-witted. The very first thing you are likely to need is a wheelbarrow. Did they at least use log rollers under the stones?

 

Martin.

Probably not as stones that heavy would apparently have crushed the logs and you'd surely need a very flat road to run them on. Like most great inventions the wheel is very obvious AFTER it's been invented but there is nothnig like it in nature. The South Americans had very sophisticated civilisations but they never invented the wheel.*

Current thinking seems to be that bith the stonehenge and pyramid builders used wooden sledges though there are other credible theories. I  believe that in the Scottish Isles, experimental archaeologists did try using log rollers without success but someone had heard of locals laying seaweed in the path of a stone. They tried that and it was remarkably successful;  the friction was so low that it required very little effort to drag a heavy stone over the seaweed. Presumably one could use other inland plants the same way.

Neolitihc humans didn't have our technology but they certainly weren't dim-witted. Their brains were probably as good as ours at problem solving.

To see what one person used to handling heavy blocks can do in turns of moving and raising stones (without wheels) it's worh watching this.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K7q20VzwVs&ab_channel=giorkos3

 

However, to get the northern section of HS2 ever built we probably will have to rely on aliens. 

 

*Update. Apparently the wheel was invented in Mesopotamia  as a potter's wheel about 5 500 years ago but someone then had to have the bright idea of putting two them on an axle. The wheel was developed in the Americas (presumably for potters too) but, without any draft animals, wheeled vehicles were not. I don't know about windmills - the other major historic development from the wheel.

Edited April 25, 2023 by Pacific231G

[jamie92208]

TBM Lydia, driving the Logistics tunnel is ow reporting progress. By the 21st April it had gone 9 metres out of 853

 

 

Jamie

[Ron Ron Ron]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

So not aliens then 🤫

 

Well, actually yes!

The other stuff is just a cover story, put out my our overlords.

 

 

.

[Northmoor]

5 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Environmentalists would have a fit and seize on the PR opportunities of that.

Unfortunately a lot of objectors believe that is what HS2 will look like in 100 years time, rather than like the line running up the LHS of the image.