Recliner wrote:
Bruce wrote:

Recliner wrote:
Ah, the wonders of PPI schemes... Of course, initially the lack of
seating was justified by the higher frequency and shorter running
times that were planned to be introduced at the same time, thanks to
the new signalling system


Gordon Brown's PPI was always going to be a disaster. That much was
clearly apparent even before it started. Many have said Brown
insisted on it out of sheer spite to ensure that Ken Livingstone could
not gain political capital from the improvements to the Underground.

But after the PPI failed, there was still an opportunity to do
something about the seating. You have to wonder what all the people
are doing whose non-jobs were preserved after the PFI fell apart. They
are employed expensively by Transport for London to do what appears to
be f*** all.

I wonder if Bombardier was entitled to some draconian penalty if the
spec was changed in any way? After all, once Metronet had collapsed,
Bombardier had no reason to play ball.


I would not be surprised. Judging by the horror stories from PFI
schemes in the NHS, with even slight alterations costing an order of
magnitude more than they reasonably should, I bet Bombardier have
Transport for London over a barrel.

But the specification for the seating layout must have come from TfL
in the first place, which is why I have no sympathy for them. When
the PFI went tits up, they had the chance to re-shape the contracts so
they more closely resembled those used for conventional methods of
procurement.

But TfL didn't do that. Instead, TfL took over the PFI contractor and
had two separate bodies of management, one in TfL and one in the PFI
contractor, who was by then owned by TfL. The amount of duplication
is near total, so around half of the people are doing non-jobs.

No doubt a lot of hot air is being produced, emails are being
exchanged and paper is flying about everywhere as the people in these
non-jobs try in vain to appear as though they are doing something
useful. But if Facebook was banned, they would probably find
themselves with nothing to do.