Dangerous Liaisons

According to a highly qualified civil engineer that I know, the rumours that the planned rebuilding of Victoria Street are not due to subsidence caused by an excess of weight on the 4^th floor of Eland House. There had been a fear that the sharp shift to right combined with the increasing mass has caused some major structural damage to the area. It does appear the danger has been partly offset by massive production of recent hot air which has released some seismic pressure. Whilst my concerns have been abated by my engineering friend, I was subsequently frightened by another friend who is a cosmologist. She described the situation where a massive inert mass collapses in on itself sucking in everything, including light, evidence, decency and ethics. This is truly scary, perhaps when cuddly celebrity astrologer Russell Grant is freed up from his turn on Strictly Come Dancing he will care to comment upon the chances of this cosmological catastrophe – I don’t think we will have to wait long.

Obvious the big plans for knocking down and rebuilding a large part of Victoria Street will cause some problems for existing tenants. It does appear that one particular organisation does have some fairly well developed (but secret – so shh!) plans. After Westminster Council have managed to sack a large number of pen-pushing enemies of enterprise, the remainder are going to shack up with us lot in Eland House. Not exactly a case of sleeping with the enemy but more a dangerous incestuous liaison I think.

So what are the plans for the rebuilt Victoria Street? Not sure but we could do with a new Greggs, there is only so many times staff can be expected to dine at Nandos. Come on Uncle Eric see if you can pull your weight and get us a lovely new bakery serving sugary buns and sausage rolls.

Money For Nothing

Working in IT is not always a petabyte of laughs, although I do have some fond memories.  One is based on events approximately 4 years ago. During a particularly busy period , I was unable to shuffle out to Greggs for lunch and a colleague offered to get me my sausage roll and iced finger. Like many IT pros I am a music fan but don’t generally follow the stereotype. I asked my fellow geek if he would pick up my jazz mag from the newsagent on his way back to the office.

As we know IT geeks are famed for their practical jokes, but I could not contain my shock with what he returned with  for me –  a veggie pasty and custard slice!! How we laughed. .. but probably not as much as I will laugh to the response we will get to my latest FoI request.

Dear chums

I note with interest that Uncle Eric is not happy with those naughty recalcitrant councils who so far have not followed his unique localism agenda and published their service expenditure as he has rightly demanded. I hope that Uncle Eric will come down on those councils like a ton of bricks and crush them like creepy ants. Uncle Eric has stated that publishing service expenditure is an easy and low cost task – but is it?

Last week whilst lunching with my co-workers from the IT department, a little bird told me something of interest. Actually it wasn’t a little bird but a slightly dishevelled geek wearing a Metallica t-shirt with some social-skills development needs . As I know from my many years working in the IT department, and these pre-date your very short tenure, the IT department are often ignored, at best but usually simply derided.  I like to think of us as the bowels of the organisation. No one really wants to come near us, we deal with a lot of (ahem) important business but woe betide anyone who annoys us, because if we clam up we can cause you a whole lot of trouble.

Anyway, the whisper I heard is that for DCLG to make available its own service expenditure did not come cheap. The amendments to the finance ledger systems required external support from expensive contractors. So my request is:

Can you please provide the cost for work to make changes to the finance system to generate a reporting module that can produce monthly service spend over £500?

Whilst the contract for this may have been wrapped up in a wider set of requirements, an estimate based on number of contractor days and rounded to the nearest ten thousand pounds will suffice.

Yours hoping for a reboot

Derek 1.0