Then along Horton Lane to find plenty of flail action along the hedgerows, action which has left its usual, rather ugly mess.
I associated to the trees of Sheffield being taken down by their PFI roads contractor. In the present case, I imagined the council going along to their contractor to be told something along the lines: 'You didn't say anything about doing it nicely when you let the contract. And you don't seem to understand how much it would cost to do nice with the sort of people that we employ to do this sort of work. We might be able to do something for another £500,000 a year...'. Which, of course, the council has not got.
I associate further to IT contracts, where the main contract might well be let at a loss by a contractor keen to get the work, who would then get his money back in spades from all the change notices which would be issued through the life of the contract. Things which had not been thought of. Mistakes. The world changing. It all adds up, but the increments, taken one at a time, are not too hard to swallow.
Which all goes to show that getting someone else to do the work (aka privatisation) does not save us as much money as the Tories would have us believe. Not least because it greatly reduces one's ability to flex with changing circumstances. Not least because that is the whole point: let's pass a few fat contracts to our friends at the Bullingdon Club. Or wherever.
PS: the post having just been delivered, I can offer a footnote on the wonders of contracting out. Two theatre tickets for a show in Whitehall, bought from London Theatre Direct, have arrived from the Czech Republic. What on earth is going on? Is there some enormous ticketing operation serving the whole of Europe and beyond working out of some shed in Prague old town (aka Krocinova 3)? Have I been scammed? Perhaps it is appropriate that the theatre in question used to be the home of the famous Whitehall farces.
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