MoD paid £22 for 65p light bulb.. [Archive]

GrahamO

4th Mar 2011, 08:11

They didn't pay £22 for a light bulb.

They paid £22 for;

- a 65p light bulb
- time for someone to come and replace it.
- a contribution towards the cost of running the light bulb replacers vehicle, pension, holiday pay, sick pay etc.
- time for someone to order another item to replace the one that was installed.
- a helpdesk service to take the call that asked for the bulb to be replaced.
- a computer system to keep a record of the request to ensure that it was not forgotten and that the work was carried out on time.
- time for people to attend a meeting every month to review and ensure all the bulbs replaced were completed on time.
- time for the contractors employees to attend the meeting with the MOD Contract manager.
- time for the bulb replacement operative to sit around awaiting a call as he has to be available to be able to repsond and replace abulb within an agreed time limit.

All of the above was always paid for before, the difference now is that the cost is visible.

The list is fairly endless....... replacing one light bulb is easy, but when you have a premises with 10,000 light bulbs which are actually needed for good reasons, its costs a little more given the failure rate of the bulbs and the effort to actually replace them.

rarelyathome

4th Mar 2011, 08:18

"Defence chiefs are also said to have paid £103 each for screws, believed to be on sale online for £2.60"

Ah BUT ... what is available online will be 'screws'.

DE&S will have paid all that extra for 'carbon steel, manually activated, fibre intrusive, material securing devices'. An extra £100.40 each - simples!!

dallas

4th Mar 2011, 08:23

GrahamO

If the storeman saw the price on his paperwork I doubt it included the cost of a bloke to replace it. In fact, it would probably take 2 blokes because of the working at height issue. You could probably add another couple of £100s to the 'repair' bill, but on the up side they would probably do lots at once :-)

thunderbird7

4th Mar 2011, 08:27

Brings to mind the waterproof/windproof matches in all the survival packs.

Oh, and paying extra to remove all the 'fitted as standard' am/fm radios from the Metros when they were bought... :ugh:

Phil_R

4th Mar 2011, 08:32

So does this boil down to "How many fighter pilots does it take to change a lightbulb?"

Sorry, sorry...

Grabbers

4th Mar 2011, 08:37

Graham O

Were/are you responsible for this sort of contract?

Cows getting bigger

4th Mar 2011, 08:40

It comes down to financial structure as well as governance. Stn Cdrs have a notional £xxx million budget but are so constrained on how much they can spend and which suppliers they must use. In reality they only have a few hundred thousand they can 'play' with. The option of sending an MT wagon down to Homebase on a Wednesday morning with the SWOs grandmother in tow (pensioner discount) isn't there. Another one that needs looking at is the whole Banner stationary thing - is it really more cost effective?

Stations should be given the cash and allowed to spend it against critical, defined output. Unfortunately, some eeejet who did a course, once, has probably decided to implement the TLMP. :ugh:

green granite

4th Mar 2011, 08:45

Why aren't they using low energy bulbs? :E

Cows getting bigger

4th Mar 2011, 08:48

Because there is probably a 25 year through life contract prescribing 100W bulbs. :) Vary the contract and there will be an associated cost.

billynospares

4th Mar 2011, 08:51

spekesoftly

4th Mar 2011, 08:54

The option of sending an MT wagon down to Homebase on a Wednesday morning with the SWOs grandmother in tow (pensioner discount) isn't there.

Correct, because Homebase don't do an OAP discount card! ;)

Wrathmonk

4th Mar 2011, 08:59

billy

I hope someone in MOD PR picks up on that and makes the Sun and Beeb squirm ....

Nothing like jumping on a bandwagon .... never happened in my day, we used to get our candles from corner shop etc.

bingofuel

4th Mar 2011, 09:00

Was the high cost of routine miscellaneous spares not explained by Tommy Lee Jones, in the film 'Men in Black'?

We have to pay for the secret stuff somehow............

Willard Whyte

4th Mar 2011, 09:03

Of concern is that they are referred to as 'lamp filaments' in Army inventories.

Whilst it may be technically correct it makes them sound like idiots, much like any pedant on an internet forum, for example.

orgASMic

4th Mar 2011, 09:25

Would they not be 'lamps, filament'?

:ok::ok:

Sgt.Slabber

4th Mar 2011, 09:27

Billy,

Is there not also the question of RAB - is RAB, or son-of-RAB still going? Can't have too many on the shelf otherwise there is an annual interest charge on the in-stock value. Thanks to JG "el gordo" Mad Mac MacBroooon for that one.

Then LEAN rears its ugly fizzog. £5600 quote for a small quantity of aircraft standard bonded washers because the maintainers have used their LEAN allowed stock on an Out Of Phase gearbox fault leaving none available for a Scheduled maintenance job, there are none in depot, manufacturer is single source in the US and only does a production run every two years. :ooh:

Then, of course, there are the infamous £65(?) VC10 squash balls... err, Valve,Float. :\

Well spotted on the DofQ :ok:

teeteringhead

4th Mar 2011, 10:06

It still used to be (when I last had to get involved) £17 to "provide and fit" a light bulb cos you couldn't do it yourself, not having acquired an NVQ Level 5 in ladder-climbing nor membership of the appropriate professional association. The Staish complained to higher authority ...... and never got promoted!;)

Still happens - CO's Inspection this week - lots of dead flies in flourescent light fittings:

2011 response: "We'll get someone to come and look at that to see what we can do"

1971 response: "Get those :mad: flies out NOW!!"

Jumping_Jack

4th Mar 2011, 10:08

Of course this doesn't just apply to spares. What about the IT barrel that ATLAS have us over? £1000 to move a PC from one 'tap' to another? Lets face it it isn't just the MOD either...all Gov't Depts get ripped off in similar measure. Not saying it's right by the way!!!

BEagle

4th Mar 2011, 10:27

Ah, but when real aerospace manufacturers start getting involved....:uhoh:

A user needs a laptop for a specific aviation purpose. He breaks it and needs a new one, but unfortunately the old type are no longer available.

So a COTS one is acquired at normal PC World prices. But because it's an 'aviation use' item, it has to have a new Part No., which requires a Service Bulletin.....and the cost of that is €10000. Which doesn't even include the cost of the laptop!

The light bulb voucher states 'Basic Price 22.51 per D of Q as at 18-JUN-10'. However, if it's really true that this means £22.51 per 100, then yes, it's a mistake......

Wasn't some MTO once given a speaking-to for revealing that MoD was paying something like 10x the going rate for replacement Mini alternators?

tocamak

4th Mar 2011, 10:27

Just on the BBC that said light bulbs are actually specialist filaments for a watchman radar. No idea what that might be (well I know what a radar is!) but never let the truth get in the way of a good story!

NutLoose

4th Mar 2011, 11:18

Better not mention the BAe Squash Balls then............. Any EX VC10 will know what I mean...

F3sRBest

4th Mar 2011, 11:23

sorry to shoot this whole thing down but i have just been to our stores with the number and it is actually £22 for the D of Q which is 100 so the light bulbs are 22p each so actually a good deal and just piss poor journalism http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/smilies/thumbs.gif

Oh please,please,please ring up the Sun and tell them!! :)

Wrathmonk

4th Mar 2011, 11:25

said light bulbs are actually specialist filaments for a watchman radar

Still doesn't resolve billynospares point on the quantity of "specialist filaments" you get for your money. Appreciate the MOD say they only buy 5 per annum ....

The Sun quotes 'an un-named soldier'....so how many bases have Army storemen and a Watchman radar. Should narrow the field down for the witch hunt to begin;) Or is this, again, a lazy journalist who can't tell the difference between an airman, soldier or a sailor!

tucumseh

4th Mar 2011, 11:26

Nothing will ever top the Active Dipping Sonar kit for C130.

Funny how it takes a light bulb to get both the Sun and Fox going. Neither would understand anything more complex......... Like the dipping in the hover capability of the C130.

NutLoose

4th Mar 2011, 11:43

Of course you could look at........

NHS spending and the role of the private sector - The British Medical Association (http://www.bma.org.uk/press_centre/pressnhswaste.jsp)

and

Hospitals run by HSBC pay £200 to fit wall socket - Times Online (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article4087496.ece)

but wait that was the Governments idea!!

Four of the hospitals in HSBC’s fund pay charges at rates far higher than those charged by normal tradesman.
- The Central Middlesex hospital in northwest London said that, on average, its contractor, Ecovert FM, charged £210 to install an electric socket.
- West Middlesex University hospital said it was typically charged £150 by Ecovert FM for the same task. An independent electrician located close to both hospitals in Harrow said a typical charge for replacing a socket was £40. The cost of installing a new one was £80.
- Royal Blackburn hospital said it was charged £198 by its contractor, Consort, to put in a datapoint – needed to plug a computer into an internal network. By contrast, West Middlesex University hospital said it was usually charged about £60 for the same service.
- West Middlesex University and Royal Barnet hospitals said they were normally charged about £100 to install a new lock – a third more expensive than local locksmiths.

then dont forget the

NHS continues to pay for PFI | Healthcare Network | Guardian Professional (http://www.guardian.co.uk/healthcare-network/2011/mar/02/pfi-nhs-private-finance-initiative-liverpool)

The repayments are usually significant for a trust. Leeds Teaching Hospitals pays around £3m a month under its PFI deal (http://www.smarthealthcare.com/leeds-teaching-hospitals-pfi-data-suppliers-17nov10) and last August the Department of Health said that NHS organisations will eventually pay more than £50bn for buildings worth just £11bn, (http://www.smarthealthcare.com/private-finance-initiative-nhs-pfi-repayment-13aug10) with maintenance charges adding a further £15bn.

puts a lightbulb into perspective doesn't it......

BOAC

4th Mar 2011, 12:22

Nutloose - these articles are without meaning without detail. IF 'installing' a socket involves cutting out for the socket, chasing cable into the wall, running cable to a circuit connection etc etc I suspect there are NO 'independent' electricians who will do it for "£80". If however it is a simple 'replace that socket' it is a rip off.

Sunday Times Journalists are known to seek a story rather than facts.

Sgt.Slabber

4th Mar 2011, 12:28

NutLoose

Better not mention the BAe Squash Balls then............. Any EX VC10 will know what I mean...

#21, above... OOPs!

Roadster280

4th Mar 2011, 12:32

It's been going on for years. About 15 years ago, we had a bit of a surprise in our workshop. Being a Signal Regiment, we used quite a few co-ax connectors. Common or Garden BNC connectors. Granted they were Mil Spec to Defstan whatever, but Amphenol sold these by the thousand to the MOD. A year or two before, the stores system started price marking the stores. The connectors were labelled at GBP 10.50 or so. Not terribly unreasonable, given they were Mil Spec. We were getting low, so we demanded another 20 or so.

When the new batch came in, they were price marked at over 50 pounds!! Same item, same packaging, same NSN, same DofQ. We raised it with the RLC head Norman (there is one of these per R SIGNALS regiment) and he just shrugged his shoulders.

Another one. On an RAF station, we Army types needed some nuts & bolts for our radio masts. We ordered 50 or so through RAF Supply. Back came the response "None of these have ever been ordered in the RAF, would require external contract to be let, suggest demand is excessive, demand cancelled". Yet had we ordered them through the Army system, we'd have got as many as we liked. The nuts & bolts were always falling off the masts or going rusty, no big deal at all to replace them. I wonder how many other items the RAF did actually let a contract for, that were available in the system?

Duncan D'Sorderlee

4th Mar 2011, 12:59

As there hasn't been much on any of the, many, Nimrod threads recently, can I point out that we spent £4bn of MRA4 bean tins? I'm fairly sure that we will have to pay out again for the beans!

Duncs:ok:

Grabbers

4th Mar 2011, 13:01

BBC Radio 5 live reporting the MoD admits to paying £22 for a single, standard 100 watt lightbulb. :D

Uncle Ginsters

4th Mar 2011, 13:32

Just take a look at the MoD CIS catalogue...then compare to PC World!

Average markup of 1000% :ugh::mad::ugh::mad:

GrahamO

4th Mar 2011, 15:11

@Grabbers

Were/are you responsible for this sort of contract?

Responsible for - No.

Experienced in winning - Yes.

Its always amazing how people bemoan the loss of the little chap who pops into the office to fix a few things for you, except when the bills for him get worked out, and you realise said little chap read the papers half the day and doesn't actually do very much.

I recall an particular system which had a MTTR (allegedly as it happens) of four hours - UK wide. And it was 24/7. Without going into the ins and outs, it was certainly an important system and while it could be debated as to whether 4hrs was the right number, thats what people quoted against, and were set up to deliver at a price.

Roll forward 18 months and everyone comments upon how good the service is, and how much better it was than before - except one 1* who moans like b***ery about the poor service. He demands an investigation into the alleged compliance, and a shed load of money is wasted proving that the MTTR is 4 hours or less every month. Several things come to light - his personal station MTTR is more like 8 hours as it takes 4 hours to drive there from the nearest place any sensible person is based, so although the entire system is MTTR he is at the tail end of the performance curve and is going to have to learn to live with it.

Another investigation is demanded as he insists that he was getting 4 hours before, and should be getting it now, as the Contractor is clearly doing it all wrong.

Support Command pony up all the stats for every repair carried out by Support over their four years in charge, and the MTTR calculated for the entire system and for his station. System is 8 hours and the station is more like 14 hours.

Contractor looks smug, Strike want to beat up Support and 1* looks like a d***.

MOD realise that they could have saved a fortune had they done the actual performance calculations and asked people to bid on this basis - but now decide not to do anything as the contract is past the half way point in its duration, and the costs of disbanding half the support people, would exceed the costs for the remaining years of the contract.

Contractor in effect continues to charge a lot of money for something MOD wanted, have been given, but never had actually achieved themselves, and could never have had any benefit from.

System goes out of service three years later, with enough unused spares to replace all unserviceable parts with new boards, never repairing anything and still have enough spares to run the system for a further decade.

Contractor is asked to remove the system for £1 and sells the spare parts for several millions to the NHS who had been unable to buy any spare parts as someone seemed to have bought all the production capacity in its last few years.

Was I responsible - No, but did I give the client what he asked for - Yes :ok:

Exnomad

4th Mar 2011, 15:29

I suspect this is a side effect of "just in time" systems, rather than holding a reasonable stock of consumables with users. JIT was supposed to save money by avoiding the cost of large stocks of spares, but taken to extremes is plain stupid
I suspect this cost a great deal more than £22. To raise a requisition enter it on a computer. Someone in stores to find it, pick up the item and send it out is where the costs occur

Gerontocrat

4th Mar 2011, 16:02

Would they not be 'lamps, filament'?

According to a Maltese storeman at Luqa in 1976, they were then "bulbs, light."

Sunfish

4th Mar 2011, 16:34

Dear oh dear! You poor fools! Some years ago I was a manager of a division of a company that did IT outsourcing, let me tell you how it works.....

1. Governments are afraid of (a) Staff numbers and (b) Public debt.

2. We find a department of government that has its own computers and support staff. We decide to target them. We do some research, then we tell the Sun. Headlines start appearing "Government spends billions on computer systems that don't work!", "Lazy public servants play computer games all day". You know the drill.

3. Our glossy brochures on outsourcing miraculously turn up. It doesn't take much for the Minister to realise that this problem will go away if he out sources it because the costs will be hidden in current expenditure overheads.

4. The Minister directs that a request for tender be written and issued. This takes at least a year, by which time the IT requirements have changed.

5. The IT industry responds with a quotation. This takes a year to write and often consists of Three volumes.

6. The tender Board evaluates and awards the tender after another year of deliberation.

7. We now have a contract to provide what the Department thought it wanted Three years ago. We hire the Departments best IT staff and fire the rest. The Minister is happy. The head count is down.

8. Now the fun really starts. Since we are a lying pack of weasels that would sell our own grandmothers, we compare what the Departments wants now with what was specified in the contract then. Needless to say, we find "discrepancies", always in our favour. Want an iPhone App? Sure! Must have! Twenty million. Need a new fax machine? We are your sole supplier, Three thousand quid.

9. Now the miracle happens, and this is very important..

About nine months into this contract, a keen accountant realises that we, the contractor, are lying rotten dirty thieving weasels who would sell their grandmothers He tells the press, and they ask us to confirm that we charged Twenty million for a Two bob iPhone App, and Three thousand for a Two hundred quid fax machine.........

So we say "Sure we did, but don't blame us, blame the Government for writing the contract and awarding it to us!

..And the media lambast the government, and the howling mob of taxpayers chase the Minister down the street.

Meanwhile us rich dirty rotten weasels are trying to leverage our Twenty million dollar iPhone application into a Thirty million dollar iPad application "upgrade".....

To put it another way, if you paid Twenty Two quid for a light bulb, somebody, somewhere wrote you out an invoice for Twenty Two quid and presented it to you with a straight face.

To put it yet another way, don't ever outsource anything that is not a bog standard item or service that there is already a thriving market for with multiple sources of supply.

Take office cleaning. Now try and price office cleaning with security cleared cleaners. My guess that the price would multiply by Ten. It is exactly the same as putting the word "Organic" or "Aviation" in front of the name of a simple household product. The price immediately doubles.

threeputt

4th Mar 2011, 16:36

Re post # 2.

Just got back from golf; I think you will find that the tapes and associated non-breakable boxes were actually costed at £48 each and not, only that, they were sourced from South America (Brazil If I remember correctly).

3P:ok:

Pontius Navigator

4th Mar 2011, 16:42

In fact, it would probably take 2 blokes because of the working at height issue. You could probably add another couple of £100s to the 'repair' bill, but on the up side they would probably do lots at once :-)

Nah, to replace the red light in the top of the tower - 70 feet - they could not use the vertical ladder - non-compliant, so a scafolding firm was brought in to erect a scafold access from the ground to the top of the tower.

£22, peanuts when you really set your mind to it.

Pontius Navigator

4th Mar 2011, 16:50

I can recall when - was it 'MOD PE'? was introduced (70's?) to 'maintain' buildings etc, ......

BOAC, a history lesson. MOD PE was Procurement Executive concerned with buying kit.

Now when I joined works was done by:

Works and Bricks - Air Ministry Works Directorative, they were replaced by
Bricks and Works - Ministry of Public Buildings and Works, who were in turn replaced by:
Destroyers of Everything - Department of the Environment, who were in turn replaced by:
Portakabins Stuck Anywhere - Public Services Agency, who were in turn replaced by:

wait for it:

Destroy Everything - DE - who employed:
Prime or Regional Prime Contractors. who were supposed to enable us to improve the estate and do away with Annularity of budgets - that didn't last longer than12 months.

When PSA lost the job they walked off site and took all the treasure maps with them. We then had DCRE RE Survey surveying and mapping the estate.

Jimlad1

4th Mar 2011, 16:52

ARRSE were looking at this in depth - turns out its for a light bulb which the MOD buys 4-5 per year, not your average light bulb.

More interestingly is the lack of MOD response to this - it usually comes out with very defensive lines setting out whats going on. Here there is nothing, no lines, no rebuttal, just silence. It feels like the first stage of a media set up - PR11 cuts anyone?

Pontius Navigator

4th Mar 2011, 16:59

If you really want profligate spending look at DII and its precursors.

Stations wired with fibres at £18 per metre only for it to be discarded a few years later.

DII/c wiring discarded in under a year.

DII/f really got the bug - DII/f=2 x QE CVs.

We needed a hole in a wall in the office - 5 inch breeze block. The cost was £120. I was told the cost was the agreed rate for a hole be it in the home counties of the Falklands.

Dii/f sucks and provides little more than email and Office. If you want anything else then it costs buckets to get it acredited.

Fareastdriver

4th Mar 2011, 18:16

draken55

4th Mar 2011, 18:56

Tuned into to BBC Radio 5 to-day half expecting lots of angry calls from the Public over this story. If anything the opposite was the case with many pointing out that Health & Safety or Maintainance Contracts stopped them as individuals from buying or changing light bulbs and pretty much anything else not in their job description. This all looks like what happens when you mix H&S legislation and a compensation culture:*

If it's was a PR11 stunt by MOD it may have served instead to show how much waste their now is in both Private and Public Sectors due to Government Legislation:ugh:

BEagle

4th Mar 2011, 18:57

There was a great howling and knashing of teeth is the USA about fifteen years ago. Some firm, either Lockheed or Boeing, were charging $100s for a hammer in an engine change kit. After that row standard overcharging came to a grinding halt.

As referenced in the movie Independence Day when the President is told the truth about Area 51*

PN, surely MPBW were always 'Ministry of Public Blunders and Wonders'?

DOE we called 'Doomwatch' after the contemporary 'environmental' TV programme.

PSA was 'Painting Stuff Again', because all their vehicles had to be repainted with the new name and logo!

As for all the people threatening our offices with pointless computer cabling, words fail me. In those days I found it easier to use my own laptop and a GSM connecting cable. The CIS-pigs had no idea that it was so easy (but pricey) to connect to the Internet back then......:hmm:

*which, of course, doesn't exist. Or does it.....

Tiger_mate

4th Mar 2011, 19:03

Todays BBC news concerned MoD £22 light bulbs that are actually 'worth' 65p.

In my own little world, I was booked into a hotel for a duty travel overnight stop next week. Booked via HRG the cost (B&B) is £70. I went online and could have got the same for £59 without even trying for MoD discount. All these companies involved in procurement, development, flight testing, research, hotel bookings, white fleet MT, etc etc are taking the MoD budget for a ride.

The BritMil Plc would have better spent their energy in finding savings from financial wastage rather then the Payroll IMHO. ....and a day away would be far better financed by Sqn GPC and Std Rates for subsistance; it would save a fortune.

proplover

4th Mar 2011, 19:05

DiiF is an MOD Clasic.

DiiC was fairly good and was rattling along well. The C contract runs out and to get "Best Value" the MOD go out to Tender for the F contract. The Main Contractor for C has a good relationship with the MOD and tells them that the Tender is not that well written and they, through the 5 years of C have detailed carefully what F will actually cost. C contractor is 1st out the door during the 'contract award' process!! The winner, EDS as was, cost on what the MOD Tender says - then some 8 weeks AFTER the contract is signed just as so many here will relate to, basically go- "Oh you want it done like that - we didnt cost for that" Result was that by the time they had "re-calculated" the costs it was significantly more than what the C contractor had priced! Best Value - my arse!! For example, I couldnt believe the number of people turning up at Pre-start meetings! For an equivalent job on C there would be 6\7 people covering design, PM, Site and MOD NOW we had 22 people turning up!!! Most had never worked on a Military site and some only had a vague knowledge of IT and how to install the cabling\kit.
I could write a book on the Life and Times of Dii - by my calculation F cost the MOD some 65% more per TAP than C - Best Value? I think not and as a taxpayer I couldnt believe how gullible certain people at the MOD were\still are.

Tiger_mate

4th Mar 2011, 19:30

gullible certain people at the MOD were\still are.

...or how many ex-servicemen are adept at abusing the military on behald of thier civilian employer.

endplay

4th Mar 2011, 20:20

DofQ can really catch you out. I ordered 100 tie wraps for servicing kits but failed to notice that the DofQ was 1000. As they were C class (and therefore nonreturnable) I had 100,000 of the buggers to dispose of.

earth-bound

4th Mar 2011, 20:50

In my own little world, I was booked into a hotel for a duty travel overnight stop next week. Booked via HRG the cost (B&B) is £70. I went online and could have got the same for £59 without even trying for MoD discount.

I work for a government department and a colleague had a very similar experience a couple of weeks ago; £110 for a London hotel when she could get it on line for about £80.

We were having our monthly "get it off your chest" pow wow and she raised it as an example of waste. What we were told was that we had paid the travel agency that we use for that booking the £110 - but at the end of the financial year we get proportion of the money we've spent with them refunded and depending on how high that total spend is it can be up to 50%.

Things are not always as simple as they seem !

Mandator

4th Mar 2011, 20:57

I remember something similar at Bruggen in the 70s. Someone wanted 100 strips of PSP and placed the requisite demand. Unfortunately, the DofQ was tons and no-one noticed. The problem was only discovered when a convoy of ten-ton trucks turned up at the hangar.

nivsy

4th Mar 2011, 21:08

Tiger_mate,

You may find that your internet offer for a hotel is fully paid for in advance and not refundable nor can be cancelled.

Booked through HRG you will find that the price reflects a booking that can be cancelled.

Should individuals book through the internet and pay in advance, then find meetings etc cancelled, I would suspect all would put in their claims anyhow meaning the public purse pays for meetings etc not even attended - press would have a field day!!

Naturally some bookings can be done which can be cancelled and everyone can do so up to the limits specified unde current regulations.

Nivsy

Tiger_mate

4th Mar 2011, 21:17

The cancellation terms on the HRG booking paperwork are exactly the same as available to anyone making a booking according the the hotel website. As i have to pay the bill before departure anyway the HRG input into the whole affair is nothing positive beyond adding 8% booking fee and the full cost to the MoD account at a time when subsidised accomodation is available.

The taxpayer part of me thinks the monopoly is very wrong.

NutLoose

4th Mar 2011, 21:53

Quote:
Originally Posted by dallas http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.pprune.org/military-aircrew/444596-mod-paid-22-65p-light-bulb-post6284237.html#post6284237)
In fact, it would probably take 2 blokes because of the working at height issue. You could probably add another couple of £100s to the 'repair' bill, but on the up side they would probably do lots at once :-)

Nah, to replace the red light in the top of the tower - 70 feet - they could not use the vertical ladder - non-compliant, so a scafolding firm was brought in to erect a scafold access from the ground to the top of the tower.

£22, peanuts when you really set your mind to it.

You are lucky, when they closed one of the power stations next to EGNX Powergen turned off all the nav lights on top of the cooling chimneys, when it was raised with them, they pointed out the station was now closed, when the little fact that the Chimneys and all the buildings were still standing they had an oops moment and turned them all back on..

Little Birdie told me ages ago, so cannot verify, but the rumour was 2 jags Prescotts cars that he used were actually supplied by a company in Nottingham, so every time he needed a car to drive a couple of hundred yards across London, they had to travel from Notts to London, move him, then travel back to Notts!!!!!!!!!!

That is where our taxes go!!!!!!!

polecat2

4th Mar 2011, 22:11

Seem to remember that in my day MPBW stood for Make the Poor B*st*rds Wait. :)

Polecat

Willard Whyte

4th Mar 2011, 22:17

stiknruda

4th Mar 2011, 22:24

I left a long time ago - so forgive any inaccuracy!

We'd just taken delivery of the Tornado. It became quickly apparent that there were no steps to plug into the cockpit coaming to allow ingress/egress at Stations not equipped to handle the a/c. And being a new type it was welcome everywhere!

Allegedly a requirement was sent to BAE - after churning it through the 'pooter a quote for £57 000 per stair set was submitted. It reached us at TTTE.

The unofficial TTTE response was that a fleet of Rolls-Royce be purchased. one parked at every aerodrome and the intrepid Tornado duo deplane via the roof of the R-R, as in those days the top of the range Roller went for less than £50k.

Phileas Fogg

4th Mar 2011, 22:30

Low energy light bulbs are 10p each in a leading UK supermarket however, were it to be true, £22 for something that enters service at 65p is a pretty good deal compared to spending £8 billion on something that never enters service at a cost of minus 200 million!

Willard Whyte

4th Mar 2011, 22:50

stik, such is the way of things that these days £50K would have one stepping on to the roof of a Jaguar XF. A V8, naturally, but merely a Jag nonetheless.

Pontius Navigator

5th Mar 2011, 07:40

No offence, but that smells like bull****

I've never cancelled accommodation outside of 24 hrs prior to arrival and incurred any charge whatsoever. If MoD cops it it is THEY who are ****ing up.

WW, as I said elsewhere, there were 3 prices for an hotel we stayed at in Guernsey last year:

1. Pay all up front - £277.
2. Pay 10% deposit - £28.70 - pay balance £258.30 on departure
3. Pay whole bill on departure - £327.

The no penalties charge therefore had an 'insurance' element of £40. bviously if you cancelled then option 3 was cheapest.

Pontius Navigator

5th Mar 2011, 07:43

stik, such is the way of things that these days £50K would have one stepping on to the roof of a Jaguar XF. A V8, naturally, but merely a Jag nonetheless.

WW, you forgot defence inflation. What is £50k now 30 years later? Probably pay for two Roller at each station too. Since there are so few stations make that 4.

Gulfstreamaviator

5th Mar 2011, 07:48

Why not buy a few, pop some bubble wrap on end that might touch aircraft, and invest the balance of the budget in Euro Lottery.

just a thought.

glf

4mastacker

5th Mar 2011, 15:10

endplay wrote:

DofQ can really catch you out. I ordered 100 tie wraps for servicing kits but failed to notice that the DofQ was 1000. As they were C class (and therefore nonreturnable) I had 100,000 of the buggers to dispose of.Endplay, looks like you were caught out by confusing the DofQ (aka unit of issue) with the PPQ (Pre-Packed Quantity). The PPQ of your tie wraps would be 100's and the DofQ would be Each (EA) or Single (SGLE). The quantity you should have asked for was 'One'. Don't worry, lots of folks have been a victim of this confusion and is, perhaps, one of the reasons why "Chiefy's Drawer" always had more stock than Stores. BTW, you could have returned your excess if the original packaging hadn't been broached.......and sleep.

Pontius Navigator

5th Mar 2011, 16:29

Why not buy a few, pop some bubble wrap on end that might touch aircraft, and invest the balance of the budget in Euro Lottery.

Does anyone remember the old steel step ladders, painted blue before tone-down, weighed a ton?

Replaced overnight by shiney new aluminium ones? No idea of costs in those days but the first thing we knew was when the damn things got airborne in the venturi under to Vulcan.

SRENNAPS

5th Mar 2011, 17:24

Best one I saw was nothing more than a tyre rubber inner tube designed to support the nozzle petals of a RB199 Module 15. Designed by Fiat, as part of the Italian contribution to the Tornado, it cost £4500 and that was back in 1982 at TTTE. I saw the invoice, honest!

proplover

5th Mar 2011, 19:11

Tiger Mate - Im not ex-forces, just a taxpayer. There were quite a few ex-military guys on the project, many from the Signals - unfortunately, I think due to their background in accepting what they felt was an order\instruction from higher up the chain would accept it without any query. eg I installed a duct system around an army camp for DiiC - all compliant with JSP480. Along comes F and I get the same site. I am somewhat bemused to find the new design has a new twin duct section alongside the one I put in 16months earlier. Its the best part of 3/4 mile long with numerous pits all for...... ONE DiiF cable. I queried this with the ex-military guy who was the customer PM explaining that this was an unecassary waste of money and the system installed was still complient and had capacity. I was somewhat taken aback as the ex-major seemed to think I was some poor squaddy of his. After his tirade of how I should not dare to challange the design and accept his and the designers (again ex-Mil) "orders".
Pleased to say in this case I had the last laugh (its different in the civy world) as at the pre-start meeting I queeried the lavish waste of money on this duct system, the Budget Holder soon got involved and the new duct sytem was removed. However there were hundreds of incidents like this all over the UK. It seemed to us that EDS went out of their way to over design and over manage what they had to put in and if they could scrap perfectly good C stuff and replace it they would. It wasnt a surprise that F ran out of money.
Lastly my company also operates the 'use the Hotel Desk' to book rooms for you, we have exactly the same gripes. As you have discovered they always seem to charge you more than what you could book it for (if you have the time and your not involved in multile bookings) however what you may not be aware of is that they also neoitiate a 'discount' for themselves as well! Double bubble!

Pontius Navigator

5th Mar 2011, 20:56

It seemed to us that EDS went out of their way to over design and over manage what they had to put in and if they could scrap perfectly good C stuff and replace it they would. It wasnt a surprise that F ran out of money.!

I wasn't around long enough F to run out of money but:

C installed a fibre optic cable as the best solution in my office.

F replaced this with copper AND a huge router in the wrong place and which would cost £10k to move. They also used the original BT cabinet installed for C.

Like I said, the budget was equivalent of TWO aircraft carriers.

NutLoose

5th Mar 2011, 23:13

Don't forget the VC10 million pound bin bag holder opposite the tankers galley. :ok:

MaroonMan4

6th Mar 2011, 07:20

I get this story now - and although horrified and angered at the original post, I can see what is going on. This story is not about the cost of the light bulb, but the political spin by civil serpents to justify to the British public why there are some many and so deep cuts across the MOD.

This is purely a smoke screen and should not detract from the whole very reduction in UK military capability. Of course sort the procurement and contract system out, but whilst the MOD and treasury are doing it, don't slash and burn a military capability that will takes years, if not decades to regenerate if (and when) required.

Diablo Rouge

6th Mar 2011, 08:14

If I was a Falkland Islander, I would start polishing up on my Spanish linguistic skills. The Argentinians will not give two hoots for political compromise at a future date and there is nothing that UK Defence Plc can do beyond the small contingent already resident, and a prepared (argie)SF force on the ground could do serious damage to that.

Back to thread: The military are themselves subscribers to overpayment. I can recall that if you had to pay for damaged or missing items through service sources that 30% admin fee was added to an already outragious bill.

HRG accomodation booking is a license to print money, but one that accountants, and them alone endorse. Just so that an MT mate does not sleep in his cab and claim a nights rates. It is a pathetic waste of money.

Any supplier that is contracted long term will take the puss; that is business. You would not have to look far for examples of stationary costs being extortionate compared to nipping down to Staples.

Messing supplies. The flip side is poor quality supplied at top or even standard pricing. This principal is; I am led to believe, how Witherspoons can provide such perceived good value for money.

They are the problems, but the solutions can be an admin burden that make the problems apear trivial.

Mike7777777

7th Mar 2011, 12:14

£22 supply and install is a very cost effective price, particularly if it's a standard price across several locations.

£22 supply only is probably factoring in the cost of going through the hoops at tender stage: 66p for the lamp/bulb/light_emitting_thing, £1.50 postage and packing, £19.84 for the interminable method statements, risk assessments and responses to pointless questions prior to winning the contract, or not winning another contract somewhere else.

I'm going through the hoops with a non-MOD tender process now :ugh::\

A2QFI

7th Mar 2011, 12:39

Dunelm Mill had low energy light bulbs @ 15p each and 3 for 20p. I queried that and was told it was correct. A local charity I work for has been giving all-comers 4 such bulbs free of charge

cockney steve

7th Mar 2011, 15:00

Supply-quantity has always been an issue.

Lucas car electrical.....donkey in stores enters his request for 50 alternators ,in the wrong column.
The alternator is on back-order (again!)....some weeks later, an Artic lorry turns up at this little provincial branch....the sniggering driver holds out a delivery-note for 50 CASES of alternators -100 per case.....not only had they used the entire country's stock and had to make extra,but there were enough to supply the entire population with one each.

The total was probably greater than the entire production -run of this particular model.

Everyone who touched the order KNEW ther was not room in the depot for that quantity......but it was no-one's responsibility to pick up the phone and query the qty.

Water-board, man orders 25 fluorescent tubes....yup! 25 cases. 2 years later, every branch in the area had a few cases lying around and the culprit no longer had a stack that filled a 12' x 20' room!