MoD paid £22 for 65p light bulb..
 

From the BBC:

BBC News - MoD paid £22 for 65p light bulb

No wonder there's so little money for things which really matter.

Ah yes, wasn't it £26 for a Rapid Data Entry cassette tape for the Tornado GR1? The one with the soft teeth that kept getting chewed up. You could get any number of Maxell, TDK or cheapo homebrand ones from most shops for less than £1 each.

Still, at least you could listen to music on those boring trails. :ok:

I can recall when - was it 'MOD PE'? was introduced (70's?) to 'maintain' buildings etc, and we got a quote for a new notice board on the squadron. Yes, it was a small board and yes it was a VERY BIG quote. Nothing changes much.

This 'light bulb' nonsense (unfortunately only the tip of the iceberg), along with MOD the 'procurement' fiasco, is totally inexcusable and requires immediate action. You lmow, sort of thing a competent senior officer should be doing - oh, sorry.................

Numbers of people who do the jobs like buying, checking and contesting excessive costs get reviewed.

"We can contract that out" says a bright spark. "That isn't core business."

We contract it out. We make the contracts very big with single suppliers.

We get humped on an increasing level every year.

Result? We haven't learned to write good contracts or manage them.

"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!!

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 :-)

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:

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

Sorry, sorry...

Graham O

Were/are you responsible for this sort of contract?

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:

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

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

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 :ok:

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

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.

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............

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.

Would they not be 'lamps, filament'?

:ok::ok:

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: