On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 16:03:17 +0000, magwitch wrote:

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 12:30:55 on
Sun, 30 Dec 2007, The Natural Philosopher remarked:
When we took over in 2000 we de-subscribed Cambridge from being a
"nuclear free city" (if you know of any such signs that didn't get
taken down please let me know!). We didn't, after all, want to try
to force Addenbrookes to remove all those interesting machines in
the basement, for example.

Not to mention stripping out every single smoke alarm in the diocese..

Banning luminous watches...

Hah!

In the 50s I remember cornflakes and rice krispies with little plastic
luminous skeletons and alien monsters and the like, loose in the packet.
Also the annual trip to get new shoes usually involved having your foot
x-rayed in a huge box-like contraption — great fun as you could see your
green foot bones through a window in the top of it.

And the radioactive luminous paint you could buy from Gamages et. al.
You licked the tip of the paintbrush to get it to a fine point...


--
Frank Erskine

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 16:49:07 -0000, Tim Ward wrote:

"Duncan Wood" wrote in message
newsp.t35p8vomyuobwl@lucy...
On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 16:40:23 -0000, Tim Ward
wrote:

"magwitch" wrote in message
...

If you are genuinely worried, that means more space on the beach at
Dunwich and Warbleswick for the rest of us nonhysterics

Assuming you mean Walberswick ... then the beach space already has to
be
shared with the large population of strange crabs ...

That's it's main plus point;-)

Indeed, but are the large numbers of strange crabs there simply because
they
like taking part in the international crabbing competition, or are they
the
consequence of Sizewell fallout?



Somehow I'd always assumed the competition followed the crabs...

On 2007-12-30 16:47:35 +0000, John Rumm said:

Andy Hall wrote:

The one you are not part of by the looks of things.

Not really. "Society" is a nebulous thing, the notion of which comes
from those who don't want to take responsibility for themselves, their
extended family and their neighbours and who would prefer to abdicate
that responsibility. It is the stuff of social engineering where the
potential of the individual is subjugated to the concept of "society"
for no clear reason other than the convenience of control by those who
would seek to control others.

Which is essentially what Mrs. T was actually saying in her oft
misinterpreted speech containing the quote "there is no such thing as
society"...

Quite. Often misquoted as well.

"Duncan Wood" wrote in message
newsp.t35rsgriyuobwl@lucy...

Somehow I'd always assumed the competition followed the crabs...

I think my alternative theory - that the competition is so bizarre that the
crabs congregate in order to take part for the entertainment value - has
just as much merit.

--
Tim Ward - posting as an individual unless otherwise clear
Brett Ward Limited - www.brettward.co.uk
Cambridge Accommodation Notice Board - www.brettward.co.uk/canb
Cambridge City Councillor

Steve Firth wrote:
Roland Perry wrote:

But these sorts of
conversation on usenet are somewhat dominated by self-selecting people
who are comfortable with using email, rather than having face to face
meetings.

I grow increasingly exasperated by those who only seem able to work on
the phone/face to face. Meetings are usually a great big waste of time,
and usually exist only to stroke the ego of whoever arranged the
meeting. I've been doing "meetings" more than thirty years. I really
can't recall any that produced results worth having or that hadn't
already been decided long before the meeting was convened.

I used to write the minutes of all the meetings I was forced to hold in
advance of the meeting. I rarely even had to edit them, since the
statements and reactions of every individual participant were
predictable and lets face it as the organiser all decisions were going
to be made my way no matter what. Just as every other chair of any other
meeting always had their own way.

I'm having to travel later this week for a "meeting" that could be done
by email, it's going to take three days and involve about 30
individuals. Each will get just a few minutes to get their point across.
Whereas if the conference were virtual each person could contribute a
full day's work to the issue still have plenty o time for discussion and
decisions and save 60 vehicle movements plus 60 days in hotels.


Oh don't knock meetings too much. I once did one of the best drawings of
my deceased dog, William, from memory in a meeting... I treasure it still.

Tim Ward wrote:
"magwitch" wrote in message
...
If you are genuinely worried, that means more space on the beach at
Dunwich and Warbleswick for the rest of us nonhysterics

Assuming you mean Walberswick ... then the beach space already has to be
shared with the large population of strange crabs ...

Got the T-shirt!

"! caught crabs at Walberswick"

(thanks for the correction)

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 17:22:34 -0000, Tim Ward wrote:

"Duncan Wood" wrote in message
newsp.t35rsgriyuobwl@lucy...

Somehow I'd always assumed the competition followed the crabs...

I think my alternative theory - that the competition is so bizarre that
the
crabs congregate in order to take part for the entertainment value - has
just as much merit.



Fair point

magwitch wrote:


Oh don't knock meetings too much. I once did one of the best drawings of
my deceased dog, William, from memory in a meeting... I treasure it still.

Ah yes, I have many hard backed A4 notebooks filled with interesting
works of art and doodles. I particularly treasure the infinite plumbing
system drawn over about five years of meetings with realistic three
dimensional sketches of compression fittings, tubes and taps.

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 16:39:21 +0000, (Steve Firth)
wrote:

snip


I grow increasingly exasperated by those who only seem able to work on
the phone/face to face. Meetings are usually a great big waste of time,
and usually exist only to stroke the ego of whoever arranged the
meeting. I've been doing "meetings" more than thirty years. I really
can't recall any that produced results worth having or that hadn't
already been decided long before the meeting was convened.


My boss in Houston, faced with nearly everybody being unavailable "in
a meeting" nearly all the time put a stop to it by the simple
expedient of saying :

"You can have all the meetings you want, as long as you do it properly
and book a meeting room in advance through my secretary".

Problem over.

DG

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 16:40:23 -0000, "Tim Ward"
wrote:

"magwitch" wrote in message
...

If you are genuinely worried, that means more space on the beach at
Dunwich and Warbleswick for the rest of us nonhysterics

Assuming you mean Walberswick ... then the beach space already has to be
shared with the large population of strange crabs ...

They come from the Chavs dogging between the beach huts.

DG

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 17:02:32 +0000, Frank Erskine
wrote:

Hah!

In the 50s I remember cornflakes and rice krispies with little plastic
luminous skeletons and alien monsters and the like, loose in the packet.

The skellingtons weren't luminous. They were phosphorescent. No
ionising radiations involved.

Also the annual trip to get new shoes usually involved having your foot
x-rayed in a huge box-like contraption

Pedoscope.

— great fun as you could see your
green foot bones through a window in the top of it.

They were *BAD* by every radiation protection measure you could
contemplate.

And the radioactive luminous paint you could buy from Gamages et. al.

That may / may not have been radioactive depending on the date. Ditto
the skellingtons above.

Ex WW2 aircrew watches did have luminous spots containing Radium, and
were sold freely and cheaply in the 50's and 60's

You licked the tip of the paintbrush to get it to a fine point...

Luminisers making the faces for the above watches did that and got a
body burden of Radium for their trouble.

DG

In message op.t35n1ybyyuobwl@lucy, at 15:59:48 on Sun, 30 Dec 2007,
Duncan Wood remarked:
The last thing I needed a colour photocopy of to send to someone was
written in Switzerland and printed (somewhat rarely) in house. I think
they'd be puzzled at a request from someone they never heard of in the
UK to sand a copy of something that may be out of print to yet another
set of people they hadn't heard of.

Presumably they'd be equally confused by this unknown person using
their office photocopier.

Of course. The office copier I would need to use is the one at the
destination. That's the place I'm teleworking with. But the original is
in my home office in Nottingham and the copier is 500 miles away.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 16:39:21
on Sun, 30 Dec 2007, Steve Firth remarked:
Roland Perry wrote:

But these sorts of
conversation on usenet are somewhat dominated by self-selecting people
who are comfortable with using email, rather than having face to face
meetings.

I grow increasingly exasperated by those who only seem able to work on
the phone/face to face. Meetings are usually a great big waste of time,
and usually exist only to stroke the ego of whoever arranged the
meeting. I've been doing "meetings" more than thirty years. I really
can't recall any that produced results worth having or that hadn't
already been decided long before the meeting was convened.

People work in different ways and with different constituencies.

I once got a reasonably significant law changed in the UK by having a
face to face meeting with Patricia Hewitt, who was the DTI minister at
the time. Trust me, emailing would *not* have had the same effect. It
revolved around almost literally kicking her senior civil servant under
the table to have them admit that what I'd just said was true (crucially
backed up by a physical copy of an earlier SI with one sentence
underlined in red that I could literally thrust under her nose), which
she was then good enough to admit changed her mind on the underlying
issue of policy.

OK, it's not always as knife edge as that, but most of the people I work
with simply can't be engaged in policy debate by email - all they do is
face to face meetings. As well as many of them not being especially
computer literate (or people who don't operate their own email, let
alone have much inclination to originate replies) the majority do not
have English as their first language and many are understandably far
more comfortable talking broken English than writing it. But enough of
my problems.

--
Roland Perry

On 2007-12-30 19:28:17 +0000, Roland Perry said:

In message op.t35n1ybyyuobwl@lucy, at 15:59:48 on Sun, 30 Dec 2007,
Duncan Wood remarked:
The last thing I needed a colour photocopy of to send to someone was
written in Switzerland and printed (somewhat rarely) in house. I think
they'd be puzzled at a request from someone they never heard of in the
UK to sand a copy of something that may be out of print to yet another
set of people they hadn't heard of.

Presumably they'd be equally confused by this unknown person using
their office photocopier.

Of course. The office copier I would need to use is the one at the
destination. That's the place I'm teleworking with. But the original is
in my home office in Nottingham and the copier is 500 miles away.

So scanner at home and print to the copier over a VPN connection......

Alternatively just send the file to a service bureau like Fedex Kinko's
and get them to produce the treeware.


I don't see the problem.....

In message , at 16:39:21
on Sun, 30 Dec 2007, Steve Firth remarked:
You can't email me 50 colour photocopies of this document I need to send
out this afternoon;

No, but when I'm out working around the country I regularly use VPN to
print 50 or more copies of reports on the workgroup colour printer in
the office. Then someone at the office binds them and posts them to the
recipients. This means that instead of 30 odd people having to attend
the office each day, the place only needs a handful of on-site staff.

I'm really glad you've got a "someone" at your beck and call like that.
I don't send physical copies of internal reports, it's source material
I've gathered in the great outside world that I need to circulate.
--
Roland Perry

Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 16:39:21
on Sun, 30 Dec 2007, Steve Firth remarked:
You can't email me 50 colour photocopies of this document I need to send
out this afternoon;

No, but when I'm out working around the country I regularly use VPN to
print 50 or more copies of reports on the workgroup colour printer in
the office. Then someone at the office binds them and posts them to the
recipients. This means that instead of 30 odd people having to attend
the office each day, the place only needs a handful of on-site staff.

I'm really glad you've got a "someone" at your beck and call like that.
I don't send physical copies of internal reports, it's source material
I've gathered in the great outside world that I need to circulate.

Nowadays on the governmental work I do all of that sort of stuff is PDF.
I travel with a scanner, so if I meet a luddite I can scan the documents
they give me to PDF.

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 15:16:20 +0000, Owain
wrote:

Roland Perry wrote:
Not to mention stripping out every single smoke alarm in the diocese..
Banning luminous watches...

TRIMphone dials...

Were illuminated with Betalights.

The isotope was a Beta emitter and wasn't any external radiation
hazard at all.

DG

In message 4777f533@qaanaaq, at 19:44:51 on Sun, 30 Dec 2007, Andy
Hall remarked:
The office copier I would need to use is the one at the destination.
That's the place I'm teleworking with. But the original is in my home
office in Nottingham and the copier is 500 miles away.

So scanner at home and print to the copier over a VPN connection......

Alternatively just send the file to a service bureau like Fedex Kinko's
and get them to produce the treeware.

I don't see the problem.....

You probably don't. And lots of people don't see the problems of
teleworking jobs that aren't fundamentally teleworkable.
--
Roland Perry

In message , Frank Erskine
writes
On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 16:03:17 +0000, magwitch wrote:

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 12:30:55 on
Sun, 30 Dec 2007, The Natural Philosopher remarked:
When we took over in 2000 we de-subscribed Cambridge from being a
"nuclear free city" (if you know of any such signs that didn't get
taken down please let me know!). We didn't, after all, want to try
to force Addenbrookes to remove all those interesting machines in
the basement, for example.

Not to mention stripping out every single smoke alarm in the diocese..

Banning luminous watches...

Hah!

In the 50s I remember cornflakes and rice krispies with little plastic
luminous skeletons and alien monsters and the like, loose in the packet.
Also the annual trip to get new shoes usually involved having your foot
x-rayed in a huge box-like contraption €” great fun as you could see your
green foot bones through a window in the top of it.

And the radioactive luminous paint you could buy from Gamages et. al.
You licked the tip of the paintbrush to get it to a fine point...



and the horrible smell ...


--
geoff

In message , at 20:29:42 on
Sun, 30 Dec 2007, Steve Firth remarked:
Nowadays on the governmental work I do all of that sort of stuff is PDF.

A tiny fraction of the ones I deal with are. Finding something machine
readable is a major coup!

I travel with a scanner, so if I meet a luddite I can scan the documents
they give me to PDF.

I've scanned a few things, but travelling with a scanner isn't practical
for me.
--
Roland Perry

On 2007-12-30 21:22:38 +0000, Roland Perry said:

In message 4777f533@qaanaaq, at 19:44:51 on Sun, 30 Dec 2007, Andy
Hall remarked:
The office copier I would need to use is the one at the destination.
That's the place I'm teleworking with. But the original is in my home
office in Nottingham and the copier is 500 miles away.

So scanner at home and print to the copier over a VPN connection......

Alternatively just send the file to a service bureau like Fedex Kinko's
and get them to produce the treeware.

I don't see the problem.....

You probably don't.

With that particular issue there isn't a problem.

And lots of people don't see the problems of teleworking jobs that
aren't fundamentally teleworkable.

I do understand your point about the need for face to face meetings for
certain purposes and use it myself on occasions. I also take your
point that it can be important when beginning new business
relationships and especially when the other party does not speak
English as their first language.

However... I do have to optimise my time, and to that end need to be
able to operate my "office" from almost anywhere on the planet at
virtually any time. To achieve that, I make sure that I have high
speed internet access as much of the time as possible when traveling,
and can initiate sending of materials electronically, by fax or by hard
copy (colour glossy if really needed). It really doesn't matter if
I am sitting at home, in an airport lounge, a customer or a hotel lobby
several time zones away. For the pieces of time in taxis or other
instances where high speed access is not available, the Blackberry
saves me at least an hour a day on average.

Travel is also carefully planned, in order to optimise productive time.
A byproduct of that is that unnecessary journies are not made.

So basically the "office" moves around, but not back and forth from
home each day. During some weeks it remains at home most of the week,
while during others it might be in three or four different cities.

Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 20:29:42 on
Sun, 30 Dec 2007, Steve Firth remarked:
[snip]

I travel with a scanner, so if I meet a luddite I can scan the documents
they give me to PDF.

I've scanned a few things, but travelling with a scanner isn't practical
for me.

Just throw it in the back of your giant 4x4 with all the other essential
survival gear.

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 21:22:38 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message 4777f533@qaanaaq, at 19:44:51 on Sun, 30 Dec 2007, Andy
Hall remarked:
The office copier I would need to use is the one at the destination.
That's the place I'm teleworking with. But the original is in my home
office in Nottingham and the copier is 500 miles away.

So scanner at home and print to the copier over a VPN connection......

Alternatively just send the file to a service bureau like Fedex Kinko's
and get them to produce the treeware.

I don't see the problem.....

You probably don't. And lots of people don't see the problems of
teleworking jobs that aren't fundamentally teleworkable.

There's quite a number of jobs which aren't really very teleworkable,
such as hands-on engineering, medicine, personnel, astronomy, building
etc. Almost all the general public seem to think that everybody at
work sits at a computer desk printing out reports, graphs and so on. I
would absolutely hate that type of scenario. To me, computers aren't
the 'be-all and end-all'.

For some months I did work from home. As it was a temporary expedient
I didn't dedicate a specific room as an office, but I found it
extremely difficult to concentrate on work as there were so many
distractions such as uninvited visitors - 'double-glazing' salesman
types, and of course since there were bits of paper and laptoppy-type
stuff around my favourite armchair and coffee table, I never felt that
I was sort of 'off-duty' in the evenings.

Mind you, this was before the days of broadband - I used PCAnywhere,
which was a bit depressing in itself... :-(

--
Frank Erskine

Huge (Huge ) gurgled happily, sounding much
like they were saying:

I suspect you'll find that the vast majority of people would happily
give up commuting if their employers would let them.

For a while, maybe. Then they'd miss the social side. Not all of them,
but most.

You reckon? I've worked at home for over a year. It's fab. I wouldn't go
back to commuting in a million years.

I started renting an office this summer, after six years working first at
home then from a colleagues home office. It was the best move I've made
since going self-employed.

Mark Goodge wrote:
On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 14:41:04 +0000, The Natural Philosopher put finger
to keyboard and typed:

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 13:32:43 on
Sun, 30 Dec 2007, magwitch remarked:
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 16:55:47 on Sat, 29 Dec
2007, "dennis@home" remarked:
Both of those work when it's done properly. Like the tube in
London, or car pooling 9-5 office jobs when there's several of
you in a suburb and you all drive to the same office in the city.
Why do they go to the office every day?
What is at the office that is needed?
Facilities and other people, usually.
Are they all blind or deaf and couldn't be contacted by e-mail or phone?
You can't email me 50 colour photocopies of this document I need to send
out this afternoon;
Why ever not?

How do you email paper?

Scan and send em.


If your answer is that every teleworker should have a colour collating
printer at their home, so that you never need to transfer physical
documents, then you've just raised the financial bar considerably.
That might be practical in some circumstances, but not all.


Most.

Jobs differ. Some can be successfully teleworked. Lots of others can't.
A lot more can than you seem to think.

A lot of stuff can be teleworked. However, for teleworking to work,
you have to be capable of doing *everything* remotely that you would
otherwise do in the office in the course of a normal day. If there's
even one thing that requires actual physical presence in the office,
then you might as well be there all day and save the effort and
expense of duplicating equipment at both the office and at home.


I seldom found anything that couldn't be done remotely.

I've even done remote computer installations.

Although most offices still require lots of PAPER, there is no reason
why they should by and large, a lot of that could be scanned onto server
and the paperwork filed by one person.

Only when you get away from paperwork, to real hands on work, do your
hands need to be there.

But most office work could be done from almost anywhere..

All software, tech support, back office stuff.
Laywers.
Accountants.. (harder as they insist of pssyical paper)
Graphic design
CAD/CAM design.
Shopping by and large.
All sales studff
All marketing stuff.

Things that couldn't be are doctors - altho NHS direct is a pretty
useful service - dentists, plumbers and the building trade generally,
manufacturing (directly hands on stuff: The back office could till be
managed remotely)

The fact that perhaps 15% of all work can't be done remotely is no
argument for not doing the other 85% that way.







Mark

Steve Firth wrote:
Roland Perry wrote:

But these sorts of
conversation on usenet are somewhat dominated by self-selecting people
who are comfortable with using email, rather than having face to face
meetings.

I grow increasingly exasperated by those who only seem able to work on
the phone/face to face. Meetings are usually a great big waste of time,
and usually exist only to stroke the ego of whoever arranged the
meeting. I've been doing "meetings" more than thirty years. I really
can't recall any that produced results worth having or that hadn't
already been decided long before the meeting was convened.


I have to agree.

I used to write the minutes of all the meetings I was forced to hold in
advance of the meeting. I rarely even had to edit them, since the
statements and reactions of every individual participant were
predictable and lets face it as the organiser all decisions were going
to be made my way no matter what. Just as every other chair of any other
meeting always had their own way.

I'm having to travel later this week for a "meeting" that could be done
by email, it's going to take three days and involve about 30
individuals. Each will get just a few minutes to get their point across.
Whereas if the conference were virtual each person could contribute a
full day's work to the issue still have plenty o time for discussion and
decisions and save 60 vehicle movements plus 60 days in hotels.


I couldn't agre more. Meetings to decide issues are seldom worth while.
They do have team building value, and a chance to brainstorm.

I remember one customer in Aberdeen, who we never visited, not from the
first contact, through several e-mails, to closing a sale, building a
computer system, with a modem, shipping it up by courier, and installing
and testing it using that.

Customers wanted to see us, for sure, but it wasn;t *necessary* and
indeed most of the work was always better done back at base before leaving.

I did one installation in 15 minutes. The bloke was angry and didn't
want to pay the £75 installation fee. I told him it was the 8 hours work
we had done before arriving that made it so simple.

Then the was the emergency phone call from Channel 4, that I insisted we
charge heavily for. I drive down, parked at huge expense,, and then sat
at reception for 50 minutes till he came out of the machine room, where
his mobile didn't work. In ten minutes I was able to demonstrate that
someone had buggered the configuration files, which he was gracious
enough to admit. No call out necessary, But we got paid,...a lot..

The default assumption is that you gho into a place of work, amnd meet
with people to discuss issue.

Remove that default assumption and its amazing how much MORE work can be
done at lower cost.

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 14:43:52 on
Sun, 30 Dec 2007, The Natural Philosopher remarked:
Well, commuting used to cost me about �5k a year. That easily funds a
collating photocopier. And a color laser for that matter..and quite a
lot of bandwidth.

One of the points about telecommuting is to *save* the commuting costs,
not replace them with loads of different costs.

I thought in this context we were talking about not burning fuel?

Tim Ward wrote:
"magwitch" wrote in message
...
If you are genuinely worried, that means more space on the beach at
Dunwich and Warbleswick for the rest of us nonhysterics

Assuming you mean Walberswick ... then the beach space already has to be
shared with the large population of strange crabs ...


Look, in polite society we refer to them as the North Folk, from Norfolk.

Tim Ward wrote:
"Duncan Wood" wrote in message
newsp.t35p8vomyuobwl@lucy...
On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 16:40:23 -0000, Tim Ward wrote:

"magwitch" wrote in message
...
If you are genuinely worried, that means more space on the beach at
Dunwich and Warbleswick for the rest of us nonhysterics
Assuming you mean Walberswick ... then the beach space already has to be
shared with the large population of strange crabs ...
That's it's main plus point;-)

Indeed, but are the large numbers of strange crabs there simply because they
like taking part in the international crabbing competition, or are they the
consequence of Sizewell fallout?

There is no Sizewell fallout.

A friend of moine, very anti-nuclear and an original greeny scientist,
built a geiger counter and went round every single power sttaion in the
UK with it.

ONLY at Windscale, was there any evidence of radioactivity above background.

He got far more on Dartmoor.

Now he went *looking* for problems and issues. He found none.

The fuel reprocessing and the waste management is far more dodgy than
the power stations themselves.

Windscale, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl were examples of accidents
with antiquated technology that no one would dream of building today,
and they none of them wrecked the planet half as much as CO2 is doing.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both examples of huge uncontained releases of
radioactivity, are inhabitable today. It is inconceivable that any
nuclear accident could be 1% as devastating from a fallout point of view.

Now I don't say let's go back the 60's where in class the physics
master removed two pellets of uranium from a lead lined boxes, and
carefully brought them within a few mm of each other and we listened to
a Geiger counter going wild..receiving probably about 5 years allowable
dosage by todays standards..but there is a continued note of hysteria
about nuclear issues, that the facts do not support.

The Cold war was a time when the Soviet Union was happy to fund anyone
who campaigned against nuclear weapons sided on these shores, and did. I
am not saying that CND was soviet inspired, but they were very happy to
see it do its thing, and certainly gave it many helping hands. Big Oil
was equally happey to see a major competitor driven out of business.
Only teh perceived political need for difference, and the need to make
the proces of breeding plutonium seem socially useful, led to us
building reactors at all.


The arguments against nuclear power are largely FUD. Fear of what MIGHT
happen. The safety record is in fact hugely better than comparable power
generating industries. As far as its un-greenness and unnaturalness
goes, well we live on the surface of a large fission reactor anyway.
Apparently we are somewhat used to it, as a species.

"Huge" wrote in message
...

the camera *always* lies.

There is an entire museum with this as its strapline in Bradford - well
worth a visit.

--
Tim Ward - posting as an individual unless otherwise clear
Brett Ward Limited - www.brettward.co.uk
Cambridge Accommodation Notice Board - www.brettward.co.uk/canb
Cambridge City Councillor

I used to write the minutes of all the meetings I was forced to hold in
advance of the meeting. I rarely even had to edit them, since the
statements and reactions of every individual participant were
predictable and lets face it as the organiser all decisions were going
to be made my way no matter what. Just as every other chair of any other
meeting always had their own way.

I'm having to travel later this week for a "meeting" that could be done
by email, it's going to take three days and involve about 30
individuals. Each will get just a few minutes to get their point across.
Whereas if the conference were virtual each person could contribute a
full day's work to the issue still have plenty o time for discussion and
decisions and save 60 vehicle movements plus 60 days in hotels.


I couldn't agre more. Meetings to decide issues are seldom worth while.
They do have team building value, and a chance to brainstorm.

I remember one customer in Aberdeen, who we never visited, not from the
first contact, through several e-mails, to closing a sale, building a
computer system, with a modem, shipping it up by courier, and installing
and testing it using that.

Customers wanted to see us, for sure, but it wasn;t *necessary* and
indeed most of the work was always better done back at base before leaving.

I did one installation in 15 minutes. The bloke was angry and didn't
want to pay the £75 installation fee. I told him it was the 8 hours work
we had done before arriving that made it so simple.

Then the was the emergency phone call from Channel 4, that I insisted we
charge heavily for. I drive down, parked at huge expense,, and then sat
at reception for 50 minutes till he came out of the machine room, where
his mobile didn't work. In ten minutes I was able to demonstrate that
someone had buggered the configuration files, which he was gracious
enough to admit. No call out necessary, But we got paid,...a lot..

The default assumption is that you gho into a place of work, amnd meet
with people to discuss issue.

Remove that default assumption and its amazing how much MORE work can be
done at lower cost.



Yep agreed .. VNC is a god send for a lot of applications but the
_management mindset_ hasn't evolved enough as yet;!....




--
Tony Sayer

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

There is no Sizewell fallout.

Sigh. That was a "joke", in the context of the International Crabbing
Championship at Walberswick, which is itself a joke.

I too have stood on top of the reactor at Sizewell perfectly happily.

--
Tim Ward - posting as an individual unless otherwise clear
Brett Ward Limited - www.brettward.co.uk
Cambridge Accommodation Notice Board - www.brettward.co.uk/canb
Cambridge City Councillor

On 31 Dec 2007 11:54:09 GMT, Huge wrote:

(* What *did* happen on the 9th of November, anyway?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_9

--
Frank Erskine

"Huge" wrote in message
...

I too have stood on top of the reactor at Sizewell perfectly happily.

The visitor centre was closed when we visited a few years ago, I imagine
permanently in these post "9/11" (*) days.

I've flown over the top of it at only a few feet above the top of the
exclusion zone since 9/11 and nobody took any obvious interest in me. If I'd
wanted to fly into it it would have taken me only a few seconds, they
couldn't have stopped me unless there really was a seriously trigger-happy
anti-aircraft missile operator watching me the whole time.

--
Tim Ward - posting as an individual unless otherwise clear
Brett Ward Limited - www.brettward.co.uk
Cambridge Accommodation Notice Board - www.brettward.co.uk/canb
Cambridge City Councillor

tony sayer wrote:
I used to write the minutes of all the meetings I was forced to hold in
advance of the meeting. I rarely even had to edit them, since the
statements and reactions of every individual participant were
predictable and lets face it as the organiser all decisions were going
to be made my way no matter what. Just as every other chair of any other
meeting always had their own way.

I'm having to travel later this week for a "meeting" that could be done
by email, it's going to take three days and involve about 30
individuals. Each will get just a few minutes to get their point across.
Whereas if the conference were virtual each person could contribute a
full day's work to the issue still have plenty o time for discussion and
decisions and save 60 vehicle movements plus 60 days in hotels.

I couldn't agre more. Meetings to decide issues are seldom worth while.
They do have team building value, and a chance to brainstorm.

I remember one customer in Aberdeen, who we never visited, not from the
first contact, through several e-mails, to closing a sale, building a
computer system, with a modem, shipping it up by courier, and installing
and testing it using that.

Customers wanted to see us, for sure, but it wasn;t *necessary* and
indeed most of the work was always better done back at base before leaving.

I did one installation in 15 minutes. The bloke was angry and didn't
want to pay the �75 installation fee. I told him it was the 8 hours work
we had done before arriving that made it so simple.

Then the was the emergency phone call from Channel 4, that I insisted we
charge heavily for. I drive down, parked at huge expense,, and then sat
at reception for 50 minutes till he came out of the machine room, where
his mobile didn't work. In ten minutes I was able to demonstrate that
someone had buggered the configuration files, which he was gracious
enough to admit. No call out necessary, But we got paid,...a lot..

The default assumption is that you gho into a place of work, amnd meet
with people to discuss issue.

Remove that default assumption and its amazing how much MORE work can be
done at lower cost.



Yep agreed .. VNC is a god send for a lot of applications but the
_management mindset_ hasn't evolved enough as yet;!....

Wht it takes is more an more 'virtual ' companies without expensive
plush reception areas and offices coming along and stealing the business
from the traditionals.


However with et govt. being the single biggest employer in the country,
not much hope of any changes there. "Oh, we can't let our data go off
site: It might get lost !" haha bloody ha.

Tim Ward wrote:
"Huge" wrote in message
...
I too have stood on top of the reactor at Sizewell perfectly happily.
The visitor centre was closed when we visited a few years ago, I imagine
permanently in these post "9/11" (*) days.

I've flown over the top of it at only a few feet above the top of the
exclusion zone since 9/11 and nobody took any obvious interest in me. If I'd
wanted to fly into it it would have taken me only a few seconds, they
couldn't have stopped me unless there really was a seriously trigger-happy
anti-aircraft missile operator watching me the whole time.

And it probably wouldn't have done any serious damage if you had.

Its way easier to make a nuclear power station safe from attack - it
already is a featureless concrete blockhouse.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Tim Ward wrote:
"Huge" wrote in message
...
I too have stood on top of the reactor at Sizewell perfectly happily.
The visitor centre was closed when we visited a few years ago, I imagine
permanently in these post "9/11" (*) days.

I've flown over the top of it at only a few feet above the top of the
exclusion zone since 9/11 and nobody took any obvious interest in me. If
I'd wanted to fly into it it would have taken me only a few seconds, they
couldn't have stopped me unless there really was a seriously
trigger-happy anti-aircraft missile operator watching me the whole time.

And it probably wouldn't have done any serious damage if you had.

Not to the reactor, no, not even a scratch, but you could probably break and
burn enough ancillary stuff to shut it down for a few months if you knew
what you were doing.

--
Tim Ward - posting as an individual unless otherwise clear
Brett Ward Limited - www.brettward.co.uk
Cambridge Accommodation Notice Board - www.brettward.co.uk/canb
Cambridge City Councillor

On Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:45:02 +0000, The Natural Philosopher put finger
to keyboard and typed:

Mark Goodge wrote:
On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 14:41:04 +0000, The Natural Philosopher put finger
to keyboard and typed:

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 13:32:43 on
Sun, 30 Dec 2007, magwitch remarked:
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 16:55:47 on Sat, 29 Dec
2007, "dennis@home" remarked:
Both of those work when it's done properly. Like the tube in
London, or car pooling 9-5 office jobs when there's several of
you in a suburb and you all drive to the same office in the city.
Why do they go to the office every day?
What is at the office that is needed?
Facilities and other people, usually.
Are they all blind or deaf and couldn't be contacted by e-mail or phone?
You can't email me 50 colour photocopies of this document I need to send
out this afternoon;
Why ever not?

How do you email paper?

Scan and send em.

That still doesn't get paper from A to B.

If your answer is that every teleworker should have a colour collating
printer at their home, so that you never need to transfer physical
documents, then you've just raised the financial bar considerably.
That might be practical in some circumstances, but not all.


Most.

You reckon it's practical for most teleworkers to have a colour
collating printer at home? How many teleworkers do you know who
actually have one?

Jobs differ. Some can be successfully teleworked. Lots of others can't.
A lot more can than you seem to think.

A lot of stuff can be teleworked. However, for teleworking to work,
you have to be capable of doing *everything* remotely that you would
otherwise do in the office in the course of a normal day. If there's
even one thing that requires actual physical presence in the office,
then you might as well be there all day and save the effort and
expense of duplicating equipment at both the office and at home.


I seldom found anything that couldn't be done remotely.

I've even done remote computer installations.

No, you haven't. You've done remote software installations, maybe. But
to actually install a computer itself - or fix it when the hardware
goes wrong - you need to be there where the computer is.

Of course, installing a computer itself may well not be a skilled job
- you just take it out of the box and plug it in. The skilled part -
installing the software - can often be done remotely. But you still
have to have someone there on site to do the job.

Although most offices still require lots of PAPER, there is no reason
why they should by and large, a lot of that could be scanned onto server
and the paperwork filed by one person.

Only when you get away from paperwork, to real hands on work, do your
hands need to be there.

Which is most jobs. Office work is still a minority of employment in
the UK.

But most office work could be done from almost anywhere..

Some office work could be done from almost anywhere.


All software, tech support, back office stuff.

Tech support often needs to physically handle the kit that's faulty.
How do you replace a disk drive remotely?

Laywers.

Have to be able to appear in court.

Accountants.. (harder as they insist of pssyical paper)
Graphic design
CAD/CAM design.
Shopping by and large.
All sales studff

Most people who work in sales stay in one place and their customers
come to them.

All marketing stuff.

Things that couldn't be are doctors - altho NHS direct is a pretty
useful service - dentists, plumbers and the building trade generally,
manufacturing (directly hands on stuff: The back office could till be
managed remotely)

Plus a few more...

Train drivers
Chemists
Nurses
Security guards
Shop assistants
Bus drivers
Taxi drivers
Cleaners
Teachers
Actors
Receptionists
Telephone sanitisers
Police
Firefighters
Farmers
Vets

to name but a few.

The fact that perhaps 15% of all work can't be done remotely is no
argument for not doing the other 85% that way.

There are far more jobs that can't be done remotely than jobs which
can. Maybe 15% of work that's currently done on location could be
teleworked instead.

Mark
--
http://www.MotorwayServices.info - read and share comments and opinons
"Wouldn't you love somebody to love?"

In message , The Natural
Philosopher writes
Senility must be wonderful


Yeah and I remember reading in New Scientist 10 years ago that there
was a dental treatment that enabled new bone to be formed so tooth
loss could be halted and the effects of peridontal disease would be a
thing of the past... still waiting.
New Scientist is, in a peer-reviewed scientific sense, mostly a
comic for those who like to appear cleverer than they really are.

Yup. Sadly as science journals go, its the Sunday Sport of them..Still
it has its place.


ok

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...r.renewableene
rgy


--
geoff

In message , The Natural
Philosopher writes
But most office work could be done from almost anywhere..

All software, tech support, back office stuff.
Laywers.
Accountants.. (harder as they insist of pssyical paper)
Graphic design
CAD/CAM design.
Shopping by and large.
All sales studff
All marketing stuff.

Things that couldn't be are doctors - altho NHS direct is a pretty
useful service

You think so ?


- dentists, plumbers and the building trade generally, manufacturing




--
geoff