Charter Plane down- breaking news

Ah. I hope we weren't playing with dangerous toys at the time ;-)

 

tallbloke wrote

Man it was a fucking joke.

Ultimately it was got me back into biking.

The crunch came when those of us unfortunate enough to travel on that
line were threatened with dismissal unless we improved our timekeeping.

I figured that it would be slightly marginally quicker to spend at least
3 hours every day commuting into London by car than catching the train
early enough to do the notional 35 minute journey in time to get to work
by 9 every day.

Then there was the dinners at 11 twice a week when I had finished work
at 5 and hadn't stopped at the pub on the way home.

I understand that things have changed little in the intervening 20
years.

 

Obviously I was misinformed. Or the bloke who told me was...

Oh no, **** 'em. I'm only there for another three months, so I've no
emotional or financial interest in the company's wellbeing.

 

I used to drink with a guy that was part of some nuclear inspectorate.
He used to tell some horror stories. The worrying bit was as well as
Russia, France and the US some of the stories were about the UK.

 

I didn't the guys at CNES did.

Managing the money.

 

There could be a case of a marginal fail being processed through a
formal concession if it were programme critical or the repair was
technically more difficult to perform or involved higher risk. This
would then go to the 'boffins' to make the final call.

Anyway on nuclear plants there are so many people crawling around and
having to witness and sign for every job that any conspiracy to
falsify weld records would have to involve a long chain of people.

ernest

 

What about Railtrack, I think that's publically owned at the moment?

 

spouted the following in

Yes. After the nice people whos shares you bought had had their noses in
the trough for a number of years, they realised their asset stripping
days were numbered, so they abandoned it for us to pay for all over
again.

Neat trick if you can pull it off.
They 'made a few quid' too.

 

In my experience the people controlling the purse strings are not the
accountants; it's the board. There will be an FD in place but it won't
be his decision alone. Often, the departmental directors will describe
things as 'accounting problems' but it's more a matter of budget not
being available rather than 'the accountants' telling us how to run our
business.

 

Sort of(ish) and in my limited experience it's got worse since the Gov took
it over again.

 

I concur.

I suppose from the ferry co's POV if the customers die, at least they're
*not* going to ring up and shout about it.

 

wrote

And what sort of qualifications are considered usual for this particular
career? Snot a degree in IT is it.

 

OK, as an Engineer anyone from FD down is an accountant

 

See? You never know when that sort of stuff will be useful ;-)
I'd still like to know why I have to take more exams than my doctor...

 

In my crowd it generally is; well for the technical directors anyway.

 

wrote

This is a very recent and not very widespread introduction into British
industry. Accountancy is still seen as the only certain way to board
level jobs, other than daddy owning 51% of course.

 

Even the CTO? The FD doesn't run the company, he just heads up the
finance dept.

 

What he said. IME.

 

This is because if a doctor makes a mistake normally only one person
will die.

 

Or cost loads of money I suppose!
What you say is true, if say, an NDT tech working on a passenger airliner
didn't spot something or just cowboyed the job, then potentially, hundreds
could die... :-\
I have a story about that...