27 February 2009

Prison buggered to December?

| johnboy
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The Liberals’ Jeremy Hanson is letting the world know that he has been digging around the prison woes with FOI laws and has come across Bovis Lend Lease (who I hear have removed their signage from the well staffed, but inmate free, prison) estimates that the faults in the prison security system won’t be rectified until the end of the year.

From a Corrective Services brief dated from last December

    “While BLL (Bovis Lend Lease) previously acknowledged this issue as a defect, this was denied by their representatives… however on 9 December they indicated that resolution would take 12 months or more.”

Was John Hargreaves seriously planning to buffalo us with “It’ll open real soon now” all the way to the end of the year?

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You’re kidding… right?

yes and no. Snowy Hydro worked out the first time. Not my fault the Australian Government Departments have forgotten how to operate.+

Good point!

Granny said :

As I have said before on this thread, they need to send in a Darth Vader!

Because he did such a good job on the death star….

hax said :

p1 said :

If only there was some mechanism where by governments actually had employees of their own, who could plan and build things.

You’re kidding… right?

Well, ordinarily this would be a joke, but the construction industry in Canberra doesn’t exactly cover itself in glory, does it? Public servants may not be the best contract managers, but debacles like the prison and dodgily-built apartment blocks show that companies like Bovis don’t have a proper handle on their subcontractors, either.

The answer, of course, is to have the private sector held more accountable by proper and well-enforced regulations. Most of the crap that gets built in Canberra would never be certified in countries like Germany or Switzerland – not in a million years – and hence would never be built that way in the first place. Getting ACTPLA in order, and properly resourcing it, would be a good start.

p1 said :

If only there was some mechanism where by governments actually had employees of their own, who could plan and build things.

You’re kidding… right?

Was John Hargreaves seriously planning to buffalo us with “It’ll open real soon now” all the way to the end of the year?

The end of the year is relatively soon, if you compare it with the next election…

Thanks, Qbn Gal! I think it was River God that I read.

Granny, Wilbur Smith wrote 4 books in his Egypt series – The Quest, River God, The Seventh Scroll, and Warlock. Well worth a read. Check out his website

Ah man, I’m so jealous of anyone going to Egypt. It’s such an awesome place. I’ve been a couple of times, and would give anything to go back.

That’s great, Jim. I have a friend who’s going over to Egypt soon. When she told me I thought how much I’d love to be doing that myself. I’d never really thought about it before. I read a really cool fiction book by Wilbur Smith I think on ancient Egypt and it sounded kind of intriguing. Maybe one day ….

However, I think even a pharaoh or caesar would have project management issues, although I’d hate to have been that project manager ….

As I have said before on this thread, they need to send in a Darth Vader!

Depending on what era of Ancient Egyptian you’re talking about (pyramids went out of style after widespread tombraiding became apparent, and burial went underground in the Valley of the Kings/Queens and other areas) the pyramids tended to be scheduled for completion very early in a pharoahs life. After completion, often they were expanded to be more luxurious, or, sometimes, an even bigger pyramid was built and the smaller one handed off to a relative or particularly important bureaucrat.

Contemporary theory about the building of the pyramids is that they weren’t actually built by slaves, but by off-season agricultural workers (the agricultural work season being built around the tidal seasons of the Nile) alongside a full-time caste of artisans.

I don’t know about going ‘over-budget’ (given that they were first built for god-kings, this is unlikely – although the later eras in which many more notables were getting into elaborate burial could make this highly possible), but it’s unlikely they’d be able to handly them going too far over schedule. The Papyrus of Ani (Book of the Dead) makes it clear that the body has to be interred in the tomb after 39 days; although it can be shifted from tomb to tomb after this initial interment.

Sorry, I’m a total nerd for anything Ancient Egyptian.

I still think the pyramids would have been over schedule and over budget. The world can’t have changed that much in a few thousand years!

p1 said :

This never would have happened in Egypt in the days of the Pharaohs.

Slavery: it gets sh1t done!

Oh, I think that it did!

If only there was some mechanism where by governments actually had employees of their own, who could plan and build things.

This never would have happened in Egypt in the days of the Pharaohs.

wonder how many solictors are now extending clients cases so they dont end up in goulburn

I wouldn’t trust Bovis Lend Lease to build a kennel for my dog. When it comes to accepting responsibility for defects, they take the old and well-trod path of deny, deny, deny…if they exhaust you into giving up, well, there couldn’t have been any substance to your claim, could there?

It’s a shame that major construction projects provide so much flow-on into local economies. Governments all over the world are as hooked on them as they are on tax revenues from legalised gambling, which puts the developers in a position of great power, which they seem to abuse from day one, wringing all sorts of concessions from government and giving as little as possible in return. it’s all $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

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