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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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 Posted -
11/01/2009
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06:04
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New Year, new topic. If you want to see the old one do a forum search for same title but 2008.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk
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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 12/04/2009 : 16:50
Quite Ted, but he will chew air in that peculiar way and not condemn what was obviously a nasty little conversation between nasty men on nasty subjects. Get on with governing the country! That's what we pay you for, not indulging in gutter politics.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk  |
frankwilk
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Posted - 13/04/2009 : 07:21
It would appear the Helicopter that went down in the North Sea had been having Gearbox checks after (if I read it right) a chip had been detected in the gearbox oil.
I know BP put the safety of the workers at the top of it's priority, so I am sure it was nothing to do with costs.
The Pilots are now calling for the Super Puma to be grounded !!!!
I always worked on the basis that if Helicopters were really Unsafe, the Pilots wouldn't fly them every day, after all I only did it twice a fortnight..
Frank Wilkinson Once Navy Always Navy |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 13/04/2009 : 07:59
It's a problem isn't it Frank. I would imagine that they are fitted with a magnetic drain plug and all I know is that a flake of steel on the plug was a very bad sign. No point in jumping to conclusions but the pilots evidently think they have a point and the only route is a forensic examination of all the gearboxes. I heard one pilot talking about elevated vibration levels and going back to my gearbox days I was surprised to find that even very experienced firms had very little understanding of exfoliation of hardened gear surfaces due to vibration in the drive train. It's a complex matter but basically the fault may not be with the box but with an associated problem in the drive train. I hope they pin it down for everyone's sake. With a wagon, the gear just got noisy as it destroyed itself. Different kettle of fish with far higher stresses in a rotor gearbox at 5,000 feet over a stormy sea. I can well see how a catastrophic failure could ensue.
I was thinking this morning about Lord Carrigton, the Foreign Secretary who resigned as soon as it became clear his department had cocked up in not recognising the build-up to the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands. He took responsibility which he believed came with the pay grade. I'm not suggesting that the email affair in Downing Street is a resigning matter but Brown should accept responsibility and apologise. Remember all the machinations between him and Blair when they were at daggers drawn? There is a track record.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
Tizer
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Posted - 13/04/2009 : 11:24
I hope you are right about BP and costs Frank, and that BP and the helicopter people have well-trained, expert staff. I say that because it's becoming increasingly not the case for other business areas. A very public example in the USA involves the food industry. They often don't have the technical staff any more. An epidemic of salmonella bacteria from pistachio nuts is causing a lot of distress and other trouble. You might think pistachios are not important but when a contamination like this occurs you find that the nuts are not just eaten as pistachios but are ground up and used in a wide range of other foods to give flavour, and the nuts and ingredients made from them are being shipped all over USA and also overseas. Pistachios are roasted and should be free of bacteria. But this company failed to adequately segregate roasted nuts from unroasted, contaminated nuts - and not surprisingly ended up sending out massive amounts of salmonella contaminated nuts. The company, however, seemed surprised. All this is bad enough but there is now another big salonella problem in the USA - from peanuts. The FDA has felt it necessary to put out a statement to US food manufacturers informing them that they are responsible for the safety of the food products they make. When it comes to this level, you wonder what a poor state we have got into.
Edited by - Tizer on 13/04/2009 11:26:01
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frankwilk
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Posted - 13/04/2009 : 17:25
Tizer my mate Bernard would not stand for any cost cutting on Safety at BP. I did hear from one source that Bond are finished in the North Sea !!!!
Frank Wilkinson Once Navy Always Navy |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 13/04/2009 : 17:28
Tiz, I think you are right to worry. I have always said that we should never under-estimate the capacity of people to be stupid and lazy. This is the wild card in so many cases and of course I have always the example of Big Harry's death in my mind which was a product of this in exactly the same field as the helicopter, oil company research and surveying but in Australia. Exactly the same regs but two of them were killed because of a chain of events which started with reducing costs, proceeded through incompetent and stupid people to the point where it cost two lives. The key is almost always employing people to supervise and spot check. Whewn the investigators go in they almost always find that the paper trail is deficient even if the work has been done.
Same thing applioes in the Downing Street enail scandal. After Joe Moore and Charlie Whelan why wasn't there adequate scrutiny of what these people were doing to protect them from their own stupidity. They are so divorced from the real world that they imagine the fantasy world they inhabit, full of smoke and mirrors, is actually a parallel universe. The political advisors are not the only ones subject to this delusion.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 14/04/2009 : 06:46
I'm getting bored with the email saga and the refusal of Brown to yield anything more than pertial apology but did you see the letter signed by him which they showed briefly on television last night? What a strange, crabby little signature! I think that signatures can give a lot of information and this was not an impressive one.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 14/04/2009 : 07:00
On a different note... If media attention is a measure of the degree of crisis the 'credit cruch' is over. I don't think for one minute that it is, I think the game plan is to let the causes and actions drop because of the next election. If the level of distress in the lower echelons becomes a problem the governmnet can convert it to good news by announcing initiatives to combat the problems. Some estimates put unemployment at 3,000,000 by then.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
Tizer
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Posted - 14/04/2009 : 10:20
Frank, my mates in the food industry wouldn't let cost cutting compromise safety - but they are out of the industry now for one reason or another.The oil industry may be more careful about safety because it's the safety of its own people. With the food industry it's only customers!
General Motors may be further down the slippery slope. The company has had its head in the sand for many years now. Today's news from the BBC site:
"Shares in US carmaker General Motors fell steeply in European trade after a report the US government wants the firm to start bankruptcy proceedings soon. The New York Times said the Treasury Department wants a court-supervised restructuring to start by 1 June, but the firm would prefer other options. In early trade in Frankfurt, GM shares were down 14.3% at 1.32 euros after closing 16% lower in New York. Meanwhile, GM is recalling 1.5 million vehicles over engine fire fears."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7997694.stm
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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 14/04/2009 : 16:55
A monetarist would say that the market is effecting its own restructuring. The tectonic plates of industry are shifting and it would be a mistake to try to halt the process. One of the few places where market forces do matter. If they are not viable they must change and restructuring is as good a way of doing it as any. It is inevitable.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
frankwilk
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Posted - 14/04/2009 : 23:03
This grabed my attention, don't think it was a wind up but lets hope it's real
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBTVdnWj1hM
We must of all had dreams what was yours ????????
Edited by - frankwilk on 15/04/2009 06:27:09 AM
Frank Wilkinson Once Navy Always Navy |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 15/04/2009 : 06:41
http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/04/susan-boyle-why.html
It looks as though it was genuine.... Wonderful!
Well. it's official, the email scandal is over. They wheeled Hazel Mears out yesterday and she told us that it's 'time to move on'. So that's all right then.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
HerbSG
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Posted - 17/04/2009 : 01:09
Another Canadian soldier returned home today , #117 (the 2nd female). The body was shipped on a military flight carrying 137 troops back home, The troops expected to land at CFB Trenton to take part in the repatriation ceremony, but the powers that be had them deplaned at the Ottawa airport and then the flight continued on (1/2 hr) to Trenton. The DND have now apologised and said this will never happen again, any returning troops will indeed accompany any bodies to the end of their journey home. All the fuss over some beauracrat trying to save a few dollars on fuel.
HERB
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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 17/04/2009 : 07:30
The nurse who was struck off the register for blowing the whistle via Panorama on the disgraceful treatment of old people at Bristol. Alright, she might have done it the wrong way but it should have been handled differently. What sort of message does this send to others who are worried about what is happening? No word of recognition for the circumstances which forced this poor woman to do what she did. What the bureacrats haven't addressed is that the procedures for blowing the whistle aren't simple enough and reassure the whistleblower that they will be protected. There must be a better way, even if it means the messages are anonymous.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
frankwilk
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Posted - 17/04/2009 : 07:59
It struck me as a bad decsion. No mention of the Nurses, who delayed the morphine injection. !! Or why the patients had been left for ages with no toilet help etc. Chief excutive not rolled out to explain. We are being let down again by incompetent staff.
The BBC should take the nurse onto it's payroll, and let her loose across the country.
Frank Wilkinson Once Navy Always Navy |
SPEAKER'S CORNER 2012
