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I have to go to Ashford for a meeting next month, I asked my admin people to book me a night in a Travelodge or Premier Inn and train tickets. They came back with a quote for restricted train tickets costing just shy of £100 and a room not far off that. If I book an open train return myself it's about £90 and a non-discounted room on the Premier Inn website is about £60. I'll book them myself and claim them as expenses. What's the point in travel booking service companies if they make no savings at all and actually cost more than public cost?

"When in deadly danger, when beset by doubt; run in little circles, wave your arms and shout"

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https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/aug/07/london-gets-24-times-as-much-infrastructure-north-east-england

A hugely unfair spending balance , while living costs are more it's a ridiculous state. While cross rail is ongoing and future cross rails we have the oddball pacer trains that nobody wanted that are decades old. Manchester and Sheffield have pre victorian travel times and a motorway link that has been put off for 50 years.

Homer: How is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home winemaking course, and I forgot how to drive?

[

i]Mr. Burns: Woah, slow down there maestro. There's a *New* Mexico?[/i]
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https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/aug/07/london-gets-24-times-as-much-infrastructure-north-east-england

A hugely unfair spending balance , while living costs are more it's a ridiculous state. While cross rail is ongoing and future cross rails we have the oddball pacer trains that nobody wanted that are decades old. Manchester and Sheffield have pre victorian travel times and a motorway link that has been put off for 50 years.

But I thought these things were all the fault of the nasty EU.

"it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it."

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But I thought these things were all the fault of the nasty EU.

There were a lot of mad claims in the run up to the vote must have missed that one , though I'm sure someone probably said it.

Homer: How is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home winemaking course, and I forgot how to drive?

[

i]Mr. Burns: Woah, slow down there maestro. There's a *New* Mexico?[/i]
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I have to go to Ashford for a meeting next month, I asked my admin people to book me a night in a Travelodge or Premier Inn and train tickets. They came back with a quote for restricted train tickets costing just shy of £100 and a room not far off that. If I book an open train return myself it's about £90 and a non-discounted room on the Premier Inn website is about £60. I'll book them myself and claim them as expenses. What's the point in travel booking service companies if they make no savings at all and actually cost more than public cost?

Oh yes, know that only too well. All our travel has to go through our travel agency who not only charge a hefty fee for each booking but also appear to have negotiated deals that cost far more than what is available to the general public. It is a disciplinary offence to book travel and not use them. Stupid beyond belief, and given that I and many of the 5000+ other employees do a lot of travel no doubt costs us a ridiculous amount each year.

 

We have a similar deal for stationery where we have managed to negotiate a deal with a supplier to purchase items at inflated rates that other companies would blush at charging, we also get to wait a week or more for delivery. Presumably they have not heard of Amazon.

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Same here with the travel. My former employer went through three different suppliers while I was there. The worst, by a long way, was American Express who they moved to a year or so before I left. Their web based booking tool was impenetrable; it would add about an extra half an hour to your process of trying to make a booking because it was so badly designed and slow.

Going off on a tangent; what is it with large American cooperations and really useless web design? In addition to the above mentioned AMEX travel tool the absolute worst web experience you will ever "enjoy" is IBM. It must have been designed by people who spend all their spare time playing Dungeons and Dragons - it's a labyrinth. I've lost count of the number of times I've clicked through a few links to try to reach the information I need only to end up back where I started.

"it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it."

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I have to go to Ashford for a meeting next month, I asked my admin people to book me a night in a Travelodge or Premier Inn and train tickets. They came back with a quote for restricted train tickets costing just shy of £100 and a room not far off that. If I book an open train return myself it's about £90 and a non-discounted room on the Premier Inn website is about £60. I'll book them myself and claim them as expenses. What's the point in travel booking service companies if they make no savings at all and actually cost more than public cost?

 

Same with Trainline.com, they charge £1 extra per booking, what's the point of that if you can get (most times) the same ticket cheaper from a ticket office, and I would like to point out that most ticket offices try their hardest to find you the cheapest fares.

As we discovered when we were up north at half term, the ticket office saved us £75 on a 2 1/2 person open return to Warrington, with reserved seats which trainline charge you for.

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use National Rail Enquiries instead.

 

http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/

That's what I use.  Most rail providers also have their own tools that do the job.  I use the Greater Anglia one and it's quite good, plus the e-tickets are very useful.

"When in deadly danger, when beset by doubt; run in little circles, wave your arms and shout"

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A Scottish friend of mine posted a picture of BBC Weather on Facebook showing Scotland will be getting -10C temperature tonight.  He then had a mini-rant about how global warming was clearly a lie and how this cold night was proof.

"When in deadly danger, when beset by doubt; run in little circles, wave your arms and shout"

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Barnet Council announced that they'd had significant and serious performance issues since outsourcing their back office functions to Crapita in a £322m deal in 2013.  That said, they were pleased with the cost savings that had been made.  That's alright then...

"When in deadly danger, when beset by doubt; run in little circles, wave your arms and shout"

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That's what I use. Most rail providers also have their own tools that do the job. I use the Greater Anglia one and it's quite good, plus the e-tickets are very useful.

They all use the same underlying platform, the same one that is used by all ticketing outlets and the TOCs. The next time you buy a ticket on the train you will see the Atos (yes, that Atos) logo on the ticket machine.

"it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it."

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http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/190m-leeds-flood-scheme-unaffordable-government-claims-1-7659479

 

 

Leeds flood prevention scheme "unaffordable" Leeds, a major city, north/south bias? half the cost of Buck House.

 

Waiting for the usual justifications

"Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice, socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality" - Mikhail Bakunin

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http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/190m-leeds-flood-scheme-unaffordable-government-claims-1-7659479

 

 

Leeds flood prevention scheme "unaffordable" Leeds, a major city, north/south bias? half the cost of Buck House.

 

Waiting for the usual justifications

 

If only the citizens of Leeds gave anything like as much back to the country as the Royal Family do by occasionally sitting in a house that people stare at.

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

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Glad to here. I used it a while back and only last week a recruiter said to me nobody uses it anymore. What do they know ?

Someone better tell IBM that they blew $7bn acquiring something "nobody uses anymore" plus millions a year on new developments. But that brings me back to one of my previous rants, recruiters!

"it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it."

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Someone better tell IBM that they blew $7bn acquiring something "nobody uses anymore" plus millions a year on new developments. But that brings me back to one of my previous rants, recruiters!

Recruiters are largely parasites.  Some are good but the majority are pustulent boils on the backside of humanity.

"When in deadly danger, when beset by doubt; run in little circles, wave your arms and shout"

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