Brits waste billions on more tat

StevieJ

fc123 wrote: »

So tat is not such a sin really. I do acknowledge the waste and environmental consequences but a tat fest is not always A Very Bad Thing.

But most of the Tat comes from China

fc123

StevieJ wrote: »

But most of the Tat comes from China

Even so, it still circulates around the economy..the importer makes his ££, the retailer and the charity shop. We just lose the manufacturing price on the Chinese import...the remaining marging stays in the UK.

The mark ups are huge ex China.

I hate to do figures as they are personal to me but I am having a stack of samples made out in China at the moment (doesn't affect what we produce in UK...he can't do the volume nor detail I need) and I as the designer/retailer will make the lions share.

Davesnave

bo_drinker wrote: »

And the !!!!!! off the car

Where I am, it would be a pleasure to notice bird !!!!!!. On the other hand, there is the advantage that everyone's motor looks much the same for about 6 months of the year. All muckily egalitarian,though 4x4s still have right of way, and tractors trump anything, except the milk lorry.:rolleyes:

lemonjelly

fc123 wrote: »

I thought that maybe you also had a pasta mountain.

Are you on a diet? Tomterm lost 6 stone this year.

No pasta mountain. Am trying to acquire a slightly improved shape. Not out of shape or anything, but could be a bit trimmer

I am on a clothes diet - bought no new clothes for 16 months now. Banned clothes as a present as I don't wear anything out.

Aim is a 5 year reduce the tat in the wardrobe.

trumpton

Our house sale completes on Friday and we have been desparately trying to clear stuff out of the old house. Going through the garage and the loft, I am frankly ashamed of the amount of tat we have accumulated and indeed, wasted money on, over the years.

The garage had about 20 tins of paint, all with about 2 inches at the bottom, kept just in case I wanted to 'touch up' the paintwork when it got chipped. I could open a shop selling McDonald's 'collectables'. Home Bargains also has a lot to answer for. I know my kids are keeping people in China in jobs, but sometimes I think stuff is just too cheap these days. My children each had more toys in their first two years than I had in my whole childhood. Consumerism gets me down sometimes, though it's my fault for buying stuff, I know.

On a cheerier note I have spent a lot of time and effort re-homing furniture because I can't bear to throw good stuff away.

StevieJ

trumpton wrote: »

My children each had more toys in their first two years than I had in my whole childhood. Consumerism gets me down sometimes, though it's my fault for buying stuff, I know.

I know, it has become a nightmare deciding what to buy :eek:

Really2

I thought this was about this.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labours-computer-blunders-cost-16326bn-1871967.html

Botched projects: The cost of failure

£12.7bn National Programme for IT (NHS)

It was meant to revolutionise the way the health service worked. But far from heralding a new age of efficiency, the National Programme for IT is now widely perceived as the greatest government IT white elephant of history. As well as the huge costs involved, suppliers have walked away, projects are running years behind schedule, while medical professionals have complained that they were never consulted on what they wanted the new system to achieve.

£7.1bn Defence Information Infrastructure (DII)

It seemed like a good idea at the time. In 2005, the Ministry of Defence decided to offer a contract to a consortium of suppliers to replace the hundreds of different computer systems being used by the military with a single system that would be used by the army, navy and air force, as well as the MoD itself. It was to be used by 300,000 people across 2,000 sites. However, it is running more than £180m over budget and 18 months late. A parliamentary inquiry also warned that forces' reliance on older systems put them at risk of a security breach.

£5bn National Identity Scheme

Originally budgeted at £3bn, the Government’s plan for new identity cards, containing biometric data and linked to a central database, soon came under heavy criticism from civil liberty campaigners. As the costs spiralled, so the Home Office began to water down the aims of the scheme to assuage the critics. In July, Alan Johnson announced that the cards would no longer be compulsory, while moves to force all airport workers to use the cards were also abandoned.

£400m Libra system (for magistrates' courts)

An attempt to bring records used by magistrates courts into the digital age backfired when trying to introduce one universal IT system to all courts descended into a costly mess. Fujitsu originally bid £146m to deliver the Libra system in 1998. However, the project proved more complicated than anticipated, and costs have now been put at more than £400m.

£350m Single Payment Scheme system (SPS)

The Single Payment Scheme system was designed in 2003 to be a sophisticated way of giving farmers their subsidies, by mapping their land and working out their level of payment. But failures with the IT systems being used mean that farmers were left short-changed. In 2006, around £1.28bn of the £1.5bn subsidies destined for British farmers still had not been given out. The Rural Payments Agency overseeing the project was ordered to make 23 major changes to the system. Despite the £350m spent on the technology, the Public Accounts Committee warned last year that it was already “at risk of becoming obsolete”.

£300m GCHQ "box move" of technology

When the Government’s intelligence organisation, GCHQ, decided to move its complex computer systems into a new building in 1997, the projected £41m cost was so small that officials believed it could be absorbed within existing budgets. That was until the Curse of the Government IT Project struck. Costs of the so-called “box move” soon began to rise out of control. In 2003, the National Audit Office (NAO) put the costs at more than £300m. Edward Leigh, Tory chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, called the original budget “staggeringly inaccurate”.

£155m National Offender Management Information System (C-Nomis)

In an attempt to make sharing information about offenders easier, the Department for Justice gave the go-ahead for the National Offender Management Information System (C-Nomis) to be rolled out to prisons and the probation service. As the estimated cost doubled to more than £600m and senior officials questioned the whole point of the project, it was abandoned in 2007, with £155m already spent.

£106m Benefit Processing Replacement Programme

In June 2006, the Department for Work and Pensions confidently assured Parliament that new funding for its Benefit Processing Replacement Programme (BPRP) had been approved. So it came as a surprise to many when it emerged just three months later that the project had been quietly scrapped. Little information has emerged on why BPRP was abandoned, but the Government has admitted that £106m had already been spent on it before it pulled the plug.

£88.5m Prism IT project

Undeterred by past failures, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) thought it would be a good idea in 2002 to order a new computer system for their 200 offices around the globe. The result was the Prism IT project, seemingly a bargain at just £54m. However, delays and costs have risen, while the contractor was even forced to temporarily halt the scheme in 2005 while an investigation took place into its various problems. The system has not proved a hit with staff. One wrote in 2004: “In all the FCO’s long history of ineptly implemented IT initiatives, Prism is the most badly designed, ill-considered one of the lot.”

£81m Shared Services Centre

To officials at the Department for Transport, the Shared Services Centre seemed to good to be true: not only would it integrate the human resources and financial services of the department and its various agencies, it would even save the taxpayer £57m. Unfortunately, those hopes were dashed as the scheme became another example of an IT project going horribly wrong. Workers at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) were forced to brush up on their language skills as computer systems gave them messages in German. It will now cost £81m, a failure in management that the Public Accounts Committee described as a display of “stupendous incompetence”.

TOTAL: £26.3bn

puddy

what about all the useless social services IT systems throughout the country, although they are conducted and bought by local government but you ask any social worker about the 'IT' they have to use

i love this country but why are we so rubbish at things like this??

Really2

jenner wrote: »

what about all the useless social services IT systems throughout the country, although they are conducted and bought by local government but you ask any social worker about the 'IT' they have to use

i love this country but why are we so rubbish at things like this??

Backhanders.

If they let places get on with it but had to say they had to set data in certain fields and exports to the same file format there is no reason why any area could not share data anyway.

I do not have a clue why we do not let departments make decision and look after costs instead of taking it away from them.

I think it is proven the larger the system/project the higher the cost, it's not cheaper at all.

StevieJ

Really2 wrote: »

Backhanders.

Sad to say but I find many decisions incomprehensible unless you think the unspeakable :eek: