Last autumn, we found ourselves coming out of a very tough year. Our 3rd wedding anniversary was an opportunity to celebrate the fact that we’d somehow got through it all. As it’s a bit of a tradition to spend our anniversary somewhere in the UK, I took my wife to one of my favourite cities: York.
UPDATE: The final addendum to this post is that we’ve had a personal email from Mr Dennison, offering a full and sincere apology – which we have, of course, accepted. Whilst we still have issues with how the council go about major works, the incident on Twitter is finished.
If you’ve read any recent posts, you’ll know that I’m unhappy not only about the extortionate bills from the council, but also their single-minded righteousness and refusal to enter a meaningful discussion.
The middle-management gnome at the centre of this was one Mark Dennison, who just sent me the following tweet:
mark_dennison (Mark Dennison)
@electroweb you will be glad to know i have left the Council now so you can moan to someone else……have fun
6:51 PM Jan 7th via web
Good to know that the concerns and feelings of residents and taxpayers are taken seriously by council employees. What a warm feeling to know that those whose wages we pay, through tax and the charges on my property, hold us on such high regard. What wonders this does for the level of trust between leaseholders and council!
Update: Mr Dennison deleted his tweet almost immediately. He’s clearly a man who stands by his words.
Update 2: By the morning following this tweet, Mr Dennison’s entire Twitter account had been deleted. To be clear, although many people got in touch with him in support of us, there was no hounding or abuse and everyone was polite.
In futile exasperation, I’ve written the following letter to Mark Dennison of Brighton & Hove City Council. He’s the man at the top when it comes to their ludicrously expensive, random and unstoppable maintenance of my home, and I’m sick of trying to get any answers (or any kind of sympathetic response) from him. He’s the consummate local council middle-manager, lets put it that way…
A wise use of 20p, York Castle Museum
Further to my last blog about Brighton Council’s proposed £430,000 replacement of the two lifts in my building, I did my own investigations.
I spoke to Thyssen Krupp, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of lifts. Obviously they haven’t inspected the job and don’t know exactly what’s involved, but they were happy to give me ballpark figures for replacement of two lifts.
There were several options, from refurbishment to full replacement, including stopping at alternate floors as they do now, or making both stop at all floors. But the bottom line is that this work should be costing no more than…
£270,000
And that’s without the economies of scale that you could negotiate with a several-month contract to install new lifts in half a dozen or more buildings.
So there’s a 40% markup somewhere along the way. I will not be letting this drop.
With thanks to Simon, area sales rep of Thyssen Krupp and jolly nice guy.
I’ve already written about Brighton Council’s new communal TV aerial for my building, which cost a mere £13,000 to install. But today I got an even bigger shock through the post.
I live in an 11-storey block, and there are a pair of lifts. The lifts are old, yes. But they work. Occasionally, they break down. But they’re soon fixed (usually a day or so). Today, I learned that the council have put out a contract to have both lifts replaced.
The cost to me, personally, is estimated to be over £10,000.
That’s a cost to the block of almost £500,000. Half a million pounds. I live in one of half a dozen blocks on this road. So that’s £3 million cost to the council and its leaseholders in one easy swoop. Ludicrous.
I can’t believe I’ve never blogged on the utter uselessness of Yodel/Home Delivery Network. Virtually all courier companies are terrible for consumer deliveries, but Yodel make utter uselessness an art form. You can read my most entertaining spat with them here.
The vast majority of people are at work between about 8am and 6pm. If Royal Mail try to deliver a package during the day, they will either try and give it to a neighbour, or they’ll leave you a little card. You take that card on a 5 minute trip to their depot or a post office nearby and you can pick up your exciting parcel. Or, if you really want to, you can arrange a re-delivery for a Saturday morning.
Yodel/HDN will, of course, offer to redeliver to you. But only during the times you’re at work. You could redirect the package to another address but I, like the majority of people, cannot accept personal deliveries to my place of work.
The do have a depot you can pick your parcel up from, which is a convenient 16 miles away in that well-known hub of the South Coast conurbation, Newhaven. A place also well-served with public transport.
Last week, I went llama trekking in the traditional environment for these hardy Andean pack animals: Northamptonshire. Of course, llamas are by far the best animals in the world and it was a pleasure to get close to them.
You can’t ride llamas – they carry baggage but not people – so llama trekking is, in effect, taking a llama for a walk. Once trained, they’re friendly and calm walkers and will follow you quite happily. They have a leash, but it remains slack – you don’t need to drag them along, you just give a gentle tug and start moving off when you want to go or to turn, and a gentle tug backwards if they don’t want to stop but you do.
My llama was called Napper. At first he was a reluctant walker, but we soon got to know each other and he stayed just over my right shoulder, allowing me to stroke his neck every so often.
Sadly it was the one day of the week with pretty constant rain, but the countryside was stunning and it was very restful couple of hours, man and llama in beautiful union with each other.
I can highly recommend a day out with the lovely people at Catanger Llamas. They have 65 of these beautiful animals, and taking one of them for a walk is a rare and enjoyable delight.
One day, when I have an acre of land, I will own a pair of llamas.
I live in a flat for which Brighton Council is the freeholder. As the analogue TV signal is being switched off next year, they’ve upgraded our TV aerial system.
The system is overly complex, massively expensive and includes a ludicrous ‘maintenance contract’ (what the hell do you need to maintain on a TV aerial?). It’s also for Sky as well as Freeview – something that’s not needed as anyone who wants Sky can get it through a dish and we’re all wired for cable. Sky is something which has no-doubt pushed up the cost considerably.
In all, I’m not very happy with the council’s new aerial system – it’s costing me, personally, over £300 in a block of 40 other flats!
Brighton Council’s only response has been “we have to install it, we’re responsible for providing you with an aerial”.
Today, I’ve had a letter from the people who are installing it, as they need access to my flat to put in a socket. They’ve given a week’s window for the installation, which does not include weekends. Helpfully, they can only come between 8am and 6pm, during one particular week, Monday to Friday only.
That’s useful for anyone who has to work, isn’t it?
(Incidentally, I’ve put in a freedom of information for details of the meetings where they discussed the system, and also requested details of any contact between the council and Sky TV. I want to know – and despite asking several times I haven’t been told – why Sky is part of the system, when they could have had Freeview only)
Things from my Posterous MiniBlog
