Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

Booking a cheap short-break holiday sounds really simple,  doesn’t it? Just pick a cheap flight from your local airport and off you go.

There are two problems with that approach though. First, there’s the flight times in both directions. Whilst 10am sounds reasonable enough as a departure time for our next trip it means a 7am departure from home which is a little early and forget about that 8am departure! Likewise, on the way back you don’t want to be shooting for morning departures from an unfamiliar city; much better to aim for late afternoon or perhaps early evening which a) gets you more time in the resort and b) gives you lots of time to organise the trip and allow for any mistakes you may make in the journey to the airport (eg our next trip involves a walk, boat trip and coach trip to reach the airport).

The second problem is the accommodation. In the off-season you can find that there are more flights going to a resort than there are reasonable rooms available to cope with the people arriving or that the reasonable rooms are way too expensive for a short break.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. For example, if you’re thinking of Madrid you could consider Madrid Norte rather than those right in the centre. Amersterdam is small enough that Amsterdam hotels generally don’t get split so much into regions and the small size of the place means that most are either in or close to excellent spots in the city and much the same applies for Lisbon hotels too. It’s even possible to shoot for romantic hotels in Florence (although do watch those tagged “boutique hotels” which can be considerably more expensive than normal hotels and may not offer much for that supposed exclusivity).

Prices in all the above aren’t too bad although do be wary of the “prices from X”. Sorting by price for a double room works well if you’re looking for a double room but if you’re bringing along the kids you can sometimes find that the hotel with the cheapest double room either doesn’t have family rooms or if it does they’re not the cheapest available in that destination so it pays to check out the prices of the first four or five hotels listed.

It seems like aeons ago when we were all routinely pampered with blankets, pillows, endless food & drink, socks, little “do not disturb” signs, toothbrushes, combs and even flight bags. Actually, you needed the flight bag to carry off all the goodies that you were given in those days. That was in economy too… in first class you’d have needed porters to take everything with you!

Everything is different now of course in the age of the discount airline. The food & drink only turns up if you pay for it, the flight bag has long since been consigned to history and they’ve even cut into the basics such as blankets and pillows which often aren’t even adequately stocked on planes never mind being at least the little bit overstocked as they were yesteryear.

Funnily enough it’s actually the summer season when travellers end up feeling cold or even freezing. That’s the season when everyone’s heading off to the beaches and leaving home when it’s fairly warm too so they’re travelling in their summer attire of t-shirts, shorts, skirts and light clothing generally.

What do you do about it though? Well, you could cart on a blanket and pillow but, frankly, you’d look like a complete plonker doing so and besides you’ve got to factor the weight into your greatly reduced luggage allowance. It’s also two carryon items which may not be allowed but anyway, do you really want to juggle two more things on your vacation?

A long time ago, there used to be a single induction course for new entrants here but now that the induction seems to have been passed on, rightly, to the appropriate line manager, the subjects that would formerly have been covered as part of that are now taken up by courses in their own right.

The reason for that seems fairly clear: the personnel people want to be sure that the subjects are properly covered so that the company doesn’t get sued. However, that reasoning leads to the “flight safety” problem i.e. that the courses are just being done for the sake of saying that they’re being done.

So, we have the, clearly important, fire safety course which is generally seen as a chore to do when, of course, it could be rather important one day. We have a data protection / freedom of information course which skims over the information. We have a diversity course which is one that really seems, unfortunately, to fall into the “we have to do this, so we’re doing it” camp. Then there’s fraud awareness which seems mainly to have the message “we’ll catch you on”. Finally, for now, there’s the display screen awareness course which does have some useful points but which needs to come with a little manual as most of those points will be quickly forgotten.

As all of those except for the main fire safety course are online, personnel don’t seem to worry about targeting them in any way and, as they find their feet with the technology, it would seem that we can all look forward to a diet increasingly made up of mandatory courses, many of which may well be on the mandatory list because they can be put on it.

I suspect that for most people it’s very much a gradual process of change for their homes. Not only is this easier going financially but it avoids really serious disruption.

But where do you start? We’re in a house that missed out on something like 20 years worth of updates and maintenance so it’s in need of pretty much a complete upgrade. What we’re trying to do is to go through it in the most sensible way we can manage. That basically means starting at the top and working down on the basis that dust and whatnot will fall down so working on the top floor first should reduce the mess.

Unfortunately, it’s not always possible to do things in the logical sequence. Thus we find ourselves needing to replace the heating system now rather than in the summer when it wouldn’t be as inconvenient. We also found ourselves forced into replacing the kitchen roof when ideally that would have waited until next year when we might be extending the room beside it and thus needing another roof.

It’s easier with soft furnishings of course which can be upgraded anytime without affecting any of the other things going on. What we can’t really do is replace the carpet until the building work is done as it would be sure to be full of dirt if we did.

So, gradual with little flurries of activity is our approach.

The social security system has been, up to now, fairly standard UK-wide. It wasn’t that the system was exactly the same as historically there have been different sets of laws in the mainland and in Northern Ireland. However, the laws were arranged so that the amounts paid in the various benefits were the same even when there were different computer systems making those payments.

The operational aspects of that changed about 20 years ago when the computer systems were amalgamated so that, for example, the computer system which calculates and pays your retirement pension in Belfast is exactly the same one that calculates and pays it in Birmingham. Prior to that there was a system in Northern Ireland which paid the pensions in Northern Ireland and a different system on the mainland. However, the amount calculated to be paid was the same thus the changeover was seamless.

Historically, changes in social security payments in England were always reflected in corresponding changes in payments made in Northern Ireland. This time around though the policitians in Northern Ireland haven’t, yet, reached agreement to make the necessary changes which in turn means that Northern Ireland has been subject to penalty payments corresponding, roughly, to the amount that would have been saved if they’d made those changes. Those penalty charges are starting to mount up and we’re now starting to see the start of the effects of such penalties being imposed.

First off, it’s worth noting that the budget for the social security department is usually the highest of all the departments so penalties imposed on it that need to be spread amongst the other departments hit the other departments quite hard. Secondly, the Northern Ireland executive have resolved that neither education nor health will have cuts imposed which leaves fewer departments to shoulder the cost and that cost will be quite substantial.

This week, we’ve already seen the announcement that DRD won’t have enough cash to repair all the street lights and that DOJ will be suffering a similar major cut. They are only the first to make their announcements and similar cuts will be happening in public services over the coming year if agreement on welfare reform doesn’t happen. Of course, without agreement, it’s not just this year but every year to come that will have cuts. They’ll be increasing in scale too: it wouldn’t just be “tens of thousands” of street lights that would go out this year, but rather that a similar additional number would go out each and every year thereafter.

What’s also a looming problem is that the ability to pay the benefits affected will gradually dwindle as time goes on. Despite what some of the politicians think, the computers currently making the payments will be switched off in due course or rather the ability to support them will be. In fact, the ability to support them is already diminishing as the support teams are being transferred to other duties. For a change there really is a firm end date for them to work to and unmissable deadlines are approaching very quickly indeed. Even basic training for those in the benefits offices takes time and, without agreement, that won’t be done. Changing over to the new system is something that will take time to do and the time available to do that changeover is running out.

How’s it going to look if some key deadline passes and it isn’t possible to changeover in time? How are they planning on explaining to the thousands of recipients of the affected benefits that it’s no longer possible to pay them?