Hammonds crash on Sunday night

Also, a cracking car magazine type show attached.

BBC2 Sunday night at 8pm

Nige

Reply to
Nige
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Yes indeed - can't wait! I'm overdue watching a good un-PC program.

Matt

Reply to
Matthew Maddock

Just to get you in the mood.

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Reply to
Rob

I'll be watching Time Team as well.

Both feature interesting, enthusiastic, people. That's getting so rare these days on TV.

Reply to
David G. Bell

Was the sound a little messed on that? he sounded more like Q than Jezza.

Reply to
Elder

Well I saw it winced a lot and I have the same opinion, no matter how 'good' a driver you are lose a front tyre at very high speeds and you are little more than a passenger and when the remaining bits of wheel dig in you are just a projectile. On the lighter side what a good job he didn't have a booster seat.

Welcome back Hamster!

Derek and for those of us with long memories wince some more at

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when it goes right
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Reply to
Derek

On or around Sun, 28 Jan 2007 10:14:06 +0000, Rob enlightened us thusly:

neat.

Reply to
Austin Shackles

Yes indeed! The feature on his crash was very well done I thought.

and given the choice between the Jag and the Aston, I know which I'd choose...a new D3 and a Defender with the change!

Matt

Reply to
Matthew Maddock

it was very good I wonder what goes through your mind in that situation apart from OH......... Shit and a quantity of earth Richard reckons he doesn't remember perhaps as well . Aston or XKR at those prices? for me a classic Vogue SE soft dash with all the toys and only just enough left over for fuel or maybe the same Overfinched yes definately Overfinched. I hate it missing Peggy and having to sell her just when I had the electrics sorted made it doubley worse. Derek Kato 200TDi Disco

Reply to
Derek

It's just a shame it's all so blatantly staged and set-up, Porsches and Ferraris setting identical times on the track, caravan programmes that include cameras being in just the right place to perfectly film burning cushions being thrown etc etc.

It's funny, but it's very far from genuine, it gives the appearance of bucking the trend and thumbing the nose at health & safety people and so on, but no chance.

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

On or around Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:05:27 +0000, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

the road mending bit was fun, too, I thought.

Reply to
Austin Shackles

In article , Austin Shackles writes

A bit OTT though. They were supposedly making a hugely important point about road maintenance performance, but the silliness undermined it (and I love the show!).

So why can't road maintainers have fewer sites active at one time, and mend them faster? They can do it for Heathrow's runways (and even Bristol airport's skid-pan*), so why not the M4? It's not cheaper to be slower...

Regards,

Simonm.

(*t'would be a better use of Lulsgate overall, and since they've set it up already...)

Reply to
SpamTrapSeeSig

On or around Mon, 29 Jan 2007 08:50:40 GMT, SpamTrapSeeSig enlightened us thusly:

Up to a point: I think partly the "how hard can it be?" series is underlying that it's NOT as simple as those of us waiting in a queue think. Sure, they got the job done, but only by throwing many times the resources at it. The highways maintenance lot can't afford to do that - unless of course they can get many times the funding.

This isn't to say that the council workers in particular don't swing the lead. The ones doing resurfacing on contract tend to shift their arse and get it done, as they're only getting paid the same, whether they take 2 days or 12.

There'd be a goo deal to be said for paying the council boys piece-work rather than hourly, but I doubt you could swing it. And there is a flip-side to the council road-men's job - like being called out at 2 ack emma to do gritting, or man a diversion around a road closure, or such; it ain't all leaning on the shovel and drinking tea in a hut.

but back to the program: they got the bit they were doing finished by diverting supplies from somewhere else, which doesn't help in the wider picture.

My biggest complaint is that recently the quality of work, especially the "tar-and-chippings" surface dressing is utter s**te, lasting often only a month or so. This can't only be down to more traffic and heavier lorries; I'm sure a lot is to do with the use of cheaper materials: inferior grade tar-emulsion rather than better stuff, and bigger chippings which fall off more easily. False economy if carried to the extreme that is evident these days, where the surface is compromised within a short time and even in some cases they've been seen doing remedial work within a month to get the surface somewhere near usable, also they've had the gritter wagons out spreading fine dusty gravel to cover the exposed (melting) tar emulsion.

Reply to
Austin Shackles

That's how bin men tend to be paid, so I don't see why not. It's called 'task and finish'. They negotiate a price for the job and get paid the same regardless of how long it takes and can set their own start time, breaks etc (within limits).

However highways work is not repetitive like the bin round and is dependent on external factors like weather, materials supply and so on. Makes it rather less easy to determine a 'reasonable' time for the job.

Reply to
Tim Hobbs

D'you know, I thought that was the dullest* stunt I have ever seen on the show, and it seemed to last the whole programme. I hope that isn't the standard for the new series.

  • In both Welsh and English senses.
Reply to
Rich

In article , Tim Hobbs writes

The bottom line - the _real_ bottom line - is that putting all the resources in one place at a time, to finish as quickly as possible, is the most efficient way to do it overall. Disruption is minimized, plant and people are idle for as little time as possible, and the actual direct expenditure is not hugely higher than the 'round tuit' approach.

I take the point about the weather, however if there's the capacity overall for, say, 100 lane-miles of resurfacing per council depot over a given year, it's not going to be increased by splitting the workforce down into small groups and spreading them out thinly.

I think the highlight of the piece was James May's solution to the megaphone problem...

Regards,

Simonm.

Reply to
SpamTrapSeeSig

I'm always mystified by the way we tackle motorway maintenance in this country. Over a two or three mile stretch of works, you often only see a handful of workers, and 8 till 4 seems the norm. Surely we should have a night shift and enough workers to keep the job on the go at top speed?

I work in the airline industry and that's been a 24 operation for donkey's years now.

Julian

Reply to
Julian

Trouble is, in road mending the people who pay for the repairs are not the people losing money whilst the road is dug up. If Mrs Miggins can't get the kids to school and 5 local shops lose all their passing trade who cares? Not the council....

Keeping the job running efficiently requires strong, empowered and well-skilled project managers. Ever seen one of them in a Council building? No, me neither, 'cos those people would rather work anywhere than in local Government.

Fundamentally, that's why outsourcing is so popular. It can put real commercial pressures on. Back to bin wagons - even those councils which don't subcontract still have to tender for the job internally and work on commercial terms. Works very well as far as I can see, especially now the contracts are longer (7-14 years).

Reply to
Tim Hobbs

On or around Mon, 29 Jan 2007 20:51:14 -0000, "Rich" enlightened us thusly:

I dunno, I was quite amused by it, and it did make several good points.

Reply to
Austin Shackles

Actually that's not the real bottom line, as I councillor I've seen the real bottom line. The 'head of fixing roads' (I forget his actual title) explained it thusly: A road should ideally be resurfaced every

20 years, the bugget they have around here when divided by the length of the roads means they can only do it on average every 100 years!. So money is THE bottom line and other factors like disruption to the public are secondary.

The cheapest way to repair roads is for the horrendously expensive machines they use to be utilised to the max. Hiring a full set of machines sat around queued up like they did on the show is totally uneconomic. What they have to do is wait until they have several jobs fairly near to each other and do them all at the same time. They hire the miller and take the top off all the jobs which takes several days. They return the miller and hire the machines to lay the tarmac which then do all the jobs. Thus it can be sevaral days from taking the top off to relaying the tarmac.

That's why it's now so common for us to have to drive over milled roads for days on end. If there is re-curbing or other work they apply the same rational to that as well so the road closure can last weeks. This system also explains why it's now so common to close a road now when they used to use single file traffic lights and fully replace one lane at a time.

We recently had a road on a local bypass closed for many weeks with a very bad diversion through the town, it caused chaos and huge complaints but the bottom line is that it would have cost far more to do it quicker. They had waited until there were about 3 other major sections within a few miles to do simultaneously so make it economic. Greg

Reply to
Greg

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