Shooting the Breeze

The big news from the eight plus hours I spent moving pianos was that the RFP will not be issued until Friday 8th August. This is a delay of one week but the Client has already advised that there will be no corresponding extension to the Proposal delivery date … Ouch! We will have just over four weeks to review the document, ask clarifying questions and develop, document, cost and price our solution. Did I say Ouch?

I also found out that my presence will be required in the Capital next week, provided I can get my travel request approved … It is peak season on London's streets and a cheap hotel just aint gonna happen!

Away from work there isn't a huge amount to report. T&M were walked. TP disappeared in his banana yellow Fiat advising that he would be back tomorrow! I also cut a small fillet of timber to fill the gap above the moulding I repaired yesterday. It was not a huge leap forward in the restoration of The Hall, more of a tilt in the right direction.

Having summarised the day's events I thought I would fill a little more space recounting a conversation I had on Saturday down in the Village …

… I had been walking the dogs and as I was heading home I passed VI's son's cottage. VI Junior was tending a rather beautiful succulent in the raised bed at the front of his cottage. I paused and we started to chat. It was no surprise that the subject of Politics soon came up as VI Junior has a Doctorate in the subject and lectures at one of the West Midlands Universities.

The gossipy conversation started with some of the frightening deficiencies in some of the local and national politicians including VI Junior's direct experience of ingrained prejudice and taking public office to further and individual's personal agenda. Having dealt with the gamut of politicians from inept through to corrupt we then moved on to the electorate…

… We both took on a resigned air  as we agreed that if the politicians were bad enough the electorate was even worse. The main thrust of the debate being centred around voting decisions being made based on fatuous information such as whether a certain politician does or doesn't look like a well known plasticine animated character. It was at this point that I suggested that perhaps a benevolent dictatorship was the best way forward and was surprised when my ardent Tory friend agreed, citing the recently appointed head of the EU who had stated that "We all know what to do, we just don't know how to get re-elected after we've done it"

At this point I came up with a ridiculous thought / stroke of genius. I proposed that every ballot paper should include ten compulsory multiple choice questions.* Basically every vote would count but a voter's multiple choice score would determine just how much of their vote would count. If you got a perfect ten you would get a full vote. If you crashed and burnt only ten percent of your vote would count. After the laughter had died down he said he was seriously considering putting this forward at the next brainstorming session he attended.

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* These would need to similar to those used in Examination systems which are automatically marked by a computer. The added benefit of this is that it would remove the need for ballot recounts as the votes could be automatically counted too.