News: 1597656308

Central government continue to dish out lucrative contracts to their mates without any scrutiny, because the pandemic makes it more important than ever to throw money at the incompetent rather than letting local governments or hospitals scale up the things they already do rather well. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/11/uk-government-serco-contact-tracing-contract-leaked-memo, https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/coronavirus-councils-develop-track-trace-22476383

'The total value of the claim was also redacted. Such heavy redactions are unusual in High Court cases being heard in public.'

And the company/individuals who'd been promised all that lovely dosh, got butt-hurt about it all and started crying.

Regrettably, this is just the latest unfortunate chapter in a sorry saga.

The Clean Air Zone was originally going to be similar to London's Congestion Charge: there'd be a charge (£3.40 for private vehicles) on entering congested areas with low air quality. Following an outcry from the motoring public, the plan to charge private vehicles was dropped, but buses will be hit by a £50 charge, while the number of lanes across the Tyne Bridge will be reduced. So, there will be a strong disincentive to use public transport, and congestion will be increased owing to the throttling of a key crossing point.

Without wanting to comment on the merits of Neology's case, I cant help feeling we're going to see more of this type of claim. Councils have been hollowed out by cuts and additional spending on Coronavirus so their ability to scrutinise procurement and defend action taken against them is inevitably diminished.

I wish I could sue all the people who have chosen not to use my services! Or even just the few who have expressed an interest by phoning me and then decided not to... M'lud Potential Client A phoned me about a problem, didn't like how much I said I would charge if we went ahead, or maybe it was the timbre of my voice, and then hung up. I'm outraged and demand compensation!

Wankers, was I think the term El Reg said they wouldn't use for firms such as Neology.

Procurement in local government certainly is an absolute PITA.

You need to jump through so many hoops to ensure that you don't get sued for choosing one bid over another, never mind picking the best product or getting the best price.You can't easily haggle, you can't ask questions of one supplier and not the other, everything must be recorded and justified. It adds a huge price to any major procurement and many low value ones as well.

Then the suppliers are often colossal arses as well. The procurement might be for a £5M system but the sales droid filling in the paperwork usually can't be arsed and misses critical bits out, doesn't understand the questions or doesn't read the questions. So you can have a system that you really want to buy that is good value but you've had to score lowly becasue the salesman was hungover and the rules mean you can't go back and get them to correct it.

Or the sales people really can' be arsed (sounds like this one) and rather than answer the questions they just supply reams of pdfs, often hundreds of pages long, and just say the answer is in the attached. Somewhere. Probably.

Or the sales people really can' be arsed (sounds like this one) and rather than answer the questions they just supply reams of pdfs, often hundreds of pages long, and just say the answer is in the attached. Somewhere. Probably.

From the article I suspect this is what happened here, namely the Neology sales team's answer didn't completely answer the ITT question, whereas the Siemen's one did. The ITT would have been initially assessed on the (typically number of letters/words limited) responses rather than on the supplementary information.

Not to mention the problem of requiring 3 tenders when often there aren't 3 companies capable or interested in doing the job.

On one occasion back when I was a Civil Servant I was in the transport manager's office. He had a van stuck on the hard shoulder, no breakdown cover of course, and the procurement department wanted three tenders for a recovery service to attend!

We avoided the worst of it in the IT Department by specifying everything had to be PDP-11 compatible, we'd bought two VAX boxes on the grounds they were compatible with the PDP -11/45 that we didn't actually use!

They need to put a section in the eligibility criteria saying that to do business with the council, they cannot have taken legal action against it in the last X years.

The reason that you need a value for X, rather than " for ever", is that companies, like people, can change. Many may have all been changing the wrong way for the last few decades but they need to see the benefits of improving instead.

"ANPR maker Neology sues Newcastle residents and local businesses after failing to win 'air quality' snoopcam project bid "

FTFY. Where do these idiots think the Council gets "its" money from, and why do they think they can sue the taxpayers because they lost out?

And I'm taking it so you can't play

Translation: Don't invite us to tender.