Oh Dear!

[Victor Vectis]

I've just looked at the latest Boaters' Update.

 

Under the heading of 'Improving London's Waterways for Boaters' there is a pic of where.........?

 

Birmingham.

Edited February 11, 2022 by Victor Vectis

[TheBiscuits]

2 minutes ago, Victor Vectis said:

I've just looked at the latest Boaters' Update.

 

Under the heading of 'Improving London's Waterways for Boaters' there is a pic of where.........?

 

Birmingham.

 

It's quite true though.  If half the London Boaters  moved up towards the Midlands there wouldn't be a problem in London ...

[MtB]

7 minutes ago, Victor Vectis said:

I've just looked at the latest Boaters' Update.

 

Under the heading of 'Improving London's Waterways for Boaters' there is a pic of where.........?

 

Birmingham.

 

 

You're joking, not another one??!!

 

(Channelling Brenda from Bristol.)

 

[dmr]

Boaters update does rather talk down to boaters, or at least those that know anything about boating.

I reckon that pic is deliberate...

"I bet 90% wont notice..".

"and it will really wind up the 10% that do."

 

or maybe they just look for a stock photo of "canal in big city"?

[David Mack]

The same edition has reference to replacing rotten deck boards on bridge no. 40 at Romney Marsh in East London.

Last time I looked Romney Marsh was on the south coast. They're not getting confused with Rammey Marsh are they?

[Rob-M]

9 hours ago, Victor Vectis said:

I've just looked at the latest Boaters' Update.

 

Under the heading of 'Improving London's Waterways for Boaters' there is a pic of where.........?

 

Birmingham.

Was the same picture they used in the last update when referring to London so at least they are consistent.

[Tracy D'arth]

Damian doesn't know his A from his E  or B from L.

[MtB]

39 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

Damian doesn't know his A from his E  or B from L.

 

This is IT, I reckon.

 

CRT have to draw staff from the population as a whole, so there is no reason to expect any given CRT employee to have any greater or deeper knowledge of the canal system an any other random person needing a job.

 

New recruits probably get sent on a short training course for a day or two explaining the basics i.e. canals were dig manually and are not rivers, why they have locks, and how they are used by boats, runners, walkers and cyclists whose needs must be balanced, and how canals are funded mostly by the guvvermint hence short of money. 

 

Expecting anyone earning £30k working for CRT writing publicity material to know the difference between Rammey Marsh and Romney marsh (or even care particularly) is a bit unrealistic in my opinion. They probably thought they were correcting a spelling error.

[Athy]

£30,000  p/a is a pretty hefty amount. If they keep making such boo-boos, their salary may not remain as high as that for very long.

[MtB]

22 minutes ago, Athy said:

£30,000  p/a is a pretty hefty amount. If they keep making such boo-boos, their salary may not remain as high as that for very long.

 

 

I disagree. 

 

I predict that CRT as an employer would prefer to keep publishing 'Boater's Updates" with trivial errors than risk losing the employee by reducing their salary as a punishment for confusing London canal photos with Birmingham canal photos.

 

In my opinion (and more likely given current HR fashion), the employee concerned deserves to be subjected to "further training". THEN see it they do it again!

[Athy]

8 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

 

risk losing the employee by reducing their salary as a punishment for confusing London canal photos with Birmingham canal photos.

 

 

I didn't mean that.

I meant that if s/he continued doing this well paid job incompetently, she would lose the job and would have to find work elsewhere, probably on lower pay.

[Athy]

I sometimes wonder if the person who produced this sleeve kept his job - especially as the error appeared on two different record sleeves.

The photo shows B.B. King, whose only connection with Ben E. is that both were black American musicians.

[George and Dragon]

51 minutes ago, Athy said:

£30,000  p/a is a pretty hefty amount. If they keep making such boo-boos, their salary may not remain as high as that for very long.

One might enquire how long you have been retired... £30k isn't very much unless the employee in question has few significant outgoings.

 

[Machpoint005]

56 minutes ago, Athy said:

£30,000  p/a is a pretty hefty amount. If they keep making such boo-boos, their salary may not remain as high as that for very long.

 

Not all that hefty. It is about £1500 lower than the median UK full-time salary.

 

 

[ditchcrawler]

Maybe I should start reading it

[Athy]

52 minutes ago, George and Dragon said:

One might enquire how long you have been retired... £30k isn't very much

 

I retired from teaching some time ago but I have not yet retired from working. Even if I had done  so, I would still be spending money. £30,000 year gives a NET wage of £463 per week, which is hefty enough!

54 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

 

Not all that hefty. It is about £1500 lower than the median UK full-time salary.

 

 

I don't know where you found that information. I've found two different sources which agree that the average U.K. gross annual salary is under £26,000 - so £30k. is substantially above the average, in other words a pretty good salary.

[tree monkey]

43 minutes ago, Athy said:

I retired from teaching some time ago but I have not yet retired from working. Even if I had done  so, I would still be spending money. £30,000 year gives a NET wage of £463 per week, which is hefty enough!

I don't know where you found that information. I've found two different sources which agree that the average U.K. gross annual salary is under £26,000 - so £30k. is substantially above the average, in other words a pretty good salary.

Median vs average, I think the 30,000 is median and the 26,000 is average, saying that it's not a particularly great wage nowadays.

[TheBiscuits]

5 minutes ago, tree monkey said:

Median vs average

 

That's just mean

 

[Jen-in-Wellies]

Definitely non Gaussian in distribution, so mean isn't a good guide as to what is most typical. Median is better. A steep cut off at the lower end with the minimum wage helping and it not being possible to exist on much less, with a very long tail at the high end. The high end includes people like the Bank of England governor on £575k a year, extolling the benefits of wage restraint on the rest of us.

The first link is household disposable income, but illustrates the sorts of distribution we are talking about.

Jen

Edited February 12, 2022 by Jen-in-Wellies

[ditchcrawler]

1 hour ago, tree monkey said:

Median vs average, I think the 30,000 is median and the 26,000 is average, saying that it's not a particularly great wage nowadays.

In 2021, the average salary for the UK was £25,971 an increase of 0.3% compared to 2020. Full-time employed males are paid 18.05% more than their female counterparts, averaging £5,109 each year.

[David Mack]

2 hours ago, Athy said:

I retired from teaching some time ago but I have not yet retired from working. Even if I had done  so, I would still be spending money. £30,000 year gives a NET wage of £463 per week, which is hefty enough!

I'm guessing that your income no longer has to stretch to paying rent or mortgage, whereas most of those folk whose earnings are around average income (whether mean or median) will find that taking a substantial chunk of their take-home pay.

[Athy]

6 minutes ago, David Mack said:

I'm guessing that your income no longer has to stretch to paying rent or mortgage, whereas most of those folk whose earnings are around average income (whether mean or median) will find that taking a substantial chunk of their take-home pay.

You guess correctly, and oh! how we loved our mortgage, when we took it out the interest rate was about 15% or even more. Yes, when we first took it out, the payments came to almost exactly half our joint salaries per month. It was a happy day when we paid it off, nearly 20 years ago now.

 

[MtB]

6 minutes ago, Athy said:

You guess correctly, and oh! how we loved our mortgage, when we took it out the interest rate was about 15% or even more. Yes, when we first took it out, the payments came to almost exactly half our joint salaries per month.

 

 

Same here. And I bet it your mortgage application as by no means certain be accepted due to lack of funds available to lend. Chuffs me off to hear people whining nowadays about how hard it is to get on the "property ladder". It isn't difficult at all, it's dead easy compared to back in the 1970s. 

[dmr]

8 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

 

Same here. And I bet it your mortgage application as by no means certain be accepted due to lack of funds available to lend. Chuffs me off to hear people whining nowadays about how hard it is to get on the "property ladder". It isn't difficult at all, it's dead easy compared to back in the 1970s. 

 

Mortgages were just not available when I got my first house, you had to have a savings account with the building society for a year or two before they would even consider a mortgage. We had to go to a dodgy back street mortgage broker and pay a hefty fee, and then Ms Thatcher put the rate up to 16%

[Mike Todd]

9 minutes ago, dmr said:

 

Mortgages were just not available when I got my first house, you had to have a savings account with the building society for a year or two before they would even consider a mortgage. We had to go to a dodgy back street mortgage broker and pay a hefty fee, and then Ms Thatcher put the rate up to 16%

Back in the day, you could not get a joint income based mortgage - only one salary could be considered and not a wife at that. A wife's salary was not considered reliable enough.