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Wastefulness that you have encountered ( tax write offs etc )

Perfectly good things get thrown away all the time at my job. My grandfather used to work for ALCOA, and in the 60s' and early 70s' the company would take good running vehicles complete with fuel and oil and either bury them or dump them in the bay.
At my job they threw away a $1,600 dollar stainless steel tool chest because it had a bent radio antenna ( there is a built in radio and refrigerator in the tool chest )
Apparently it would cost to much to ship back, so the guys spray painted it and took a sledge hammer to it so no one could use it. The company policy is that if something is in good working order and credit is given on the product, it has to be destroyed and thrown away.

Was I the only one that asked why not just have the manufacturer ship a new antenna ?? :confused:

Anyone else have examples of corporate greed / wastefulness ?

I saw a job where at the end of the project, Rigid 600 threaders ($1400 ish) were thrown in a dumpster along with other tools.
It was cheaper to dumpster them and list as a project cost than catalog, box up, store and ship to the next project.
Back in the 80s residential boom, for every 5 houses built, enough "overage" was dumped to build a 6th one. You should've seen the house I was living in. Most of that scrap got picked up :)

When my dad worked for Bell, they use rope once to pull underground feeders in. Maybe twice if it is clean and looks good. Then it gets thrown out. The rope is cheaper than the labor if it breaks mid-pull.

Shall I continue ?

We are forbid from reusing wire nuts. Sometimes the spring part gets damaged or falls out. Again, its cheaper to toss them than track down an open circuit.

If I went through all the items on construction projects that get tossed due to it being cheaper than the labor for cleaning, sorting, storing, transporting, etc it would only waste more electrons.

Shall I go on about how in food service, once it leaves the counter, even if wrapped, it must be tossed.

The waste in the county (corporate AND home) could support the rest of the world. :rolleyes: :mad:

These

http://images.mirror.co.uk/upl/daily...-774431823.jpg

4 years and counting of total chaos and mismanagement, escalating costs, leaky contracts allowing suppliers to demand more cash and at the end of it possibly a system which won't go far enough to actually make any money and will be living off my taxes and probably those of A-junior.

The proponents of this idea should be hung, drawn quatered and then shot and then the bits jumped up and down on and then shot again and... :mad:

Or at the very least they should be banned from holding a public office.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arragonis (Post 259060)

If England runs like the US, they will be promoted and get a raise.

Here we also have what are reffered to as "trains to nowhere".

Quote:

Originally Posted by JasonG (Post 259064)

Here we also have what are reffered to as "trains to nowhere".

Oh, we've got plenty of roads to nowhere ; stretches of road that don't connect to anything ; bridges over nothing or nothing going over a bridge ; a huge waste-water pumping line that sat unused for decades (it's now transporting potable water); a military airfield that was never used ;a huge tidal harbour dock that's hardly used, yet will be expanded with another similar dock; AFVs with 90mm guns that no-one else in NATO uses; MirSIP , unlicenced Dassault Mirage upgrades where cancellation would have been more expensive that seeing the upgrades through (later sold to Chile at a silly price); upgrading frigates, only to sell them to Bulgaria ; a metro system in Charleroi that was never used; ...

The list is far longer than that.

We're a rich country, with only 350 billion euro of debt.
Guess how we racked up that debt ...

I spent a year in the desert. Everything about that war is a waste, so I'm not going to bother citing individual examples.

How about this one: Defense Secretary's commute home raises eyebrows

Quote:

WASHINGTON - Shortly after Defense Secretary Leon Panetta took office July 1, he boarded an Air Force jet and flew home to California for a three-day weekend. He has flown home five weekends since then and has spent part of a two-week vacation there.

Aides say that unless he is required to stay in Washington or travel elsewhere, Panetta will spend most weekends and days off at his 12-acre walnut farm in Carmel Valley, where he and his wife, Sylvia, make their home.

It is common for members of Congress to fly back to their districts every weekend or so. But his absences at the Pentagon have raised eyebrows in workaholic Washington. Even some of Panetta's friends wonder how he can get away so regularly while his department, by far the largest in the U.S. government, faces multiple wars and daily crises.

'Toughest job in Washington'

"I think he's got the toughest job in Washington, and I think it's amazing" that he plans to go home so often, said Rep. Sam Farr, D-Calif., who represents the area and calls his own weekly coast-to-coast commute "the toughest part of the job."

Panetta usually flies home late Friday and returns to Washington late Sunday, getting to work on Monday morning, his aides say. Before agreeing to run the Pentagon, he told the White House that he planned to go home frequently. His aides maintain he stays in touch while out of town.

When Hurricane Irene threatened the East Coast last weekend, Pentagon spokesman George Little said Panetta had taken "an average of 5-7 minutes to approve" requests from governors to mobilize National Guard units.

He stays in regular email and phone contact on his ranch, aides said. A secure telephone has been installed so he can discuss classified material, and he can participate in secure video teleconferences at a facility a short drive away.

When a CH-47 helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan on Aug. 6, killing 30 Americans, Panetta's senior military assistant, Lt. Gen. John Kelly, called him in Carmel Valley with the reports. The next morning, after he spoke to commanders in Afghanistan, Panetta joined a conference call convened by national security adviser Tom Donilon to discuss the incident, Pentagon officials said.

Always accessible

"He is on duty 24-7, as any senior official is, and just like the president when he goes on vacation, the secretary is accessible 24-7," said Doug Wilson, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs.

Robert Gates, the previous defense secretary, kept a home in Washington state. He visited several times a year but did not go home each weekend.

His predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, made occasional visits to a home in Taos, N.M., but he mostly stayed in Washington or at his house on the nearby Chesapeake Bay.

Panetta is required to fly on U.S. government aircraft to ensure constant communication with the Pentagon and the White House in case of a national security crisis. On personal trips, like the weekend flights, Panetta is required to reimburse the Treasury for the cost of an equivalent coach fare. The actual cost is far higher -- about $3,200 per flight hour, the Defense Department said.

When he goes home, he flies on the Air Force version of a Gulfstream executive jet, which also carries communications gear. When he was the CIA director, Panetta once was out of contact for 45 minutes aboard a chartered aircraft, aides said.

The CIA director's usual plane had mechanical problems, and aides discovered they did not have the phone number of the replacement aircraft. It became a mini-crisis when an urgent request came for Panetta to approve an operation against a suspected terrorist, a senior Pentagon aide said. Communications were eventually restored, and the delay had no impact on the operation.

Defense Secretary's commute home raises eyebrows | StarTribune.com Huh. Forget the link; the Strib changed this very link to something unrelated and deleted the comment section too. :confused:

If I never started another engine for the rest of my life it still wouldn't make up for the fuel this ***hole is burning. That's kind of like thinking about Fat Charlie's comment, my entire life's tax contributions probably paid for one tailfin on one missile (no I don't want to do the math to really know). :mad:

Military spending here is a mess.

1. Chinooks
RAF ordered Chinooks for Afghanistan a few years ago. MOD decided it new best and reduced the spec to one so low that they can't fly in fog, cloads or at night. Last time I checked Afghanistan has quite a few mountainous areas with clouds and is subject to periods of night at least once per day.

Boeing suggest the spec was too low, MOD said it new best. Chinooks delivered and couldn't be used. Sat in a Hanger for 5 years and even started to be canibalised for parts for other aircraft.

MOD finally decided to upgrade them expect to do this now means that they have to more or less take the things to pieces again to install the missing bits.

2. Transport Aircraft
RAF buying Airbus A400Ms - an aircraft too heavy to lift it's specified weight, too thirsty to have a long range and about 2 years behind schedule. Meanwhile of course there is the C-17 which is cheaper, goes further, faster, uses less fuel, carried more and is about 80% of the projected price of an A400M - oh and the US Army and Air Force have more or less worked the bugs out of it so it can be used from day 1.

And this is before we think about the fact that the Typhoon is a decade late, and under spec and we have to continue flying circa early 1970s Tornados, just when the Russians have started sending Bears over again.

1960s
http://www.lightningpilots.com/LightningBear740.jpg

Now
http://files.air-attack.com/MIL/euro...2_20070822.jpg

3. Aircraft Carriers
MOD decides to retire the Harrier earlier this year. We only have aircraft carriers which can operate Harriers. So we don't have any. Oh but we are building two new ones, except they have no aircraft because the new Tempest is delayed. Oh and one aircraft carrier is to be mothballed straight away - why build it then ?

But even building the things is complicated - its done in two parts - on opposite coasts of Scotland. So they have to sail the centre section around the whole coast to attach it to the rest. Why ?

Oh, and to pay for all of this we just made 2000 soldiers, including some on active service, redundant.

We need another peasants (middle class) revolt...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frank Lee (Post 259202)

I could never start another engine for the rest of my life and still not make up for the fuel this ***hole is burning.

Can't see why you're blaming him, when it's policies he didn't make that force him to travel that way*. Seems to me as though he could pretty much do his job by telecommuting, if he was allowed, and save everybody money.

(*Also, Air Force pilots need to log a certain number of flight hours to stay current. If they ferry people around while doing this, there's no extra cost.)

It's the same with the criticism of Obama (and Bush before him, so I'm not being political) for taking "vacations" outside of Washington. AFAIK, there's very little a President does that can't be done just as well remotely, and one so inclined could skive off just as well in the White House as anywhere.