Oxfam and the Perils of Remote Operations

The recent news of Oxfam troubles over the behaviour of some staff in Haiti should come as no surprise to those who have worked in the poorer parts of the world.  I don’t think this is an issue about charities per se. Instead it about standards, and about how anybody who finds themselves in foreign cultures applies them.

Beyond more times than I can recall, I have seen examples of bad behaviour by Europeans  (including British) and North Americans while working in poorer societies. Use of either prostitution or having a local girlfriend while in country is commonplace.  In the early 2000s, I did one particular job in Kazakhstan for a month, which involved regular rotation work for many colleagues. The temptations there were incredible.  I stayed a month and refused further work because if I had returned I am certain that I would have been unable to hold my marriage together.  Divorce is indeed the fate that befell most of my married colleagues: out of forty guys who were on month-on-month-off rotation, by the end of two years (by which time the contract ended) thirty-eight of them were divorced. Some of them came away with new partners, others required courses of medication.

It can be argued that in this case there was no moral leadership, which is perfectly true. In fact, there is often a large degree of peer-pressure to get people “dirty”, so that they are not going to blab when they go home. “What happens in the field stays in the field” is an old saying that is still honoured.  It can be argued that charities are engaged in noble work and should be held to higher standards than a bunch of rig-pigs. In reality though, standards to which any person operates are the ones that they carry with them.  When back in the UK (or wherever home is), one is held to certain standards, the social norms. It is quite common for a man to leave his own society and, finding himself in a new society whose norms he is unaware of but is offered easy access to sex, drugs and alcohol. The newcomer has a vast amount of spending power compared to locals and a proportion of those local folk not only want that cash but are willing to deliver pretty much anything in order to get it. The newcomer is basically entering a moral vacuum where there are few external boundaries. If that person does not carry moral standards within him or herself (and no, that is not me being politically correct – one former colleague said she enjoyed working in Angola because of all the “uncomplicated sex”) then they are capable of living out their wildest fantasies. Abuse is only possible because the power is so one-sided. Kazakhstan is a society that has become a lot richer over the past two decades and, as economic power has equalised, the desperate excesses of the late 1990s are no more. 

Corporations are very aware of the perils of this lifestyle and nowadays try to control the situation by overworking employees. That may include long shifts, seven-day-a-week working and no leaving of the hotel or staff house. Some even have tried to introduce a strict policy of no alcohol while on rotation, that even includes airports and flights.  Such extreme measures, in all, make a complete misery of foreign working and takes any joy out of the proceedings. What is the use of being in a country when one is not able to visit any site of interest or culture? By the same reasoning of course, it keeps others out of the fleshpots. Many of the senior executives know the perils of course, because while they were in the field they were often the worst offenders.

It may be possible to keep oil workers away from the public but charity works, by definition, involves public contact and being part of the fabric of the host society. It will be a lot harder to enforce a moral standard as isolation is not possible. Before I continue, I don’t want to cast aspersions on everybody. For example, I came across a brilliant team of American doctors and nurses in Mauritania who had given up a month of their time to provide free operations and medical care to local people. Another good example I encountered was a UN conference in Kampala on refugees and stateless people. Much good is being done, so please do not get the idea that all foreign charity work is a waste of time. It isn’t. There are bad examples though. In West Africa, the UN workers were often derided for being in place to stop the exploitation of women while being themselves regular clients of sex workers.  Some of the most unpleasant individuals I have ever met have been diplomats attached to various embassies - although I have not encountered misbehaviour from any UK staff.

When it comes down to how to solve such problems, it is difficult. Cultural awareness must be one key. I don’t know what courses are available to charity workers before they are shipped out to remote parts of the world, but I don’t recall much training on this being offered in industry.  Leadership in field is another imperative.  If the leader is a sleaze, the team is left to their own personal standards. In fact, as I stated above, bad conduct is often encouraged from those indulging in it.

Perhaps the worst examples though are not failures in individual behaviour but extravagance in operations. Both the following examples come from former colleagues and both involve Oxfam. Both are also historical: at least twenty years old.  The first one concerns a colleague comes backing from West Africa and, unexpectedly, he is upgraded to business class. Next to him is some guy and, as the flight goes on, they fall into conversation.
“Who do you work for?”
“Oxfam.”
The engineer expresses surprise that he is travelling business class.

“Oh, I don’t work directly for Oxfam. My company are being hired on a consultancy basis.”

The second example was another friend who, as engineer-in-charge, was running an operation out of Port Hardcourt in Nigeria. The house that the company was renting could sleep ten and was often used for crews coming and going to rigs and arriving in country.  One day the landlord comes to the engineer and gives notice, unless more than double the rent can be provided.
“That’s crazy!” says my friend. The landlord says calmly that he already has an alternative tenant lined up on these terms.
“Who is it?”
“Oxfam.” 
“That must be a huge team that they are moving in.”
“Oh no, it’s just for one person.”

Thirty Nine Barrels

I was Christmas shopping with the wife when the mobile phone rang.  It was not a welcome call.
"Martin, I have booked you on a flight to Angola for the 20th."  It was my manager John.
"Oh. What?!  Steve covers Angola.  Where the hell is he?"
"Steve has just checked himself into hospital.  Back problems."
"That son of a bitch just doesn't want to go!"

Everybody knew that Steve was faking it.  Even I had heard that, during a base meeting in September, he had stated that if a job came up over the Millennium celebrations he wouldn't be available.  Pretty ballsy to say that in front of the regional manager.  Besides, the guy was in his late twenties and built like an athlete.  He was less likely to suffer with back problems that I was to overdose during a rave.

I tried to call Steve on his mobile but naturally it was turned off.

"Well, that's Christmas and the Millennium cancelled," I tell my wife.

At least the flight down to Angola was uneventful.  Stavanger to London.  London to Luanda.  On the previous occasion I had been routed via Nairobi in Kenya (for reasons I have never discovered) but fog meant I had missed the forward connection.  No such drama this time.  In fact I was even met at the airport and, once I got to the base, things had improved there as well.  While still located at the port (to this day they have not re-mettled the old dirt road leading to it), instead of the mosquito-ridden cesspool of old containers that existed previously, the new place was modern, shaded and with a tarmac yard to boot.  Very nice.
While having a hoke around the yard, I came across a set of seismic tools set up in a seven by one-and-a-half metre orange tool rack.  Noting that the cables between the tools were ten metres long, I asked somebody whether these were the tools assigned to me.  No, I was told.  Those ones were for another job out of Luanda.  Simon was doing that job.  My tools were already offshore Cabinda. Fair enough.

That afternoon, I, along with another engineer and the local manager, went to the Chevron offices in town to discuss the upcoming job.
"Ah, glad you are here Martin.  We have a question for you.  The MLR [the downhole seismic tools] tools, how are they in rugged borehole conditions?"

The thing is with any borehole seismic array is that each set of geophones have to be acoustically isolated from each other.  They are therefore not connected by solid bars but rather by long sections of cable which are usually of ten to twenty metres in length.  It is therefore impossible to push them down a hole without risking a god-awful tangle.

"Not good", I reply.  "What is the borehole deviation?"
"Fifty-five degrees."
"Hmm.  Are you intending to run casing?"
"Yes we are.  Can you shoot through casing?"
"At fifty-five degrees, it should be no problem.  A good cement job always helps but at that angle there will be enough casing touching the borehole so that there will be a bond with the formation."
"That's settled then", smiles the Chevron manager.  "We'll run the VSP once the casing is set."
"When will that be?" I ask.
"Oh, after the first week in January."

In car back to the base, one could not but reflect that that conversation could have been done over the telephone.

The following day, the 22nd of December, I flew up to Cabinda.  Expecting the base to be a dry zone, I left in the Luanda staff house a litre bottle of duty-free vanilla vodka I had impulse-purchased in Heathrow duty-free.  Upon takeoff, the airplane went out to sea and stayed there.  Angola was still in the process of moving away from a series of civil wars and it was better safe than sorry.  As we headed north, the blue South Atlantic could be seen lapped against the white beaches far below.  On approach to Cabinda the plane circled the runway before landing.  I was amazed to see people casually waling across the concrete landing strip.  By the time we landed however, the runway was clear.

The Cabinda oil base starts offshore with a series of small platforms and tanker mooring points, then at the head of shallow cliffs by the sea are a series of giant oil storage tanks.  Below the cliffs and set back from the white sandy beach, largely populated by white burrowing crabs, are a row of small yards and bases where the oil-service companies have set up.  There is a more substantial jungle-covered hillside behind these and at the top of it, is a series of chalet bungalows, very American in style.  Frankly, it was rather nice.  Food was taken in a  low multi-storey block which doubled as offices and cafeteria, which reminded me a bit of a town hall.

The emergency drill for the base was simple.  A constant siren means pack a bag and get down to the dock for evacuation by boat.  A warbling siren means dig out the heavy kevlar blanket from the wardrobe and lie underneath it: the place is under artillery attack.  I did ask whether this had ever been necessary.  Apparently in years past some Cuban troops had taken pot shots.
I never saw but I was told that Angolan troops surrounded the entire base, as did a series of minefields.  I did see the night spotter plane that constantly circled, without navigation lights, using heat-detecting technology to spot infiltration attempts.  Being of a curious nature, I asked if that had ever happened.  Apparently its major success was to spot a couple having illicit sex on the beach.

After lunch, I took the minibus down to the beach base.  It was the kind of short bus used in Britain during the late 1970s and into the 80s.  The base itself was small and the guys friendly: an American, Brit and Italian.  We had a company car too!  The most knackered VW Golf my eyes ever had the misfortune to look upon.  It still had seats, a steering wheel and four tires in each corner but most of the rest had gone, fallen either to rust or theft.  The door panels were completely empty.
The working yard was unpaved.  I found some seismic tools and decided they needed a bit of a clean up.  Naturally I didn't want to drag them through the sand after been cleaned either so it was little fun lifting a 67kg, 1.6m long tool and carrying it clear of the soft sand.

I got on very well with Jim, the American.  He was one of those larger-than-life characters, soon telling me of his teenage exploits of ordering hookers and drinks on his father's credit credit while staying at Las Vegas.
"Wait Jim," I said.  "Didn't you say that you are a Mormon?"
"Ah Martin," he replied with relish.  "That just makes the sin all the more sweeter."  Not that there was much opportunity for such sin in Cabinda.  Assuming the base was dry, I had left the duty-free bottle of vanilla vodka in the company staff house in Luanda.  That turned out to be a mistake as expat workers were allowed to buy a small quality of beer each day. A four-pack of small Heinekens does not go very far but it was better than nothing.  Meanwhile the local workers were allowed unlimited purchases, which they took fully advantage of: carrying out beer by the slab.  They would grin widely as us northerners would try to buy more than our allotted amount, only to be gleefully refused by the officious clerk.

That first day I went down to the beach and was amazed to see not only the white burrowing crabs but a family of rather scraggy-looking sea eagles: mum, dad and large fledgling.  The young bird amused itself by casually capturing and killing crabs.  Not much effort was made to eat them.  My sense of joy was added to when, as I was sitting looking at the sea-eagle's antics, a large dark back broke through the surf.  A nesting sea turtle hauled herself out of the sea and up the beach.  It was bright daylight; I thought that turtles only came out at night.  She came right towards me and only reacted with I stood up.  Hissing suddenly, it focused upon me with salt-filled eyes filled with displeasure and laboriously turned around and headed back into the sea.
I felt bad about disturbing the turtle,  Next day though I saw a local guy with a cloth bag slung around his shoulder.  He carried a long thin stick, taller than himself.  Apparently such men used the stick to probe the sand, with turtle eggs providing a welcome supplement to the family diet.
The tools went offshore on the 23rd and I followed on Christmas Eve, expecting to spend the rest of the trip there.  The helicopter itself was an ancient Bell, the kind of shopper made famous in various Vietnam war movies.   During the safety briefing, we passengers are strongly reminded again that in event of a crash landing over water, not to inflate life-vests until outside the chopper.  The week before one of these Bell's had gone down into shallow water.  A couple of Angolans on board had panicked and pulled the inflation line.  Despite the shallowness of the water, they could not be removed in time and their bodies eventually had to be retrieved by divers.

Upon arrival and much to my surprise, Derek the wireline engineer had set up the entire seismic equipment and checked it out too.  Until recently he had been a seismic engineer.  That was great.  I took the opportunity both to thank him profusely and recheck the equipment along with my recently-arrived downhole tools.  Not because I didn't trust Derek; it was just part of the job.  Having satisfied myself that all was in order, I asked what the lookahead plans were.  Open-hole logging was due to start in a few days and a full program taking at least five days.  After that the open section of the well would be lined with steel casing, the casing would be secured to the well-bore walls with cement and then it would be my turn.
Checking with both Derek and the Company Man - who is the head client representative on board, that it was okay, I booked myself a seat on the Christmas morning chopper.

As we are waiting to board, a huge American cementer struggles with his life jacket.  This guy is tall, yes, but the mass is mostly fat: he is easily over 160kg.  He sits by the starboard window and I mentally decide that if the chopper goes down, I'm out the other side.  There is no way he will be getting out and I was not eager to keep him company.  As the chopper lifts, I honestly expect it to be tilted on that side.  It didn't tilt of course but there is no way that a man like that would get medical approval to be offshore in the North Sea.

The Christmas lunch was worth the flight.  Eight huge turkeys had been laid out and the cooks stood proudly by, beaming in the praise they so well deserved.  It was rather strange eating a full Christmas meal when the temperatures are so hot outside, but the dining hall was well air conditioned.  The weight of the turkey, trimmings and pudding only made itself known once outside in the heat of a tropical early afternoon.  I walked down the hillside road to the base afterwards: a distance of just less than a mile.  With all the equipment offshore there was not so much to do and besides, it was Christmas Day.

It was a few days after Christmas when I first noticed the helicopter.  Not the usual crew change choppers but a small, bubble-domed two-man chopper; probably an early Bell, the kind thing they flew on M.A.S.H.  It was flying up and down, about a kilometre offshore.  Beneath it was suspended a boom arm which reminded me of a crop sprayer.  The next day came the smell.  A thick chemical smell that drove people indoors.  The day after that, the slick hit.

If you have every seen pictures of oil slicks hitting a beach, they are unable to do justice to reality.  The smell of oil and chemicals is horrendous.  The oil stands easily fifteen centimetres thick without support.  Everything is wiped out.  Crabs gone.  Eagles gone.  Turtles gone.  All replaced by a noisome black sludge.

Out of all the downs of working in the industry: the abuse, the sleep deprivation, being away from the family, the unsympathetic and even bullying management; none of these ever ever came close to having me quit the industry more than the experience of that oil slick wiping out a tropic beach.

What we we told?  How were the personnel instructed upon the situation?  What measures were issued to to protect us or the environment?  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  The air we breathed could have been a very poison but Chevron said nothing to us.  In fact, they made sure that we said nothing.  A colleague who started to talk about the slick on the telephone had the line cut.  Emails did not make it through their destination.  Chevron did their best to ensure there was a complete news blackout.

While none of the employees of service companies were told a damned thing, of course word did leak out.  I was invited down one night to an annex off the main living quarters.  It was effectively a small village where the old regular service hands lived.  They got the supplies from the main canteen and did their own cooking.  They also did their own drinking and none of this four-small -tinnie-nonsense: a bottle of vodka per man was not unusual per person each night.  I can drink but never learned to keep up with that rate.

As the vodka and tonics flowed, the chatter increased.  It started innocently enough.  Small talk.   was introduced to what I was told was the hottest chilli sauce in the world.  One drop would season a cauldron of stew.  Two drops would spice it and three would kill it.  I was advised to wash my hands simply after holding the bottle.  I did so: why the hell would I not?  By the end of the meal the talk turned to the slick.

This is a summary of the story as I was told it.  The country was undergoing a process called "Angoladisation" which involves getting rid of the the ex-pat workers and bringing in local staff instead.  Some local guy was on night shift and it was his job to monitor the levels in the oil-storage tanks which are situated at the top of the low cliffs.   At about one o'clock in the morning, an alarm tripped.  He did what any local would have down: turned off the alarm and went back to sleep.  By eight o'clock in the morning between 20,000 and 40,000 barrels of crude oil had been pumped into the sea just offshore.

Here's the rub though.  Corporate headquarters in Houston had declared that thirty nine barrels of oil had been spilt.  Only thirty nine as a forty barrel spill had to be reported to the international authorities.  Despite the local management trying to disperse the slick with what was locally available, they were overwhelmed.  Because it was only thirty nine barrels of oil however, no hope was sent from the outside.  We were on our own.

In all the years that passed since, that was the single most despicable and cynical decision by an oil company I have personally come across.

New Year's came and a group of us were on a hill top overlooking the local village.  At about half-past-midnight, a few fireworks fluttered up into the sky.  That was the Millennium celebrations done.

I must have been walking to work next day when a long convey of black limousines and SUVs rolled into the base and drove up towards the offices.  Official pennants fluttered from some of the car bonnets.  "Oh oh," I thought to myself.  "Shit is hitting fan."  It was about time.   Almost a week had gone by since the discharge had occurred.

It proved to be an eventful day.  On the way back up the hill, I was walking back up the hill when I heard a rustle from the jungle from about twenty metres to the right side.  Ahead of me and walking straight a large black-backed jackal emerged.  I judged the speed and distance and it seemed we were on a collision course.  It was also a jackal which was supposed to be timid so making a noise to draw his attention, I kept walking.  The jackal looked over, saw me and also kept walking.  This guy was not backing down.  So much for jackals being timid.  He was a big canine: almost the size of a German Shepard.   Our eyes locked and we both stopped simultaneously, no more than two metres away from each other.

There was no way I was going to turn my back on this fellow.  Still holding each other's gaze, we gradually edged around each other, me to the right and the dog to the left.  Holding my ground, I turned to follow his path into the bush.  All the time we held eye contact.  I only moved one was convinced he was gone.  I have no idea whether there was any danger and probably in the view of animal psychologists it may have been completely the wrong thing to do.  Stuck on that road alone with a quite a large wild predator, one can only do one's best.

That night down the old ex-pats' enclave there was a fair amount of racist banter going down.  Apparently the delegation had responded to Chevron's claims over thirty nine barrels with "We may be black but we are not stupid."
"Hang on a minute there," piped up an ancient Schlumberger hand, to general laughter.  Okay, that was witty but on the whole many of the white workers were just plain nasty about the Africans.  When challenged, the rationale of one individual was "You don't have to be racist because you don't have to work with the fuckers every day."  Although genuinely sickened by some of the attitudes displayed, from thereafter I kept off the subject altogether.

Finally, finally finally, it came time to get offshore again.

As the chopper lifted to about 1000 feet, the extent of the pollution could be seen.  For miles in both directions, the beaches were black.  The ocean was discoloured for a mile or so from the beach, with an obvious line marking the edge of the oil slick.  I did not see any evidence of oil booms or other forms of containment being deployed.

The job itself went well as far as the seismic was concerned but the Company Man seemed a mite ungrateful when I pointed out I thought there was no cement over the interval which the well was due to be perforated.
"What?" he almost shouted  "Schlumberger told me they did a good cement job."
"That is not what the seismic data is telling me," I replied.  "I recommend you run an SBT over the interval."   With bad grace the Company Man concurred.  The issue is that explosive charges are used to blow holes through the steel and cement so that the oil can flow into the well.  If there is space on the outside though, the oil can also migrate upwards and perhaps into formations above.  This would reduce production and in extreme cases even lead to oil seeming out on the surface.  Thus an acoustic cement bond tool can be run in order to find out the true state of the cementing job.

After the cement bond tool was run, the Company Man even had the nerve to come back to me to complain that the cement job was even worse than I had predicted.  The ingrate.

That was pretty much that.  Job done and processed.  I had a few moe days on the beach cleaning the equipment and packing it up ready for the next job.  Upon arrival though I had a panicked call from the operations manager in Luanda.

"Martin!  How long are the interconnects on your MRL?" [Translation: how long are the cables between the geophones?].
"Fifteen metres.  Why?"
"I want you to measure them."
"I know they are fifteen metres.  What is going on?"
"Measure them.  There has been another job where ten metre cables have been used and it wasn't noticed."
"Oh, was it using those tools in the yard in Luanda?  Yes I know they have ten metre cables."
"You knew?  How did you know?"
"Well," I said.  "I looked at them.  I saw they were short and there gathered they were ten metres in length.  I'm sure mine are fifteen metres but just for you I'll make sure when I'm cleaning them."

Then home.  The flight from Cabinda to Luanda was depressing.  The distance from the base to the mouth of the Congo to the south is about sixty miles.  Oil covered the beaches for every single mile.

Just received my pay slip and seen my tax go out....you’re welcome Britian

The title of this blog is actually a tweet by chrisjw133 and I am grateful for the inspiration because he just reminded me why we pay our taxes.

As some of you may know already, I work in the oil industry.  Okay, I can hear to booing from here but somebody has to do it as it: at least for the time being it is the basis of our global trade and economy. I look forward to the day when this is no longer the case but I digress.  One of the benefits of working in this industry is the travel.  It is a fact that people like me see places that only come into wider focus in times of disaster or political unrest.  For that reason, I am glad that places like Angola has fallen out of the headlines and when I mention Mauritania, most people have to ask where it is.  What such places have in common however, is either low taxation or a tax system that is easy to evade.

For instance, when I worked in Egypt, it reminded me of nothing more than a giant building site.  Why were the houses unfinished?  At the top of many residences the steel that reinforces the concrete is clearly visible but the buildings are obviously occupied.  The answer lay in tax avoidance.  Apparently property tax is not payable until the building is deemed complete.  The tax is not based upon occupancy.  The outcome is that roofs remain unfinished.  Don’t tell me that the Egyptians are stupid; of course they are not.  It is just that the government has colluded with the population to reduce taxation.  It is their decision whether they want their country to look like a tip or not.  Or is it?

 In many such places the general population are not encouraged to engage in politics beyond attending the often mandatory rallies.  One such instance I personally witnessed was Equatorial Guinea.  EG, as it is usually abbreviated to, is a popular destination within west Africa for immigrants and this is despite being a dictatorship and having higher tax levels than its neighbours.   I asked some people why they had settled in EG and they told me that compared to the countries they had come from, EG was better run and that ordinary people had some chance of seeing the benefits from the nation’s wealth.  Certainly while I was in Port Harcourt there was a lot of infrastructure building going on.

It is easy to forget the benefits of taxation.  In Uganda for example, education has to be paid for; denying vast numbers of the population anything beyond the most basic levels of literacy.  There is an alternative for them however.  If the poor were to join one of the many different religious groups that are flourishing in the nation, they have  chance of getting their children educated for free.  It doesn’t matter whether it is the one of the Christian or Muslim traditions: most have representation in the country.  I was very impressed by both the grand (and recently built) Sunni and Shi’ah  mosques that are to be found in the capital Kampala.  Liberals like us are then up in arms when the Ugandan parliament, with popular support, propose to introduce the death sentence for homosexuality or when in Malawi sentences the unfortunate men Steven Monjeza  and Tiwonge Chimbalanga to fourteen years hard labour for wishing to marry each other.  After all, who do you think are teaching the bulk of these populations?  It is for such reasons that I welcome the Liberal Democrat and Conservative policy of raising international aid to 0.75% of GPD, despite the straitened circumstances we all find ourselves in and would encourage other rich nations to uphold promises that they have already made. 

Of course it is not just places like Africa I see these things.  The problems are the same across the developing world whether in Central America or parts of Asia.  Colleagues of mine live in low-tax regimes, residing in beautiful houses behind their walled compounds and armed security.  I’m not casting blame; they are merely taking advantage of the opportunities that life has presented them with.  For me though, I prefer to pay my taxes and live in north-west Europe.  Here we have the schools, the hospitals, clean water and food, the houses, roads fit to drive modern cars upon, train and air travel, relatively low levels of crime, and cheap communications.  Not all of these are paid for out of taxation but far greater numbers of people can enjoy the benefits of such things because most people do pay their taxes and that the Inland Revenue is free from corruption.  That is why fair taxation is vital to a nation’s wellbeing and the fairer the taxation, the greater the general benefit.  I welcome the Liberal Democrat input on capital gains tax for example.  Buying a flat to rent is a form of speculation and thus it is only fair that a person who starts a business up from scratch and sells it upon retirement, who has risked much and employed others, has a better deal than somebody who just hopes to benefit from the next property boom.

There is a flip side to high taxation though.  The government is responsible to me and you, dear reader, for spending our money.  Hopefully this new parliament is acutely aware of this on an individual level but, more importantly, on the grand scale too.  The past ten years has seen billions of pounds wasted on invading other countries.  Trident should be included in the latest Strategic Defence Review and, in my opinion, scrapped altogether.  Hospitals have thankfully seen cases of superbug infections fall but this was only after misplaced privatisation of cleaning services in the NHS was re-examined.  Thousands of deaths should have been prevented by ensuring basic standards of cleanliness that were laid down over one hundred years ago.   Many PFI schemes are not getting the scrutiny that they deserve.  Despite all the subsidies being paid out, how many of us are really satisfied with the state of our railways?  I could go on and on.   

The point is though I just got my tax bill and you really are welcome to part of my earnings Britain.  Spend our money wisely though, because the British people are looking to see where the money, our money, is going.