4 March - Siemens’ contracted to manage Bexley’s CCTV system
The News Shopper which has just arrived reports Councillor Alex Sawyer
expressing justifiable concerns about the spread of CCTV across the borough. How
refreshing to hear a Conservative speaking as if he is not ashamed to be one. He
also reminds us that the German electronics company Siemens has been contracted to
update Bexley’s CCTV system which causes me some concern. Howard Dawber (Labour
candidate for the Bexleyheath and Crayford Parliamentary constituency) has some
interesting things to say about the Siemen’s contract and how much money it is likely to waste.
Read it here. (Link to his blog, the
Siemens page is no longer available - October 2010).
Back in 2004 Siemens took over all the IT functions of the BBC, a responsibility
that extends from office systems to the transmission network - and as a bit of a
radio enthusiast myself I believe that to have been a disaster. BBC radio now falls
off the air far too often due to stupid errors that never used to happen when BBC
engineers were in charge. What sort of idiot puts the main system and its back-up
in the same room, so when one air conditioning unit goes down both transmission
systems fail at the same time?
A close family member works at BBC White City and tells me that even the phone
system doesn’t work properly and that the unreliability is causing the BBC to
rethink its contract with Siemens. Trust Bexley council to get into bed with a bunch of
incompetents. For the record I have a large Siemens fridge and it came with a
bottle rack inside. 2 litre drink bottles are too big to fit and 75cl. wine bottles are
small enough to fall through the gaps. Fortunately my supplier agreed the shelf was
useless and obtained a standard glass shelf as a replacement free of charge.