Profile for Conn Cerned
Male, married, retired consultant
Latest comments from Conn Cerned (see all)
Conn Cerned has commented 2 times (0 in the last month).
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Books
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A poem for the day – Launching the Whaler Juan Peron
A Belfast epic, and one of my oldest poems, the opener of my first collection, Grub. The gist of the story was found in Moss & Hume’s Shipbuilders to the World: 125 Years of Harland and Wolff, Belfast, 1861-1986, which tells how Eva Peron was due to launch a huge whaling vessel in Belfast, built [...] read our review » -
Do Words Matter?: Book Review of Political Discourse and Conflict Resolution – Debating Peace in Northern Ireland
I share many of the concerns of Andy Pollak, whose recent post ‘My Response to the Slugger Begrudgers’ zeroed in on the ‘relentless flow of negativity’ of some Slugger commentators. Pollak’s post was largely concerned with the medium of the blog. Indeed, I think the anonymity of the online world encourages extreme discourse and allows [...] read our review »
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“You can see Newton’s mind at work…”
To add to the open access treasure trove at the Royal Society, Cambridge University Library is putting online some of its collection of books, maps, manuscripts and journals. We have called the first phase of our work on the Cambridge Digital Library the Foundations Project, which runs from mid-2010 to mid-2013 and has been made possible [...] read our review »
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Comment on NI Water: Why open government is more than a slogan for the chattering classes
on 7 September 2010 at 2:56 pm
Let’s not just highlight NIW procurement practices. All of the government agencies are poorly overseen by the appointed boards in this regard. And we the ‘shareholders’ are paying the price. We have only to look at NIHE and the way it conducts itself – Heating contracts for NIHE houses awarded for a 5 year period have continually been extended this past 4 years without re-tendering!
The prices being paid for the heating schemes in these NIHE houses are double that being paid for providing similar schemes in private dwelling under the DSD (but NIHE administered) Warm Homes schemes – for similar work! Each year that this cosy arrangement continues cost us the taxpayer somewhere in the region of an extra £15m more than it should had the work been re-tendered.
Who is overseeing this? Not to mention the fact that the NIHE appointed consultants policing these high-cost heating schemes are then involved on the other side of the fence as co-contractors benefiting from the Warm Homes scheme! And don’t tell us they didn’t know the cost difference! Sometimes it pays to keep quite. A conflict of interest by any standard. You bet! Incestuous? Favouritism? That would be putting it mildly. Is anyone in DSD checking on all this?
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Comment on NI Water: Why open government is more than a slogan for the chattering classes
on 5 September 2010 at 6:53 pm
Having been involved over many years with tenders for government work, I can tell you that NIW is not alone in its inability to run a proper .i.e. fair/transparent/consistent/ rigorous procurement process. ALL NI government departments/agencies should be examined for their procurement practices. But who should do this? Can we trust them to do it themselves? Not a hope!
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