Holiday Reading 

Looking for something to keep you interested whilst by the pool sipping a St Miguel next week? Here is the LSC Annual Report and Corporate Plan. It’s cheeper than the latest Jilly Cooper too!

Introspection 

On the last day in July the site stats. suggest that this has been the busiest month to date, certainly with regard to “visits”. There has been pretty steady growth this year and now we have 350-400 regular visitors who check out the site once or twice a week. The feedback we get is universally […]

The LSC Making Life Unnecessarily Hard Standing Committee 

Over the years we have moved from pencil, hand-written booklets through various forms of electronically produced reports to the current version of CCA documentation. As I start on my third or fourth appeal based on the latest paper work I cannot understand how they have arrived at this format unless they have spent weeks in […]

Carter USM 

My initial take on the LSC contribution to Carters civil proposals was that they had steamed in too early in hobnailed boots. Our commentators thought so too as, seemingly, did the LAPG (though they are more polite than me!). Richard gets a bigger platform for his views here and the remainder of those quoted seem […]

Air Raid Warning 

News reaches us of a client firm being alerted, over the phone by an account manager, of an incoming bombshell. This, they were warned, would come in the form of a wrongly sent notification of a Category 4, “below competence” PR result. One imagines they have also dispatched the duty first aider in case this […]

New On-Line CDS 6 Wizard 

Our original CDS 6 Wizard was a result of strong prophetic powers and a moment of inspiration. Having spent yesterday analysing data to assist a firm frame its thinking about Carter, our hunch that maintaining a record of all contract billing data would be vital has proved spot on. (I am most smug and self […]

Lazy Bloggin 

Its too hot, and Andy is away so I’m handling more phone queries than before, and I’m busy, and I’m in a hurry to get to my next appointment. So I am resorting to the last refuge of a blogging scoundrel and simply re-posting other peoples stuff. (That said they did send it to me […]

First the Bad News 

Last week I commented on the first two criminal firms to check past performance with Carter proposed standard fees. Both felt reasonably reassured. The next two – one civil and one crime – report an entirely different outcome and a distinct lack of reassurance. Tomorrow I am spending the afternoon with another CDS and CLS […]

Over The Rainbow 

My old colleague and mate from my LAB days, Peter Beckford, is leaving the Commission and the UK and is heading for the land of Oz. Those who know him will know he was one of the good guys who treated firms straight and ran the CDS in Yorkshire fairly and well. He will be […]

London Busses 

Having not done a Cost Committee for a while two have come along back to back. Friday we were arguing about out of time billing in Leeds and today I have a batch of reduced CDS 7s in Manchester. I need to get in the car and drive there in a minute. After than I […]