John Oliver on corporate ‘net zero’ proposals: ‘We cannot offset our way out of climate change’

[Joeboy]

How much for car hire per day? I ask as I've booked a car yesterday 22nd Dec to 14th Jan at £20 per day incl insurance.

Turkey or Switzerland Joe?

We hire, technically from french side of GVA, polo hired, given a passat (broken from new) so around that size, now cost around £826 automatic, for 7 days ..shes not finished checking but was simply looking & wishing to be there, thus the "initial" price search.

Turkey I pay £30 per day for spot hire. A few weeks hire it drops to £20

[Mr Gus]

wife now found peugot via b.a. pug 208, £456 inc insurance.

i dont think we paid as cheap as you for a fiat panda in 1989 in lanza-grotty.

[robl]

So I "must" travel to Munich for work for an Engineering meeting.......

So I did go by train, 1 other Engineer flew, 2 managers flew. Myself and the other engineer agreed the meeting was a waste of time. Could have been done online - or better still, not bothered. Throughout my 30yr career it has been like this - resist travel, relent due to pressure, repeat. There's another meeting brewing, I shall resist.

[Oldgreybeard]

So I "must" travel to Munich for work for an Engineering meeting.......

So I did go by train, 1 other Engineer flew, 2 managers flew. Myself and the other engineer agreed the meeting was a waste of time. Could have been done online - or better still, not bothered. Throughout my 30yr career it has been like this - resist travel, relent due to pressure, repeat. There's another meeting brewing, I shall resist.

About thirty years ago I took a new job in Scotland, about an hour and a half's drive away from Glasgow. My boss (in London) wanted me to be in the London office two days a week. Believe it or not he insisted that those two days were Tuesday and Thursday each week.

The net result was that I'd get up at the crack of dawn each Tuesday and Thursday morning, drive to Glasgow airport to catch the 7:15am BA Shuttle to Heathrow, then spend 45 minutes on the tube getting into central London. I'd do this in reverse in the evening, leave the office about 5pm, get the tube out to Heathrow and get the 7:15pm Shuttle back to Glasgow, then drive home, usually getting home after 10pm.

I did this for two years, until my boss was found weeping and naked in his office one Monday morning, having had some sort of complete breakdown and been locked in for the whole weekend. Never saw him again, but his replacement immediately asked why I was spending the thick end of £1k a week travelling down to London and back. To say I was grateful when he suggested I stay in Scotland and just teleconference with the London office as required is an understatement.

One good thing that came out of all that flying was that I earned enough airmiles for us to have a free holiday in Singapore, plus I'd earned a gold executive club card, so could upgrade our flights to business.

[Mr Gus]

Your old manager was a useless controlling d1ckwad, simple.
The replacement had reasoning.

[Oldgreybeard]

Your old manager was a useless controlling d1ckwad, simple.
The replacement had reasoning.

To be fair, I think that, unknown to anyone, he was suffering from some deep rooted mental health problems. His catastrophic breakdown, that led to him being (accidentally) locked in his office for a weekend, with him being found naked and sobbing on the Monday morning was most probably just the culmination of something that had been brewing for a long time. I think his irrational insistence on all that travel was most probably an early symptom of something deep rooted that he was struggling with.

[Mr Gus]

Must have been a long time ago, with no phones about, so knocking a hole un a thin door / partition, window etc?

If that severe it would not have been easily hidden, so, his condition & management style were allowed to run rampant then? ..im curious as to oversight.

[Oldgreybeard]

Must have been a long time ago, with no phones about, so knocking a hole un a thin door / partition, window etc?

If that severe it would not have been easily hidden, so, his condition & management style were allowed to run rampant then? ..im curious as to oversight.

The building in question was shut down over the weekend, no security AFAIK. The switchboard wouldn't have been manned over the weekend either, so my best guess is that the phones didn't work (this was pre-mobile phone era).

The chap was seen as being an oddball when I first started working for him. He'd shut himself in his office and never, ever, talk with people face to face, only over the phone, even if they were in the office next door. For some reason this was just accepted as a bit of eccentricity, but looking back I'm sure he was suffering from some serious mental health issues for years before his breakdown.

I felt sorry for him, if I'm honest, we should have done something to try and help him before his eventual breakdown, but he was a very, very difficult person to talk to. He never listened to anyone, only spoke to people and then just ignored any reply. No idea what happened to him, other than being given early retirement on the grounds of ill health. One rumour that seemed to stack up was that he had a slow growing brain tumour. No idea if that was true or not but it might fit with the way his behaviour changed over a period of a couple of years or so.

[Mr Gus]

A switchboard that doesn't allow you to dial out ..jeez must be govt!?

[Oldgreybeard]

A switchboard that doesn't allow you to dial out ..jeez must be govt!?

This was years ago, when we had switchboard operators, that shut down the board when they went home. We never had a direct dial capability back then, every call went through the switchboard operator.