great article, this demonstrates just how bad the civil service & politicians are when it comes to negotiating contracts with private investors… or trade deals, or brexit if it comes to that
We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
111–120 of 317 posts
Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
#112As he points out, this was a profoundly stupid mistake made when privatising Royal Mail. It would have been trivially easy to do at that point, but now it's a lot harder. If the government decided that it does want to do this, it can't just pass a law that says "the PAF is now free" without paying hundreds of millions of pounds in compensation to Royal Mail. That's quite apart from the ongoing costs of maintaining th…
Another part to this is that there's a certain amount of cooperation between Royal Mail and councils street numbering and naming. Councils are the first authority over new streets/locations, changes like a property being split or merged (i.e. landlords converting to a property of multiple occupation and not telling them for various reasons, and then residents have issues getting post), residential/commercial, etc, and then that gets passed onto Royal Mail to update the PAF. If there's an issue with an address you've got to check with the council first, so there would be some good fit for centralization there.
Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
#113The simple solution here is a threat from the government to Royal Mail. Give us your postcode file for free, or we will simply make up a new numbering scheme, send an address card to every house telling them of their new number with their next council tax bill, and postcodes will become a thing of the past. The new numbering scheme will be unique to each house too, and have a check digit so the number alone is suffic…
The idea of the UK government attempting to do such a thing fills me with the utmost dread.
When did this almost Reaganite sentiment ("I'm from the government and I'm here to help") make home in the UK? I know it's not recent: I remember similar arguments coming from the No2ID camp in 2005 at-least.
Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
We needed an ambulance off road in the middle of Richmond Park where a postcode would also not help. We didn't have WTW either, which they asked for and would have helped immensely.
If you drop a pin in google maps it shows you the lat/lon, e.g. 51.5010392, -0.1423616 7 decimal places of lat/lon is approximately a centimetre.
Centimetre, and after the next big earthquake are all numbers off, sometimes even by several meters. Now what you do? New addresses for all, or wrong numbers to new buildings?
Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
#115The simple solution here is a threat from the government to Royal Mail. Give us your postcode file for free, or we will simply make up a new numbering scheme, send an address card to every house telling them of their new number with their next council tax bill, and postcodes will become a thing of the past. The new numbering scheme will be unique to each house too, and have a check digit so the number alone is suffic…
I'm unable to think of any reform in British history where 'throw everything out and start again' had successful outcomes. The British state runs on two principles: maximum effect for minimum effort, and the Ship of Theseus.
Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hence why a house number and postcode constitutes a complete address in the UK, we’ve sort of already got What Three Words with “a number and 5-7 characters” - not quite as catchy though
We needed an ambulance off road in the middle of Richmond Park where a postcode would also not help. We didn't have WTW either, which they asked for and would have helped immensely.
There should be a free and open government backed alternative to W3W. Outrageous for a private company to own such a thing.
Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
#117As he points out, this was a profoundly stupid mistake made when privatising Royal Mail. It would have been trivially easy to do at that point, but now it's a lot harder. If the government decided that it does want to do this, it can't just pass a law that says "the PAF is now free" without paying hundreds of millions of pounds in compensation to Royal Mail. That's quite apart from the ongoing costs of maintaining th…
"without paying hundreds of millions of pounds in compensation to Royal Mail" lot less than hundreds of millions to bring it back into govt
Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
If only we had a system of national grid references since, say, 1936
They were only interested in What Three Words. Didn't want anything else, sadly.
I know - my van broke down recently, had the same experience even though I could describe the location exactly by intersection of roads, or grid reference.
As I had a smartphone they did at least have a link I could click which would give me my w3w location, which I had to read back to them.
Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you drop a pin in google maps it shows you the lat/lon, e.g. 51.5010392, -0.1423616 7 decimal places of lat/lon is approximately a centimetre.
Centimetre, and after the next big earthquake are all numbers off, sometimes even by several meters. Now what you do? New addresses for all, or wrong numbers to new buildings?
Not really a problem in the UK
Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
It hardly requires a huge amount of investigation to see that's not a scam link. It literally has the blog authors name attached to it, along with a post date and a "read the full story"link that has the same web address as the blog. It's just a few seconds work to see it's legit.
You're not fully getting it. I said with clarity that I know it's pointing back to his website. But any website with a click-bait title of 'One small trick" or some such, is a scammy, clickbaitish site.
Any negative aspect of media from the past can, and often will, be transformed into a positive trait in future media.
People embrace vinyl records in an age of digital music. They take photos with analog cameras even though everyone has a phone in their pocket. Musicians use the harsh artifacts of MP3 compression as creative effects in their music. The examples are countless, and they all emerge precisely when the media that once produced these unwanted artifacts becomes obsolete.
If you haven't noticed this shift, I suggest you learn to recognize it quickly. Otherwise, you might miss out on great content because it doesn't make it past your mental spam filter.
And if you don't want to adapt, that's fine too—just don't tell others how to manage their websites.