£35m a year for the Business Link website? Really??

Discussion in 'News' started by UKDarkstar, Jul 18, 2010.

  1. UKDarkstar
    Honorary Member

    UKDarkstar Terabyte Poster

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    £35m a year for the Business Link website? Really??



    Even if the Business Link website was any good, how is it possible to spend that much on it?

    Opinion seems to have been split when new business minister Mark Prisk announced the Government was pulling the plug on Business Link: although many business owners have long considered it a total waste of taxpayers’ money, others sing its praises. But we suspect that whatever camp you’re in, you’ll be as horrified as us to learn that its (fairly unimpressive) website has apparently cost the taxpayer an extraordinary £105m over the last three years – despite getting just 1m visitors a year. As they say online: OMG.

    It’s a huge sum, for what isn’t even a very good site. According to the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones, the costs break down like this: £6.2m on strategy and planning (meetings, essentially; they must be racing through those chocolate Hobnobs), £4.4m on design and build (is the company concerned using gold Macs or something?), £4.7m on hosting and infrastructure, £15.3m on content provision (now there’s a good freelance gig) and £4.5m on testing and evaluation. As one flabbergasted developer told Cellan-Jones: ‘It’s a completely unfathomable number, I can’t imagine how that could be spent’. Join the club.


    Full story : HERE
     
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Comments

    1. greenbrucelee
      greenbrucelee
      You know its all bollocks. That website is ****e the money is going in someones pocket, the strategy meetings are probably held in some s****y restaurant with a management team who know **** all about anything and some poor fooker at the bottom who tries his best to make a decent website gets all the ****. I suppose its the same with most things like this if they don't spend too much then they get a bigger budget so they have to make figures up like it cost 35m a year to maintain when infact its about 35 pence.

      Its like maintaining the roads, you pay tax on petrol and road tax, it supposed to go into fixing the roads but instead goes on meetings and in peoples pockets because if they dont spend a certain amount then they dont get the same budget next year.
    2. Kitkatninja
      Kitkatninja
      I may just register to find out what the site is like.

      -ken
    3. greenbrucelee
      greenbrucelee
      I wouldn't bother. some bits like certain radio buttons and links dont work.
    4. Kitkatninja
      Kitkatninja
      That's what happens when you only spend £35m a year on it :dry :lol:

      -Ken
    5. DC Pr0Mo
      DC Pr0Mo
      To be fair, the site isn't that bad, has a load of information in regards to starting up, as for the price well I never paid for it so I dont really care. The money would just have been spent on something else for people to moan about.
    6. Kitkatninja
      Kitkatninja
      Well I've tried signing up to the site and it keeps on telling me that I have to accept the T&C's, even though I've checked the box (I've tried both local and national options). Will try next week, maybe there will be some useful info for our secondary business at work...

      -ken
    7. Mr.Cheeks
      Mr.Cheeks
      Whats wrong with you dude... Why are you always ***** and negative for!
    8. zebulebu
      zebulebu
      If you think it's been bad for the last 12 years, wait until the Tories start f***ing everyone over and lining their mates' pockets at the expense of the working stiff.
    9. greenbrucelee
      greenbrucelee
      They are all as bad as each other
    10. Josiahb
      Josiahb
      The bit that always gets me with this one is they would get the same budget every year if they actually spent the money on fixing the bloody roads in the first place. I reckon I could spend their entire budget in about 15 minutes just filling potholes.

      round our way it seems to be spent resurfacing the bits of road that aren't actually buggered.....
    11. greenbrucelee
      greenbrucelee
      I was once told by a coucillor after complaining about the state of the roads and he told me that if they save on spending their budget then they get more the next year. So this is probably why you hardly ever see them because the managers want a bigger budget so they can buy ceramic ducks for their moats :).

      The problem with them filling in holes is that they use crap materials. When making cement n stuff they melt down glass inlcuding bottles etc to make the cement but what I didn't know is that you cant recycle green wine bottles (red wine) and use that because the acidity levels that are still in the bottles make the cement degrade at a astronomical rate but its faster and probably cheaper to use red wine bottles in the process. I wonder why our roads fall apart then. :D
    12. westernkings
      westernkings
      Those here that have worked in the Public Sector towards the end of Labours Reign when the POs were being signed off like no tomorrow will understand exactly how this happened, the same reason I know people with 7 projectors, 4 SLRs, a dozen Caviar Blacks, ten laptops all on Public Sector money.

      It was a free for all, and when I was part of it, I loved it. Now I am on the outside again, it's disgusting.
    13. greenbrucelee
      greenbrucelee
      I suppose everyone would do it if they could even thought its immoral.
    14. Josiahb
      Josiahb
      I wouldn't.... I always was weird though. :p

      Seriously though, if I come in massively under budget I don't get more the following year, if I'm really lucky I get same again unless I can find reasons why I need the extra cash.

      (although in the current climate having budgeted for some things doesn't actually mean I get to buy them apparently)

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