peterbirks | The Law Of Large Holes

The law of large holes is, bascially, that when you find yourself in one, it might be a good idea to stop digging.

This radical concept has clearly not occurred to Capita, which runs London's Congestion Charge scheme. A "disgruntled" employee secretly filmed the inner workings of this company, revealing it to be bureaucractic, inflexible and generally inhabited by the kind of jobsworth that you see in administrative operations the world over. Clearly Capita gains most of its recruits from the Ministry of Defence or DEFRA.

And what is Capita's response to this? Contrition? An apology? Ahh, clearly you are not au fait with the workings of the petty bureaucratic mind. First Capita says that it may take legal action against Channel Four for filming the project which, they claimed, failed to point out that "Capital staff were seen applying Transport for London's rules consistently in their dealings with the public". Nothing about whether these rules were "right"; nothing about "common sense". All that was important was that Capita was following someone else's guidelines and that it was applying these guidelines "consistently". This is rather reminiscent of the logistics officer in Schindler's List who cares only whether someone is or is not on the list, not whether they should be on the list in the first place.

So, this "consistency" included taking to court someone who accidentally keyed in a slightly wrong number plate, and putting the bailiffs onto a woman who had sold the car for which she was being fined before the consistency charge was introduced.

But Capita's second response is even better than the first. "This is not a customer services friendly service. It is all about reducing congestion, and this is how our client (TFL) wanted it to be run".

So, back to the "we were only following orders" line, I see. But it really is a pretty good one. Yes, we are shit at the way we handle the people we fine. That's because they are not customers, but criminals. Except, of course, that a lot of them aren't, and they don't see it that way. They pay a set amount for a good (the right to drive in central London for a day), and they expect the provider of that right to provide a good service. Capita's response? "This is not a customer services friendly service".

Stop digging, boys. Stop digging.