Deja Vu

I'm having one of those days where I feel I'm reliving a bad day from before. Sort of like Groundhog Day, but without the laughs, the snow or the ability to punch those people who are aggravating me. I should probably clarify, I'm not a violent man by nature, and I don't really want to punch anyone, but the release that Bill Murray gets in the film from punching Ned etc would b emost welcome about now. Perhaps part of my deja vu problem is that I do pretty much have monthly routines that crop up, although these are interspersed with quarterly or annual issues. We (my team) currently have a major headache looming, which is hoovering up our time, but the day to day stuff still needs to be addressed. I don't think I've blogged about what I actually do, work wise, just talked generally about it being in finance and involving number crunching. Well, I think the cat can be let out of the bag, although this is no cute kitten, more of a one-eyed feral tom. Where I live we have a concessions scheme for the elderly and children to travel on public transport. A lot of parts of England have them, and they vary by area. It's been dependent upon the local government bodies to determine what scheme they operate, hence the widely differing approaches. Here in Manchester, where I live, we operate a flat fare system. Basically, if you are over 60 or under 16 (and over the age of 5, or in full time education up to the age of 18) you are entitled to a permit which allows you to travel on any bus, for any distance for 50p. Part of my job is to then help determine how much money the equivalent journey should have cost and then to reimburse the appropriate bus operator (we have over 40 different companies in Manchester). We don't actually give them the whole difference between the 50p and the full equivalent fare. There is an arcane and mystical formula that determines how much is payable, depending on the time of the journey, the type of passenger etc etc. Our major problem is that our National government has decreed that from the 1 April all elderly passengers should travel for free, i.e no 50p flat fare anymore. Great news for pensioners on low incomes, several problems for us. The government have dished out some cash based upon population figures, but have not decreed how the bus companies (and tram and rail in our case) should be reimbursed. We have some knowledge gaps - where and how often are pensioners likely to travel once the flat fare disappears? How do we record the numbers of people travelling? In the past there was at least some money changing hands to indicate some level of transactions. We've had some meetings with the bus companies, and the amount of cash they want is nowhere near the amount of money we're going to receive. We're not even close in terms of cash - millions of pounds different. Ah well, I'm sure it will all come clean in the wash as they say. Putting it down on this blog has felt quite cathartic, and I apologise to those visitors who have read this far in the hope of being entertained, although if you've stuck with it this far - HA! you should know better by now. Normal service will be resumed shortly.... hopefully