There's no trouble overseas. Yes, I would say everything is in order.

-- Larry (cobol.programmer@usa.net), September 03, 1999

Answers

Interesting article, Larry.

It doesn't surprise me that some London boroughs are having trouble getting their stuff Y2K compliant. I lived in London for 6 years in the early 90's and the corruption and inefficiencies that were reported back then were pretty staggering. In fact, it is kind of surprising - Y2K apart - how some London boroughs manage to operate at all. I'm thinking particularly of Lambeth (known by some as the "People's Republic of Lambeth", complete with its nuclear-free-zone street signs). Maybe Wolverine can give us a man on the spot report if he still looks in here.

Just a little background on how London municipal government works: it is not one large city, rather it is made of, I think, 33 boroughs, each of which sets property taxes, building regulations, parking controls etc. If the Tower Hamlets system went belly up it would not affect the systems in Westminster, Wandsworth etc...

Regards

-- Johnny Canuck (j_canuck@hotmail.com), September 03, 1999.

Watch out - when you click on that link, you don't come back here.

Councillor Peter Forrest, Conservative opposition leader at Haringey, said, "It is staggering to find that with little more than four months to go to the millennium, the council's main business rates software system is not Y2K compliant, and that the planned replacement has collapsed."

At Tower Hamlets, councillor Janet Ludlow, leader of the opposition Liberal group, said, "We have not heard a whiff of this. We were told the year 2000 programme was going nicely."

Haringey's Travers says there is time before next year's business rates billing run to install a compliant system. "We're not being complacent. We could leave things as they are and hope that ICL will successfully complete Cobra but we think that's too risky." Robin Guenier, executive director of Taskforce 2000, said, " Anyone providing broad-based public services can't hide year 2000 problems in the same way as the private sector."

-- kermit (colourmegreen@hotmail.com), September 03, 1999.