The Age has produced a fantastic report on the use of management speak in government. We’re quoting them here but click on this link to see the original report:

British bureaucrats have been warned: no more synergies, stakeholders or sustainable communities.

The body that represents the country’s local authorities has told its members to stop using management buzz words, saying they confuse people and prevent residents from understanding what local governments do.

The Local Government Association, whose members include hundreds of district, town and county councils in England and Wales, on Friday sent out a list of 100 “non-words” that it said officials should avoid if they want to be understood.

The list includes the popular but vague term “empowerment,” “coterminosity,” a situation in which two organisations oversee the same geographical area; and “synergies,” combinations in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

continue reading "Management Speak Invades Local Government"

The only way to truly ruin a day is to have to deal with an irate customer or hair-splitting client. In one weekend job I had an indignant customer who complained because the assistants didn’t know how to give a refund in pounds to a customer who bought an item in France - before the sale - and would like another item in exchange, that is only available in a different store so please could you order it for me and I’ll pay the difference. !!

Fast forward several years to office jobs where fussy clients think they’re the only person giving the firm work. They ask for records from decades ago just to give the office junior the opportunity to do battle with spiders and layers of dust amongst the badly labelled boxes in archives. They’ll ring up every hour making you put other people on hold, just to see how you’re getting on.

Finally, I moved up a bit in the world and had to start having to deal with “stakeholders” - a term I objected to out of hand. It goes in the same hellish category as “blue-sky thinking”, “top-down structuring” and “putting speech marks around everything”. Stakeholders are people who like to get in the way of you doing your job. They nit-pick and have an opinion and organise useless meetings until you start up your own company just so you don’t have to consult them ever again. Thank God for that.

“Er, could you fax those signed documents over to me by the close of business?”

“FAX - HELL NO - ITS NOT 1985!”

“Networking” involves standing in a room with (ostensibly) like-minded individuals who share a common desire to shaft one another given the first opportunity but must first bandwaggon in order to get into the position of being a “shafter” as opposed to a “shaftee”.

Networking is the activity through which this may be achieved. It normally involves liberal scattering of business cards, excessive “brown-nosing”, feigning interest, management speak and finger food.

This last element invokes the “free rider problem” whereby those looking for a free lunch can join the munal bullshitting in return for a selection of salmon hors d’oeuvres and crappy wine.

See also: handing out business cards (to everyone)

What has happened to Pluto?

And I don’t mean the lovable dog belonging to Mickey Mouse.

How many people does it take to demolish a planet?

Only 424.

Turned to a dwarf

Pluto has been downgraded to the status of a dwarf planet and no longer counts as our ninth planet of the solar system.

This was decided on the last day of the International Astronomical Union in August 2006, late and after most of the delegates had left.

Alan Stern, leader of the NASA New Horizons Mission to Pluto, said: “Less than five per cent of the world’s astronomers voted. I’m embarrassed for astronomy.”

I am obliged to the Observer Book of Space, published with the Observer newspaper on 11 November 2007, for all this information, as well as for a piece on the 1974 Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence message sent from Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

This was, in brief, a numerical message which would form a picture explaining who we, human beings, are. It included a representation of our solar system.

With nine planets.

As it should be.

Let’s Get Together

Surely we can find more than 424 people who wish to BRING BACK PLUTO and reinstate it as a planet, returning it to the fold.

Join me in the quest by joining the Facebook Group, Bring Back Pluto.

My father, an American born in 1901, insisted that we four children learn the names of the planets from the sun outwards and he was only 29 when Pluto was discovered. He would tell us how exciting that discovery was. In his memory, I hope to re-instate our ninth planet to its full glory.

After all, in his lifetime he learned of the first flight at Kittyhawk and of the first discoverey Pluto and watched the first men walk on the Moon and even worked in the space industry himself. From horse and buggy, to space travel in one man’s lifetime. BRING BACK PLUTO to honour him and all those who have lived in that amazing 20th century.

• For those wishing to know, Pluto the Disney character was named after the planet on its discovery.

Saturday’s Daily Telegraph (UK) buried a piece of news down page on page 9 (Saturday 3 November 2007) which is really worth a shout of Victor Meldrewness.

Hidden beside the advertisements was this:

‘A Government minister who once called dangerous drivers “serial potential killers” was fined yesterday for using a mobile phone while driving.

‘Liam Byrne, the immigration minister, sat on a parliamentary committee that increased fixed penalty fines for driving while using a mobile from £30 to £60.

‘Mr [Note: Daily Telegraph, why call him Mr here, when other court cases just use the surname?] Byrne, 37, a former police officer and a rising star in Gordon Brown’s government, claimed [he] was taking an important call about deportation when he was stopped in Birmingham in July.’

He was fined £100 plust costs and given three points on his licence.

My point is that the sheer hypocrisy of the MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill is unbelievable. And how did the story come to be so “buried”? A front page link would have been worthwhile.

No matter how important the call, the law is that you must not use a mobile (except for handsfree) while driving. He should have pulled over to take or recall the call.

Byrne should do the honourable thing and resign. But then, pigs might fly.

In this day and age of transparency, when even the smallest parish councillor must declare an interest if an agenda item is in any way connected to him; and when professionals such as lawyers, accountants and the like must at all times be aware of any potential conflict of interest, why does this care-fulness not extend to the top?

Alastair Darling, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, stepped in a few weeks ago to urge the Bank of England (over which, incidentally, his boss Gordon Brown surrendered control during his days in the same post) to rescue the ailing Northern Rock bank, an ex-building society.

Only this past week did he have the gumption to admit, very very quietly, and in the middle of other news so it was “buried”, that he has a mortgage with…. guess who?

Yup, Northern Rock.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

What is more annoying than people braying on about how busy they are?

Not much.

Living in a city can be a demanding experience. There is an underlying feeling of running out of time that’s driving everyone to scurry around cramming in as much ‘Warmest regards’ crackberry sign-offs between crayfish and rocket sandwiches as is humanly
possible.

Maybe I’m just bitter due to the fact I am not as in demand as many of the people I seem to come across. I am not “absolutely chock-a-block”, “on 60 plus these days” or “missing holidays this year”. Some of these people are earning vast sums of money and will retire when they hit thirty, many are simply not.

I understand if you want to work yourself into the ground in the hope of promotion, good for you. If you’ve got an interesting job it would be good to hear what you’re doing. Barking out meaningless figures of how many hours you sit in a chair and stare at a screen surely isnt something to be proud of.

Comments that annoy me -

Q “Wow, you’ve had ANOTHER holiday?”
A “Umm, well yeah”
Q “Lucky old you eh? Alright for some!”

- Holidays are fun, why are you proud to not have any?

Q “Off home are you?”
A “Umm, well yeah”
Q “Nice of you to drop in and see us! Ha Ha”

- Well I’ve worked a full day and achieved a lot of stuff, but you’re right, you are going to sit here for another couple of hours, good for you!

Not all recruitment consultants are shit, obviously, but many are.

Perhaps the worst, and most widely demonstrated, trait of many recruitment consultants is their spectacular lack of any working knowledge regarding the role for which they are recruiting.

I’m not talking about in-house Human Resource people here, I mean those consultants who work for agencies. Instead of asking about your experience in sensible terms, recruitment consultants instead take the easy option: talking in buzz-words and asking questions for which they don’t even understand the answer in order to tick off a client’s “checklist.”

In order to talk in buzz words, though, it helps if one knows what they mean. Here is an example:

Recruitment Concultant: “So, you can code HTML, do you know CSS?”

Applicant: “I know of it, what aspect would you like me to explain?”

RC: “do you know CSS?”

Applicant: “I know what it means, and have some experience using it. Though I haven’t coded with CSS much, I’m pretty confident with it.”

RC: “so, you don’t know CSS” *ticks ‘no’ box.

Applicant: “do YOU know what CSS means?”

RC: “Do you know flash?”

and so on…

Come on. How can you choose the best person for a job, when you neither understand the role, nor the skills of the person you’re interviewing. Go and work in a call centre and stop wasting everyone’s time.

At some point in most of our working and/or business lives, we have the joyless experience of attending a conference or other “networking” event.

Networking, done properly, need not be a dirty word. The problem begins when people start firing business cards at you at the beginning of conversations which inevitably lead nowhere. Here’s an idea for you, next time, wait until you ascertain whether or not it is likely that I will EVER need to speak to you in a working capacity before thrusting your card upon me.

I have got bags and briefcases which are busting at the seams with such cards. I’ve never needed one of these cards yet.

The primary offenders often wear lilac or pink shirts with an equally lilac tie - complete with a huge windsor knot. They have nondescript “business solutions” roles, and find it difficult to explain what it is they actually do.

If I want your card, I’ll ask for it.