Majestic

There are times when I wonder at the perceived majesty of government – certainly as it applies to the UK. The amount of queries we get where the inquirer must already know the answer is quite spectacular. The problem is simply that while they already know what they are supposed to do and how to do it, they have no confidence.

It doesn’t matter that generally speaking the statutory rights and duties lie elsewhere, people (including corporate bodies) expect us to give them the nod before they go ahead with anything. It hasn’t quite reached the stage where the Chief Executive of a borough phones for permission to wipe his arse, but I fear the day is not too far distant.

There is an exercise going on at the moment here, called “Stop It”. The idea is to identify and discontinue those high input, low impact¹ tasks that consume time voraciously for no apparent benefit. A little like filling out “Stop It” questionnaires, actually². I have been wondering if we could stop answering the phone to people who are known to ask the bloody obvious. I’m sure we have the technology to block their numbers at the switchboard, but then I guess that’s not what ‘open government’ is all about. It would make my life so much easier if people invoked the Freedom of Information Act more frequently. We should put all queries under that; the question tends to go away when the person asking is told that an answer will cost a significant amount of money and that they are required to pay it.


¹Marvel at the jargon.

²But nothing like writing on LJ instead of working.

Majestic

There are times when I wonder at the perceived majesty of government – certainly as it applies to the UK. The amount of queries we get where the inquirer must already know the answer is quite spectacular. The problem is simply that while they already know what they are supposed to do and how to do it, they have no confidence.

It doesn’t matter that generally speaking the statutory rights and duties lie elsewhere, people (including corporate bodies) expect us to give them the nod before they go ahead with anything. It hasn’t quite reached the stage where the Chief Executive of a borough phones for permission to wipe his arse, but I fear the day is not too far distant.

There is an exercise going on at the moment here, called “Stop It”. The idea is to identify and discontinue those high input, low impact¹ tasks that consume time voraciously for no apparent benefit. A little like filling out “Stop It” questionnaires, actually². I have been wondering if we could stop answering the phone to people who are known to ask the bloody obvious. I’m sure we have the technology to block their numbers at the switchboard, but then I guess that’s not what ‘open government’ is all about. It would make my life so much easier if people invoked the Freedom of Information Act more frequently. We should put all queries under that; the question tends to go away when the person asking is told that an answer will cost a significant amount of money and that they are required to pay it.


¹Marvel at the jargon.

²But nothing like writing on LJ instead of working.

nostalgia

I have just been rooting through some old files on my computer’s P:\¹ drive looking for aged information that has suddenly become relevant again after many years’ disuse. Many of the files haven’t been opened in many a long year and a whole wad of them are in very old WordPerfect format, which luckily can still be opened by the version or Word we are required to use here in the office.

One of the things I found was a crib list of items that might need to be investigated by one Severus ex Guernicus, Keeper of Records, the character I played at Machiavelli Games’ Grand Tribunal years before I ever got involved in writing free forms with that group’s successor, NWO Games. The file was last edited and saved on 19 October 1996 about a month before the game was played.

I find it hard to believe that that weekend was just short of ten years ago, now. Much of it is still fresh in my memory, including the trip up in colonel_maxim’s rickety old second-hand caravanette which broke down outside Earl’s Court before we’d even left London and his careful dodging around outside to keep himself between the friendly and sympathetic traffic warden and the long expired tax disc in the front windscreen. The fact that we had to keep the engine running on the way back from Ilum on the Monday morning, even when we stopped off on the Motorway for a loo and food break, because we couldn’t be sure of ever starting the blasted thing again. I recall the long journey up with Ser Taylor (sans LJ) and a couple of other people who reside in my memory now only as faceless shadows (though I have a feeling from later memories that lucyas may well have been one of them) had us arriving on site as the masked ball was already underway, and feeling extremely out of place while wandering through in work a day clothes until I found somewhere to change into costume.

Highlights that still sit well in the mind include the explosive death of Vancasitum, his funeral orchestrated by Vector Tempestratum which involved real fireworks and a circle burnt into the drive way much to the horror and bemusement of the staff, the revelation of Tremere, the appearance of the Diedne, the transformation of the Lych and Vector’s show-stopping speech.

And we should never forget that "Ka is your friend"...

Ah yes, and trying to keep a straight face when reporting back to ysharros (whose character name now evades me) concerning a dispute over respect due to 'familiars', one of which was a potted plant.

Good times.

That was what got me interested in the hobby in the first place. And all this nostalgia has got me sentimental for it; I must stop and think of other things.

But mainly I was impressed by the fact that it is almost exactly ten years ago, now. I mean, I knew that already, but the file date reminder sparked it all off again and suddenly I feel a little bit old.

This nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, you know.



¹Held on a server elsewhere in case this machine goes *poing* as it and its predecessors have on a number of occasions in the past.

nostalgia

I have just been rooting through some old files on my computer’s P:\¹ drive looking for aged information that has suddenly become relevant again after many years’ disuse. Many of the files haven’t been opened in many a long year and a whole wad of them are in very old WordPerfect format, which luckily can still be opened by the version or Word we are required to use here in the office.

One of the things I found was a crib list of items that might need to be investigated by one Severus ex Guernicus, Keeper of Records, the character I played at Machiavelli Games’ Grand Tribunal years before I ever got involved in writing free forms with that group’s successor, NWO Games. The file was last edited and saved on 19 October 1996 about a month before the game was played.

I find it hard to believe that that weekend was just short of ten years ago, now. Much of it is still fresh in my memory, including the trip up in colonel_maxim’s rickety old second-hand caravanette which broke down outside Earl’s Court before we’d even left London and his careful dodging around outside to keep himself between the friendly and sympathetic traffic warden and the long expired tax disc in the front windscreen. The fact that we had to keep the engine running on the way back from Ilum on the Monday morning, even when we stopped off on the Motorway for a loo and food break, because we couldn’t be sure of ever starting the blasted thing again. I recall the long journey up with Ser Taylor (sans LJ) and a couple of other people who reside in my memory now only as faceless shadows (though I have a feeling from later memories that lucyas may well have been one of them) had us arriving on site as the masked ball was already underway, and feeling extremely out of place while wandering through in work a day clothes until I found somewhere to change into costume.

Highlights that still sit well in the mind include the explosive death of Vancasitum, his funeral orchestrated by Vector Tempestratum which involved real fireworks and a circle burnt into the drive way much to the horror and bemusement of the staff, the revelation of Tremere, the appearance of the Diedne, the transformation of the Lych and Vector’s show-stopping speech.

And we should never forget that "Ka is your friend"...

Ah yes, and trying to keep a straight face when reporting back to ysharros (whose character name now evades me) concerning a dispute over respect due to 'familiars', one of which was a potted plant.

Good times.

That was what got me interested in the hobby in the first place. And all this nostalgia has got me sentimental for it; I must stop and think of other things.

But mainly I was impressed by the fact that it is almost exactly ten years ago, now. I mean, I knew that already, but the file date reminder sparked it all off again and suddenly I feel a little bit old.

This nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, you know.



¹Held on a server elsewhere in case this machine goes *poing* as it and its predecessors have on a number of occasions in the past.