Everybody's talkin' at me; I don't hear a word they're saying.
Thursday, November 11th, 2004 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanAnother day dawns and I am feeling somewhat cheerier after a good night's sleep (although I could have been positively ecstatic had I had another couple of hours of the old dreamless). Maybe it's the extended hours darkness that made me glum (which is unsurprising, since the lead singer is very much like a cheap Freddy Mercury).
I was just surprised by the call on the tannoy for the customary 2 minutes' silence for Armistice Day. I was expecting this at eleven minutes past the hour, not at eleven sharp. Has no-one any respect for tradition any more?
Here at Two-Jag Towers, we find that we are damned if we do, and damned if we don't. I also find that providing easy access to information for people doesn't stop them from complaining that we don't provide easy access to information. The inability or unwillingness to read covering letters full of instructions, combined with the inability to hit the 'refresh' button on a web browser means that people go to the wrong URL and then look at the wrong information, and then not even the latest version.
It is to weep.
This does, however, fill me with a certain warmth concerning the introduction of the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act on 1 January. People can ask for information, but will, apparently, be unable to find it once it has become available. It is a sad indictment of the ability of the Great Unwashed to do much more than scratch their bums and yawn, but for a career faceless bureaucrat it is like manna from Heaven*.
In the meantime, I am trying to soothe the brows of a number of constituency MPs who can see slender majorities evaporating because they are worried about unpublished information concerning the implementation a policy we are deferring for a year. I really wish people would read the stuff we put out. It would make my life easier, and take some of the wear from their nerves.
Never mind. They are only politicians.
*…and your chicks for free…
I was just surprised by the call on the tannoy for the customary 2 minutes' silence for Armistice Day. I was expecting this at eleven minutes past the hour, not at eleven sharp. Has no-one any respect for tradition any more?
Here at Two-Jag Towers, we find that we are damned if we do, and damned if we don't. I also find that providing easy access to information for people doesn't stop them from complaining that we don't provide easy access to information. The inability or unwillingness to read covering letters full of instructions, combined with the inability to hit the 'refresh' button on a web browser means that people go to the wrong URL and then look at the wrong information, and then not even the latest version.
It is to weep.
This does, however, fill me with a certain warmth concerning the introduction of the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act on 1 January. People can ask for information, but will, apparently, be unable to find it once it has become available. It is a sad indictment of the ability of the Great Unwashed to do much more than scratch their bums and yawn, but for a career faceless bureaucrat it is like manna from Heaven*.
In the meantime, I am trying to soothe the brows of a number of constituency MPs who can see slender majorities evaporating because they are worried about unpublished information concerning the implementation a policy we are deferring for a year. I really wish people would read the stuff we put out. It would make my life easier, and take some of the wear from their nerves.
Never mind. They are only politicians.
*…and your chicks for free…
