'Owt else or Any Other Business

[Stanley]

You'll not regret it David, they are still addressing issues that nobody else seems to care about.
I did smile when I read the letter cancelling his subscription from the 90 year old in the last edition. He said that the reason was not any failing of the editorial staff but simply because the content was so depressing. I do understand and sympathise with him. I am still waiting for a modern Atlee or Bevan to ride in over the horizon.....

[Tripps]

Off topic but following on. I just looked at Stafford Beers and the link to his lectures. Stafford Beers Cybernetics

The introduction triggered the BS detector big time. The beard (and monocle) put him in the 'wants watching' category and the compulsory mood lightening joke (at 5 mins 50 sec) - I heard from a Bernard Manning performance just a few days ago. (Three men sentenced to death.)

The list of bookmarks for future attention grows ever longer. . . . I think I'll park him next to Anthony Burgess. I doubt I'll be a fan though.

[Stanley]

David, I know it's off piste but I feel it's time for a Stafford Beer story. In 1983 I got a message from David Moore at Nelson and Colne College asking me if I would like a week's paid holiday in Chelt. It turned out that Chelt was the name for an exercise in team working being conducted at the Manchester Business School. I was at a loose end and so went down there. The Chelt experience is a story on its own but here is one segment of what happened.

I met another man at Chelt, I found myself one evening having a quiet drink with Stafford Beer, the man who wrote ‘Brain of the Firm’ amongst other books. He was a wonderful bloke, an academic, guru, poet, socialist and one of the worlds leading authorities on cybernetics. At about three in the morning I asked him if he could encapsulate all he knew about communication in one aphorism and he said yes! I think I realised how drunk he was at that point but this is what he said; “It isn’t what is communicated, or how it’s communicated or how it’s received, it is what is understood.” His example was Chinese Whispers, the party game where you whisper a message to the person next to you and they pass it on, “Send reinforcements, we are about to advance.” becomes “Send three and fourpence, we are going to a dance.” The other classic is “Have captured Rommel!” becoming “Have ruptured camel!” He also told me a good story and if a memoir isn’t the place for a good story I don’t know what is!
The west coast of North America was seen as vulnerable to attack by the Japanese at the start of WWII and the American and Mexican governments decided to intern all inhabitants who were Japanese. When this edict was announced there was a storm of protest. There was at that time in Mexico City an ice cream manufacturer who was born in Japan and employed Japanese workers. He, and many of his workers had been resident in Mexico for years. This man was well connected and protested to a high government official of his acquaintance that the edict was grossly unfair to long term residents who had proved their commitment to the country over the years and that there was a case for some discretion. The official consulted with his colleagues and eventually it was agreed that the man had a point and he and his long serving employees were exempted from the edict.
In 1946 the owner of the ice cream company gave a banquet in honour of the official who had obtained the exemption for them, he was by then in an even higher government post. The owner rose to his feet after the meal and made a speech in which he said that the banquet was the company’s way of saying thank you for the good treatment they had received all through the war, there was also a surprise and a gift. At this point a door opened at the back of the hall and three men wheeled trolleys into the room piled high with manilla folders and documents. The owner of the firm said, “You were quite right in the first instance when you decided to intern us, we were all Japanese spies! Our job was to prepare for the invasion by identifying the water resources in Mexico and producing a plan whereby they could be used most effectively when Japan invaded and conquered Mexico. That is the surprise, the gift is on these trolleys, it is the results of all our work over the years!” Stafford said that three years later Mexico got a large loan from the IMF to re-organise the country’s water resources and put many of the recommendations of the Japanese ice cream firm into effect!
Stafford told me a lot more about Allende and his time spent helping the government in Chile. Meeting him was a privilege and a delight..... (If you want the full story it's in volume two of me memoir available from LULU.com!)

[Tripps]

In the absence of any means of taking this further, I think I'll stick with my first impressions. Experience has shown me it's pretty reliable. I keep getting the words 'scientology and 'L Ron Hubbard' coming to mind. You don't need to study and understand it to know instictively that it's nonsense. I'd categorise him as a top class blagger.

During the administration of Salvador Allende in Chile, in the early 1970s, Beer was closely involved with a visionary project, Cybersyn, to apply his cybernetic theories in government. The project's ultimate goal was to create a network of computers and communications equipment that would support the management of the state-run sector of Chile's economy; at its core would be an operations room where government managers could view important information about economic processes in real time, formulate plans of action, and transmit advice and directives to managers at plants and enterprises in the field.[13] However, consistent with cybernetic principles and the ideals of the Allende government, its designers aimed to preserve worker and lower-management autonomy instead of implementing a top-down system of centralised control. The system used a network of about 500 telex machines located at enterprises throughout the country and in government offices in Santiago, some of which were connected to a government-operated mainframe computer that would receive information on production operations, feed that information into economic modelling software, and report on variables (such as raw material supplies) that were outside normal parameters and might require attention. The project, implemented by a multidisciplinary group of both Chileans and foreigners, reached an advanced prototype stage, but was interrupted by the 1973 coup d'état.

When challenged to show a country where Comunism has been successful, the reply from its apologists is often that it hasn't really been properly tried yet. Under Beer's system workers' autonomy can be preserved whilst they are getting instructions from a Government Operations Room, over a network of five hundred Telex machines. I'd say that was a self evident impossibility. It's a shame Kissinger (still alive) et al deposed him, and deprived us of knowing whether it would have worked.

The 'send three and fourpence' quote seems to originate in WW1, and goodness knows where Bernard Manning gets his gags from.

Apologies for continuing to hijack the thread. Move it somewhere else if it's a problem.

[PanBiker]

Done.

[Tripps]

Thank you kind Sir - that's better.

[Stanley]

Stafford Beer at Manchester Business School.....

[Tripps]

I rest my case M'lud.

[Stanley]

[Tripps]

The Government doesn't get much praise for its IT systems, but I applied online for a new Driving Licence last Saturday night (what else would you want to be doing on a Saturday night ) and the replacement has just arrived in the post. I think that's quite impressive.

[Big Kev]

The Government doesn't get much praise for its IT systems, but I applied online for a new Driving Licence last Saturday night (what else would you want to be doing on a Saturday night ) and the replacement has just arrived in the post. I think that's quite impressive.

My son did the same with his passport, it was back within a week.

[Big Kev]

Wasn't sure if I should eat them or wear them

IMG_20231103_125815~2.jpg

[Stanley]

Re. good experiences with government IT systems. That's good to hear, straightforward renewals seem to be handled well, it's when you are out of the mainstream and it has to be decided on by a sentient admin officer that things go wrong. They appear to be thin on the ground! Hence son in law Mick's interminable wait for his revocation to be rescinded.

[Cathy]

IMG_0833.png

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I don’t remember them…
Just being cheeky

[Tripps]

I remember - before America took over everything - when they were called Elastoplasts.

[Stanley]

So do I and I still have the old fashioned flesh coloured stretchy ones in my First Aid Tin.

[Tripps]

I referred self deprecatingly to my habit of checking my supermaket till receipts recently. It started when I noticed I had been charged twice for an item in Aldi. That will never do - but it wasn't costly enough to take further, and It soon emerged that it was probably a mistake rather than intentional.

I looked at this week's receipt, and find that right at the bottom is the news that the pack of three Lemon Cheesecakes (£1.74 and delicious) is the one item which is listed under the heading "Warranty". I can't help wondering why that would be, but I think I'll stop looking now.

[Stanley]

It'll be something the Legal Eagles have made them do David. I often think the advisory lawyers in any business live in a very strange world.... Imagine being the guiding lawyer for Nadine Dorries when they were editing her book about The Plot!

[Tripps]

It'll be something the Legal Eagles have made them do

Perhaps - or maybe a software programing glitch? I don't see that any item of food should be put under a separately defined warranty. If I had a spare moment I'd ring them up. . . .

[Tizer]

Don't bother ringing them up. Wait until your next Aldi visit then show them the receipt and enquire what the warranty covers. It will be interesting to know their response! Perhaps the cheesecakes are so full of calories that they need to cover themselves in case you claim they caused you obesity or type 2 diabetes.

[Tripps]

Partly from curiosity - and partly because they're nice, I went to Aldi again yesterday and bought three more individual lemon cheese cakes. Again they appeared on the bottom of the till receipt under the heading "warranty". This tme they were accompanied by another item - a can of "chopped pork and ham ". Just those two items from a list of about twenty varied items.

The plot thickens. . . .

[Stanley]

I think you ought to find out why David. The suspense is killing me!

[Tripps]

I think you ought to find out why David

No good asking in the shop -they don't stand still long enough to be asked.

I rang 0800 042 0800 and the nice lady rang the store manager to explain themselves.

The verdict seems to be that it is not intended, and there is a bug in the sytem. Now I'll just have to buy some more next week to see if they've cured it.

"Please, Brer Fox, don't throw me into the briar patch"

[Tizer]

There seem to be bugs in just about every system I engage with these days! Today I had to contact NHS Access because of a problem with login. Bugs are getting to be a daily event.

[Stanley]

Peter, I find that one of the advantages of being a tech dinosaur and not using these apps is that any bugs in them don't affect me. I find if I am speaking to someone in the pharmacy for instance, I detect no bugs affecting us. The Pharmacy is a case in point, the app that automatically texts me to let me know when my meds are dispensed and can be collected has failed for the last two months, once by telling me 14 days early and once by not telling me at all. Was this a bug? I find that the best thing to do is call in and ask face to face.
As is almost always the case in these matters, the cause will be under-investment in the necessary skilled personnel to maintain and check the IT programmes.