Jimmy Saville is still alive...

In a previous incarnation I got taken through their incident management set-up, which is as batshit and militaristic as it sounds. tbf, GE didn't 'crown' himself Gold Commander, this was the infrastructure. The structure seemed to me to have several misconceptions built into it:

1. A sort of cargo-cult attitude - if we take on military structures that will allow us automatically to respond 'better' to crises. When this was set up they actually got military advisors in to talk them through how it worked iirc. Of course there are a couple of fundamental errors here - that your response isn't always based upon the combined celerity, accuracy, experience and decisiveness of the people making the decisions, and the skill of the people who carry out those decisions. Further more, as will be obvious to anyone who has any inkling of the military, it's not for nothing that acronyms like SNAFU and FUBAR found their environmental niche or were born in times of war amongst soldiers, so consistent is the mixture of chaos, fuck up and confusion. This leads to...

2. The only way the BBC could possibly be bedazzled by such a honking sack of idealised shit as this cockamamie wargames crap is because their own structures were and are so inimical to the actual execution of anything that even Paul Ince's <----- SHOOT looks like genius gordian knot cutting in comparison. The workflow is Stygian. The combination of BBC's origination in civil service style structures, and later innovations upon a them, most famously Birtwhistle's deranged spreadsheet cost-benefit culture produce an organisation where processes are not designed to deliver anything but themselves. It is the case that processes have a curious non-sentient self-preservation inherent to them. Frequently, where they don't work properly because they are not suited to the 'bound variable of reality', they require extra amounts of tweaking or further inadequate processes, which requires further management. Decision making can be best represented by the nightmarish receding of the end of the corridor in a dream where you are being chased. It goes something like this.

Someone somewhere thinks something is a good idea - usually EFFICIENCY ----> a very, very large group of stakeholders are brought in (large because it's the BBC, and EVERYONE has an interest), usually with highly paid external consultants from KPMG and the like ----> an analysis is done comparing current processes to the cost-benefit to be had from the idea (increasingly diffused - 'idea' is meaningless by this stage) ---> many many more meetings will be had with increasing numbers of stakeholders each of whom is consulted, and naturally each of whom has a different set of concerns and interests ----> in the interest of politics and 'internal consultative decision making' each of those concerns is addressed by making adjustments to the original concept so that it becomes both unrecognisable from the original idea (good or bad) and one of two things happens - the idea is decided to be a bad idea all round and ditched (good tho a massive waste of time and money), or it's taken up, only it's even more inefficient than the processes that were previously in place, and requires extra management from each of the stakeholders etc.

Gradually you have a procedural behemoth that is incapable of procedure.

To simplify, I compared the process-style recently to a friend:

"It’s like they ran an apple orchard, and are looking to move into oranges groves, but their stats only produce questions like ‘But where are we getting the apples from?’, ‘Hang on, how do we get apple trees to produce oranges?’, ‘We have a problem – we need to get rid of 30 apple pickers, but then we need to recruit 29 orange pickers and although that's an efficiency it'll cost more – I think we should stick with apple pickers,’, ‘That means we need to stick with apples’... then ‘why is no one buying our oranges, whose dreadful idea was this?’

*apples rot on boughs*

As you say, the fogginess around time, money and resourcing is absolutely staggering."

The BBC has become p much a tiny core of outsourcing/contracting, and it's a remarkably inefficient outsourcer, with all the worst excesses of civil service bureaucracy and compliance (often with the best of intentions), and the worst parts of free-market competitiveness. It's utterly grotesque, and frankly, given the quality of most of its output totally disproportionate to the final result, which is frequently total shit.

All this produces the insanity of Delivering Quality First, the most naked asset sell-off and cuts agenda it's possible to imagine.

I grew up with the BBC still having a crypto-authoritarian moral cache, but if that ever meant anything, it's total baloney now. I loathe Murdoch and Sky, and the heavily politicised anti-BBC environment that has brought these circumstances about, but find it almost impossible to defend on its own current terms.

oh the other important thing that stems from this vast Heath-Robinson inadequacy is a lack of individual accountability - where the decision-making is delivered not by department but by politburo committee, the notion of responsibility gets diffused. ideal for managers innit.

Good posts.

God, this cover

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BD-_5mSCAAAPoWm.jpg

FREE SEEDS indeed

Grey haired old man known for wearing ostentatious jewellery and ridiculous clothes, recently accused of sexual offences. And next to him, Jimmy Savile.

recently accused of sexual offences.

"inappropriate behaviour" does not necessarily = "sexual offences"

That's true. All he did was abused his position of power to coerce subordinates into doing something that wasn't allowed, and that he'd taken a very public stand opposing. Allegedly.

If the allegations are true he has clearly abused a position of power and it may even have been illegal but as this point he has not been "accused of sexual offences". I think that's quite an important distinction - I certainly wouldn't want people on the Internet incorrectly claiming I had been accused of crimes.

"Inappropriate acts" is the wording the Guardian has used, though (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/26/pope-keith-obrien-english-cardinal ) - that isn't a wording which I would ordinarily associate with (say) bullying / fraud / cover-up style "abuses of power".

Also that piece says this:

[Murphy-O'Connor] also refused to comment on whether the fact that O'Brien's accusers were serving or former priests meant it represented a turning point in the abuse scandal for the church leadership.

I read this as the Guardian letting its readers know that the accusations are in the same kind of area as "the abuse scandal". Now, I have no idea about the allegations, and I don't know whether the Guardian have the faintest idea about the allegations; for all I know they're just playing a baseless innuendo game but there are clear newspaperese hints here, wouldn't you say?

- that isn't a wording which I would ordinarily associate with (say) bullying / fraud / cover-up style "abuses of power".

The allegations are that the acts were of a sexual nature and have been described as "unwanted sexual advances". Again, that is not necessarily illegal but would constitute an abuse of power, as it would in any workplace.

The allegations are quite widely reported - it's claimed he felt up one priest after a heavy night's drinking, had some kind of mutual homosexual contact with another, and two more have said he came on to them after night prayers. At least one of these alleges that O'Brien used his bishopric to place pressure on them.

It's news because if true then he must be an "aberration", as he famously labelled homosexuals in 2005. He was also Stonewall's 'Bigot of the Year' in 2012 for his position on homosexuality.

The people making the allegation are not claiming illegal acts, as far as I can tell. Their objection seems to be that a man as morally bankrupt and hypocritical as they believe him to be shouldn't be in the college of cardinals choosing the next Pope.

The people making the allegation are not claiming illegal acts, as far as I can tell.

I know they aren't. That is what I was saying. I was clearly referring to the "accused of sexual offences" post in this thread.

Which is why I was explaining it for Tim.

And now I understand it! Thanks both, what you're saying makes sense. I hadn't seen the nature of the accusations reported.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/mar/13/dave-lee-travis-re-arrested

"Nazir Afzal, chief crown prosecutor from the CPS, said there would be a wave of very high-profile arrests of celebrities in the coming days"

dunno why this thread isn't just renamed rolling celebrity paedo thread

it would be libellous?

its not the thread title that would be libellous

some of them really are celebrities

Media reporting "82 year old australian celeb arrested, The Agee/AP not naming names but its p obvious who it is (and another website is naming him). I am a little shocked at this one tbh

Age, not Agee.

interesting to note that seven was running news breaks with a VERY OBVIOUS CUT right when the newsreader said 'an australian entertainer'

'rofl', i thought

haw

yeah i thought i'd exercise caution and not name names because altho some offbeat media are, mainstream are queerly not, which speaks to some kind of slander caution Im guessing?

maybe it would count as harrisment

*harassment

Holy didgeridoos!

I do remember that when a roadshow from Australian Customs visited my primary school back when I was a young lad, they gave away comics aimed at us young children that may or may not have featured the entertainer who has been arrested explaining that undeclared fruit could cause havoc on the natural environment.

It's a damn shame that I didn't keep that comic because it would be the perfect time to cash in on eBay.

*looks over shoulder for libel hawks*
*dying to post macro*

I know right?

Mine is a two-frame photo of a man drawing; second frame drawn is a CUTE KITTY.

oh my. win.

He was questioned about 4 months ago, it was reported at the time, just not too widely.

Trayce, YHFBM.

can i have FBM too pls??

Done. If anyone else is FB friends with Scanner, you'll have seen....

Suzy: got, replied, ta!

R---: "Kids, in water, I love them"

Director: "That's not in the script, R---"

Probably a good thing that Popular has already covered his only UK #1

Trayce, YHFBM.

― karl lagerlout (suzy), Friday, March 29, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Black Metal?

Worst KMFDM tribute band ever...

Jimmy Saville is still alive...

from this thread in November

rolfles

oh man I swear I knew nothing of this when I made this post

Its the poor bastard kangaroo he had tied down i feel for

any word on who brand named?

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/4865736/Russell-Brand-accuses-two-UK-showbiz-stars-of-being-paedophiles.html

lol @ hinch

xpost

himself, Alan Davies