The Post-Office Enquiry Just Keeps on Giving and A Memory. When Incompetents Collide.

Sadly a couple of weeks ago my Mother passed away. As you do at these times, there was a lot of reminiscing.

One thing that came up was the various jobs I'd done and the tale of the HR manager manager for ICL knocking on my Mum's door asking for me back in the days before everyone had telephones.

My Mum, bless her assumed that he was a friend of mine and kept him on the doorstep while I came downstairs.

Basically he was offering me a job at ICL after I'd done a couple of months as a temp but then been let go.

Could I start next week? You betcha!

Of he walked back to the factory about 200 yards away. Yeah, not everyone had cars back in the early eighties either.

Anyway, ICL eventually got took over by Fujitsu, but one of the policies that crept in while I was there was the parachuting of graduates into senior positions straight from University.

And I wonder if it was a Fujitsu policy that was being adopted, because the singular thing that came out of that policy was the incompetence of those parachuted in place. I had been working as the effective network manager at the factory for a while by then after the previous manager Ralph, phoned in one day and said he wasn't coming back in. Ever. 

Given that the factory was about to go through the very serious rework of the network, going from point-to-point networking to the (then) new fangled open systems like Ethernet, management of the project on a technical and fiscal level was required. So muggins here got stuck in and started the upgrade (completed under budget and in time I'll have you know).

So there I was, hoping my position was going to be made permanent eventually, when along comes a graduate parachuted into the network manager's position above me. It was quite obvious that he wasn't a technical guy. He wasn't even much of a manager either. When he opened his mouth at technical meetings with other factories in the wider network, it was very obvious. The remedy was for the techies to band together and just get the job done.

But it seemed the longer he was in his position, the more he wanted to interfere and meddle in the technical aspects, or the financials, or just basically take over the project to try and take the credit. 

A while later I left, because I could see the writing on the wall: all the good technical people were leaving and it was pretty likely that the manufacturing arm was going to be sold off because it was making a loss due to mismanagement.

I went working for an American firm down South and doubled my salary. The factory I left bled away all it's competent people and eventually the only people left were the managers. Sadly the non-technical staff got shafted when it was sold and then moved abroad. They lost their jobs.

Now I can't say that with more competent management the factory would have stood up to the outside pressures from competition, but I could see a lot of "faffing around" with vanity projects that maybe looked good in technical journals, but cost huge amounts of money and staff resources. Certainly they never saved any money, or improved efficiency. The sort of impractical and expensive stuff that Universities love. One that came to mind was the installation of delivery robots, that were supposed to deliver PCBS and components to assembly workers and then assembled PCBs and chassis' to the final assembly line. 

Robots that cost hundreds of thousands of pounds and broke down a lot replaced a very reliable old guy with a trolley that you could have employed for years for the same money. 

I get the same vibe from the Post Office enquiry. The technical guys knew what was what and it seems they tried to avoid making legally binding statements in court and it was left to managers to go up before the judges and make statements that it appears they couldn't back up. Managers that from the current enquiry, were sleepwalking in their jobs. I mean, to not be aware of the implications of the faulty software, or to be complicit in prosecutions when they knew the cause could be the software is borderline criminal let alone incompetent.

It seems that for some reason that the procedures weren't put in place to involve and inform all levels at Fujitsu of the shortcomings of Horizon and no effort was spend resolving the issues. In fact it appears that when the work involved got too substantial and the technical guys said it might impact other areas of the Horizon system, the managers just decided not to implement the changes. 

It seems that possibly that Fujitsu management liaised with the Post Office about the issues, but no-one took the seriousness of them seriously. 

Instead the machine plodded on and put people in prison. 

I assume somewhere people were too afraid to admit they were out of their depth, both at Fujitsu and the Post Office.

A case of when incompetents collide. Management at Fujitsu and the Post Office appear as incompetent as each other and it just may have become a culture of "I won't tell if you don't" as to the incompetence of the various management teams.

<Sigh> something we see across the whole country, across the public and private sector. And even to the civil service and politics.

Topsy-Turvy: Flipping the EU Debate on its Head Gives Clarity.

I've said before that all this turmoil over the Brexit referendum is better if we just for a second imagined that the result was 52/48 in favour of remain.

Would we still be talking about the result three years later? Would Parliament actively be working against the Government to secure an exit from the EU on behalf of the referendum losers?

No, absolutely not. The losing voters would have been told that the matter is settled, we were staying in the EU and a mere few months after the referendum, government process would have turned away from the question and life would have continued as before. The Status Quo would very much be in place.

Any losers would have been told vehemently to "suck it up" and just carry on as if nothing had happened.

Of course because the result was the opposite, we have had the opposite reaction: a Parliament that has time and time again conspired against the Government, and who is now taking about not settling the matter with an election, but going to the lengths of deposing the incumbent government and anointing the leader of the opposition as Prime Minister in order to defer the exit from the EU.

For three years we have had obfuscation, delay, chicanery and bending of laws and precedents in order to oppose leaving.

For what purpose? What sunlit uplands do those that conspire to keep us in the EU see in the UK's future as part of the EU? We know that remainers say there will be catastrophyThere is very little said about what a future for the EU looks like with the UK as part of it. All we hear is how bad exiting the EU will be, we never hear of the real tangible benefits of staying in the EU.

For instance, there is no mention of the stronger European Defence Force envisioned for the future of the EU, no mention of the harmonised income tax regimes planned for the future, no mention of harmonised national budgets. No one on the remain side is putting forward the positive effects of these at all. just that the status quo is better than the unknown quantity of change. I wonder why, is it possibly that those things are precisely what made UK voters vote to leave the EU? Are they net benefits after all or not? From the actions of the remainers and their reluctance to offer tangible benefits, I suspect not. All was talked about briefly during the referendum, but due to Brexit have been put on the back burner by the EU whilst we thrash out a possible deal.

And in that last sentence is the clue certainly to what a future EU would look like without the UK is a member. So frit are they of rocking the boat, the most ambitious plans of the EU have been put on hold for three years, with only moderate advances in those areas. Where before the referendum there were great and ambitious plans coming from Brussels.

Without the UK, the EU would collapse. So desperate are they to have us as a member, they are willing to forestall all major plans so that those in the UK that plan to keep us in the EU don't have anything adverse happen that could give ammunition to the leavers. Nothing that could allow a leaver to say "Aha! Told you so!".

THAT is the great tell, the thing that you look for in a Poker game when sizing up the hand of your opposition.

In another Poker analogy, the EU has a weak hand and they are bluffing.

The EU are busily working under the table to garner support. There are already reports of MPs working with EU representatives to table legislation in the UK Parliament. We already have reports of UK civil servants working with their EU counterparts as well.

Sadly Boris Johnson's government is too weak to propose legislation to outlaw this. But at least the civil servants conspiring against government policy and working with the EU should be removed from office. MPs will face their voters and be made to defend their actions.

But as the title states, by turning things on their head, you can see more clearly why the actors in the Brexit saga are playing the roles they do.

I suspect the EU has more to lose if we leave without any agreement. I suspect those that clamour for us to remain and the organised protests to do the same are a good indication that the EU and their supporters are desperate for us to stay not for our sake, but for the EU's.

As the clock ticks closer to the 31st of October, the lengths that the EU supporters in Media, Parliament and now the judiciary are stooping to is a great indicator if you can step back and see the big picture.

I suspect that things will escalate further as the month progresses without a capitulation to the EU.

I just wonder if so petitioned by the public, the Queen could announce the dissolution of Parliament instead of giving a speech announcing governmental policy. After all the government can request a dissolution and they are classed as the voice of the public in Parliament. Could the public have the power to petition the monarch directly I wonder?  It would be wonderful to see the massed ranks of members of Parliament be dismissed and told to put their case to the voters.