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.

Political Police

There have been a few instances over the past few week that have made me question the current state of Policing in the UK, especially with regard to Bias, either political or otherwise.

Being a working class lad, I've seen the move away from community Policing where the officers on the beat were a complete cross-section of the community and therefore "one of us", to the "professional Police" we have now with degree-waving graduates with no common sense, no skills, and no life experience put into situations that no training course could replicate.

Now it's all about absolutes: black and white. Now Policing is much more about enforcement rather than common sense and human rights. 

Now we have a Police force with little experience of working class life. Instead the grim estates are something alien to modern coppers and in effect they have moved from being one of those people on the estates Policing by consent, to a bunch of thugs with a war-like mentality against the citizens of the lower classes. Phrases like "War on crime", "War on drugs", only fuel the "Us and them" mentality that pervades the modern Police force.

Aided and abetted by the absolutes of fixed penalty notices introduced by Tony Blair, the Police are no longer interested in keeping the Peace. They regularly break the peace themselves, assaulting citizens to enforce wrongful arrests. 

The mentality of training that says every citizen, from a young kid to a granny should have their hands forcefully jammed up their backs, or be thrown to the ground, when making an arrest is wrong-headed. That's not Policing by consent: that is assault, that is bullying, that is just plain wrong.

Then we have bias in the Police: letting one section of the population off even when causing criminal damage and assault, to Baton-charging another section of the population when being peaceful.

Don't think we don't see the bias. Don't think we don't see the political interference. Not from politicians, but the political animals at the top of the Police Force. From inspector upwards, office politics and then political influences from various organisations sways everyone from inspector upwards.

How else do you explain one protest against lockdown being baton-charged. Yet a black lives matter protest mere days later being left alone by the Police? The same goes for the disruption and criminal damage done by extinction rebellion: untouched by the Police. But who is calling the shots? Who is making the decision to wade into one protest and back off from another? Are the pet political interests of Cressida Dick getting preferential treatment? Who is calling the shots and exactly how and why are those decisions being made?

Politically sensitive agendas are given preferential treatment, I assume to avoid political fallout.

This is not what the Police force should be doing. Their remit is to enforce the law without fear or favour. There should be no bias, no preferential treatment of political causes over others. There should be no abuse of people based on class or colour.

The Police needs shaking up. Those currently at the head of the Police need to be sacked and a new, unbiased leadership brought in.

I would utter the words "Common Purpose" again, but I've already blogged on that organisation and it's influence among the Police and other governmental organisations.

Standards in Public Life, Management and the Post-Truth Era. Establishment

Okay, so I left off the last post in 1989.

Common Purpose had been established, Sky News had started and we'd had the Hillsborough disaster and the instantaneaous covering up of the truth of that event.

Another significant event in 1989 that would kick off the post truth era is the imposition of the Community Charge in Scotland. Better known as the Poll Tax.

This and the Poll Tax riots in London the following year would trigger the demise of Margaret Thatcher. Whether she went a bit moonbat and beleived her own hype, whatever; by the beginning of the Nineties her style of government had sunk into caricature.

So also in 1990 we gained a new Prime Minister: John Major.

Almost the reluctant PM, he set about making the UK a better place for people. In his first parliamentary speech as PM he stated an intention to abolish the Poll Tax and eventually in 1992 it was replaced with the Council Tax.

John Major was a well-meaning and relatively honest man. He tried on a number of occasions to try and make the country and politics a better place.

In 1991 he launched the Citizen's Charter, an initiative to make public services better. Like the proverb about the road to good intentions, the charter eventually morphed into the box-ticking target-fixated regime we have now which denigrates the indivudal experience and hoovers up vast amount of resources supplying administration of those tick-boxes.

He also set up the Committee on Standards in Public Life in 1994 chaired initially by Lord Nolan. This was instituted in response to high profile acounts of impropriety or sleaze in politics and public services. This was back when journalists did investigate such things and it was a given that anyone in the public eye or on the public payroll was open for scrutiny. 

Very ironically, as the committee tends to highlight misdeeds and wrongdoing, so truth moves and shifts. The old adage about if you tell a lie it may as well be a big one gains political traction. White becomes the new black in an effort to divert attention.

In 1992 Labour had finally elected a leader; John Smith. He set about doing a proper job of rooting out the extreme left from the party. A job that Neil Kinnock had done so inefectively during his tenure as leader.

So here we have the early 1990s and the stage for the demise of truth.

Primarily the instigator for this is the First Gulf War in 1990-91. Of all events during the 1990s, this is the main thing. All others are preipheral and enabling, but the first Gulf War is when the media starts to turn from investigation to capitulation.

It was the First Gulf War where journalists traded access for freedom, limelight for censorship. The pressure to deliver fresh news for the greedy outlets forced journalists to compromise their principles. This is where investigative journalism more or less died and jingoism, acceptance of media censorship and propagandic reporting became the norm.

The journalistic trade couldn't revert back to the old ways after this, the establishment had learned to barter and trade the truth.

I find it ironic that as I'm writing this series of articles that George HW Bush has died. The instigator of the gung-ho! beginning of the post-truth era.

Back in the UK, John Smith is rooting out the far left of the party, at that time known as "The Millitant Tendency" (which appears to have now reappeared in the Corbyn era as Momentum), unfortunately John had a heart attack and paved the way for Tony Blair. Probably the most post-truth Prime Minister we've ever had.

Around the same time, the Americans got Bill Clinton as their President. Someone who was fast and loose with the truth as the Monica Lewinsky affair showed.

On both sides of the Atlantic truth was on very rocky ground. It was being undermined and subverted to promote a myriad of different issues.

During the Nineties we had the Balkan Conflict, the squabble over the remains of the old Yugoslavia. The Western world did a good job of covering their covert manipulations of this area until it blew up in spectacular fashion and started to cause media attention.

The truth was a victim in this conflict, with the Western media happily investigating atrocities by the "bad guys" of the conflict (the Serbs, "Black Hatted" by the West) but completely missing atrocities perpetrated by the people on "our" side.

In 1997 the BBC join the 24 hour News business. Very quickly they saw the other 24 hour news outlets and how they didn't just report "dry" news. There was always a narrative, a story, a victim, a villain and a hero. News was not simply news.

We even saw the bombing of the Serbian TV station in 1999 during that conflict, the casualties in that action declared acceptable because it removed a communications hub and a propaganda machine for the Serbian side. In that one action you can see the West's determination to own the narrative and exclude all others. By force if necessary. It also ushers in what happens to the truth and how it is reported in the following decades.

The problems in the Ukraine the manipulation of the truth around the political shennannigans, the riots and the eventual annexation of Crimea virtually 15 years after the Serbian TV station got hit shows that the West have not stopped playing the game - in fact they ramp it up to dangerous levels.

Both American and UK governments made their forays into either ignoring the truth, dsiclaiming the truth, subverting the truth or telling little white lies (which are after all, untruths).

Some of this can be explained by the fallout from the Committeee on Public standards and the push to raise standards in public life, public services, the media and other important organisations.

There is a push during the Nineties to homogenise standards for managers and leaders in the public and private sectors. One organisation offering training across all spheres is Common Purpose.  It identifies leaders and trains them to produce a homogenised, unified leadership. It's catchphrase is "Leading Beyond Authority" but you could just as well say they train people to do anything else but the job they are employed to do, loading leaders up with the idea of extended networks, diversity (at all costs) and other workload-increasing objectives. It's my personal recollection you could see it through the Nineties with the rise of so-called "management-speak": the phrases and platitudes that defined a drone. "lessons Learned" meant the organisation had failed spectacularly, no-one would be fired and the organisation would continue as normal.

In the Nineties we had the Satanic Abuse Scandals, which were poorly investigated and produced little real evidence other than anecdotes. That child abuse was occurring at that time I have no doubt, but the Satanic element clouded the issue and enabled those in power and the media to label complainants crackpots. Decades later, the systematic mis-handling of issues of abuse will come to the fore again, this time by gangs of Muslim men. It's instances like this that start to expose the Common Purpose training that began back then and has now infiltrated every form of public service. In the early Nineties from my personal experience it's limited to local councils and local public service providers. By the late Nineties it has started to infiltrate central government alongside the Blair government.

The things that started happening then continues to happen today with the media and those in positions of authority: obfuscation, denial, manipulation of the truth to outright lies and even harassment, villification and in cases incarceration of those making accusations of abuse.

Then we get to the naugties and boy, do we enter the post-truth era in a big way.

Standards in Public Life, Management and the Post-Truth Era. Genesis

Over on Orphans of Liberty I posted the following comment in response to a post about the post truth era and when it started. I apologise, as this is going to be long as it attempts to define the decade that brought us to where we are today. In fact it will be a series of blog posts in order to avoid this being a cure for insomnia.

"I think it really started in John Major’s time (although the Hillsborough disaster with its official truth conflicting with the actual truth may have been a very early indication of the control of truth and media mentality). When managament-speak changed to include words and phrases like “stakeholder” and “going forward” is really an indication of the corporate and media changes. John Major’s government commissioned the Nolan report into standards in corporate life, which strangely seems to have been a catalyst when the standards really started to slip. The control of risk morphed into the control of everything including the truth.
By the time Tony Blair got into No.10 the mentality has perfused into the Civil Service although it was probably a willing victim. It was the start of the time of arse-covereing, risk-averse, truth manipulation. Tony Blair’s government just pushed the boundaries of what they could get away with. Successive governments have pushed further from then on. The rise of 24Hr news feeds has also promoted news as drama: to hold onto viewers, everyone is a victim, the left wear white hats and the right wear black hats, the truth is what the media say it is and what makes good drama. The news is tabloid in nature: Trump is Satan, Brexit is wrong, UKIP are far right, Corbyn is a cuddly old duffer, Theresa May is incompetent, Boris Johnson is a Clown… so it goes on.
Not so coincidentally, the organisation Common Purpose started in 1989 with the stated aim of targetting leaders and emerging leaders and training them. Also not so coincidentally during this time the weaponisation of diversity emerged and the homogenisation of management across public services and the private sector"

It was a bit long for a response and it brought up some interesting ideas on how governance has changed since the Eighties and the reasons for it.

I'm not sure how I should go about this, so do excuse me if I ramble.

Anyway, let me explain. Back in the Nineties I was on the cusp of management (in fact I did become a manager in 2000, but being just on the oputside looking in, I could see some pretty dramatic changes going on in management culture all the way through the Nineties and it's only now I can sort of rationalise the changes, explain how they came about and explain where we are with the post-truth era we find ourselves in.

So, let's go back to 1989. A seminal year where a number things happened that would shape the coming decade.

So, in no particular order, here's what happened in 1989:

Sky News launches.
The Common Purpose Organisation is formed.
The Hillsborough Disaster happens.

Taking the Hillsborough disaster first. It's the first instance I can find where an official narrative directly conflicts with both anecdotal news and also the video footage that was captured inside the football ground. The official line was that the disaster was caused by hooligans. But the video footage showed no riots, no violence. Only fans climbing the fence at the front of the stands in order to avoid the crush that the Police had caused.
The offical narrative was fixed that evening by the Police and officials that the people dying on the pitch were the very people to blame. It was not the truth and as we know now, it took decades for the truth to come out that the Police were to blame.

You have to bear in mind that the "official" narrative was not questioned by reporters despite having the evidence in front of their eyes. The truth was not the official "truth".

Now to Common Purpose. Most readers will already know I have am sceptical about this organisation, it's aims, it's training and the people it targets. But it's aim is "Leading Beyond Authority", which seems innocuous enough. From impirical evidence their aims are not to teach leaders how to lead, but instead lumber them with baggage that incumbers them from doing the actual job they are employed to do.

The rise of Common Purpose and a certain management ethos has gone hand-in-glove with the failure of senior managers to to their jobs. In my mind it is no coincidence that over the decade senior management has been encumbered with things like diversity and equality to the exclusion of their original job spec. Now, decades later you can spot a Common Purpose type by the vaccuous meaningless phrases they use, the sheer inability to do their job without serious help and the slavish adherence to an agenda set by others. They are not true leaders.

Finally, the thing that happened in 1989 is Sky news is launched. A 24-hour news feed initially with no competition. However the number of Sky subscribers in the UK caused Sky to have significant influence over UK news. Other news providers started to copy it's style over the Nineties and in 1997 the BBC launched their own 24-hour news service. The problem with 24-hour news is the very nature of news: it's sporadic and you have busy days and lean days. The problem the 24-hour news providers have is how do you keep viewers watching while you are repeating the same news over and over again until the next new story pops up.

The answer is to not supply the news as a dry, truthful thing, but to make news into drama in order to hook viwers and keep them. "Truth" is not necessarily the primary response. Drama, escalation, suspense, etc. are the new News narratives.

So for instance everybody in a new story becomes a victim, to add drama to a story. Reporting Politics is pretty dull. The same names come up again and again unless governments change or ministers change. So very early the 240-hour news services took a leaf out of the book of satire: Politicians became good guys and bad guys: heroes and villains. Sky News has tended to modify it's political hero/villain narrative in line with it's owner's views, whereas the BBC have a basic Left: good/Right:bad narrative in play.

Aside to all of this, Margaret Thatcher had been in power for a decade and there was seemingly no way to remove the Tories from power. Labour, the official opposition had had a series of extremely far left leaders in the early Eighties after the Callagahan government was ousted by the Tories. First Michael Foot and then Neil Kinnock. Both innefective leaders during the Eighties and hamstrung by the far left in the Labour party.

The supremacy of money, the "greed is good" mentality and the rise of the Stockmarkets and the City of London as the prime engine of GDP in the UK (and therefore political influence), the demise of manufacturing were all well in place by the end of the Eighties.

So, that's setting out the stall for the genesis of the post-truth era, back in 1989.

In my next post I'll try and explain how during the early Nineties this all started to affect management, public services, politics, society and life in general.

Common Purpose in the USA.

It seems that the Marxist Common Purpose organisation that influences large numbers of people in authority across the UK has made it across the pond to America.

Just idly Googling I see the Common Purpose Project was started under the Obama administration. At first you may think it has nothing to do with the insideous UK Common Purpose Marxist organisation, until you see that Julia Middleton (The founder of Common Purpose in the UK) has been to the USA and spoken to the American Common Purpose Project about "Authentic Leadership" whatever that is.

I suspect it's more of the "leading beyond Authority" bullshit that UK CP espouses.

If I was an American, I would be looking very closely at the CPP organisation. The issues that it causes over in the Uk are many-fold and I would hate for the upper echelons of American organisations to fall under it's influence.

In the UK we have Police enforcing diversity rather than tackle the problems caused by it. It's as if they turn a blind eye to the problems caused by it. They concentrate on hurty words on the internet rather than crimes that cause actual hurt like stabbings. It's ludicrous, but that's Common Purpose Mantra for you.

The UK Military are so under the thrall of it that they consider equality before actually doing the stuff they should be like fighting. We now have advertisements on TV showing an Army patrol stopping top allow a Muslim member of their group time to pray..... it's all about diversity and inclusivity rather than the job that particular organisation was supposed to do.

"Leading beyond Authority" describes this. Bollocks to the job you were employed to do, lead beyond authority and make sure your organisation is diverse, caring, enriching and inclusive rather than do the job you are paid to do.

A true leader would not be swayed by thes organisation. Only those who are not leaders and want to be a part of the herd and subscribe to the groupthink would come to the fore under the Commmon Purpose regime. And we see it time and time again where useless, spineless unleaders fuck up and carry on unhindered. There's always some excuse, like health & safety, diversity, equality,

This is a warning for people in the USA. In the UK we already have Common Purpose drones in place across senior positions in media, politics, industry, commerce, security services, emergency services and the military. For us it's probably too late to root out these people and end the influence of common purpose. Anyone that tries would have the full force of the elite and their drones aimed at discrediting them.

How Islam Wins at Politics.

I've seen many posts on many blogs and videos about the so-callled special protection for those of the Muslim faith. It's true that a Muslim minority appears to get preferential political treatment. But you have to understand the cause to understand the effect.

You'll hear that the Labour party favour Muslims to a pathological degree, because they rely on Muslim votes and to an extent that's true.

But you need to understand Islam first before you can understand how it can subvert Western laws with impunity, how it can garner political support far in excess of the numbers in the general population.

The first thing to understand is Islam is not a religion, or more accurately not merely a religion. It is many things; it is an ideology, a way of life, it is all-encompassing. It is a good Muslim's duty to embrace Islam in all aspects of his or her life.

This affects the way Muslims view politics. If you take the rule that is is a good Muslim's duty to involve Islam in all things, then you start to understand how Muslims have a greater affect on politics far in advance of their actual numbers in society.

It is a good Muslim's duty to vote for another Muslim if there is one to vote for (especially if the other options are non-Muslim) or failing that the most Muslim-friendly candidate.

No matter how mad, bad, right, wrong..... if the candidate favours Muslims or is a Muslim then Muslim voters understand it is their duty to vote for them.

Now then, given that the average voter turnout in the UK can be as low as 59%, That means that thanks to our first past the post election system candidates only need to get just over half of that to win. So candidates can win elections even if only 30% of the population vote for them.

Now, imagine a block of people in your constituency that vote en-masse in a particular way. They are a useful boost to your chances of getting elected when they start to approach 10% of the local population. When they approach 20% they can virtually guarantee your election and when they approach 30% you lock out any other candidate. Christians? Jews? Atheists? Socialists? Liberals? Don't need 'em. In fact if you are a Muslim candidate and sound moderate, some of the non-Muslim fools will actually vote for you.

You cannot lose because any other candidate has to garner the support of 30% of the population just to get parity. While you are certain of your 20 or 30 percent block vote, your nearest rival is busy herding cats doing deals trying to get the rest of the population to vote for them.

That's why in any situation in local or National politics, the Muslim block vote gets preference on policies. It's how a Muslim population can punch above is weight when it comes to politics. It's why Theresa May wears a headscarf in Mosques, it's why supposedly pro-feminist Labour candidates put up with addressing gender-segregated audiences.

Now then, comes the big question: How do you deal with that bias in the voting system?

I'm not going to deal with how the political elites see the Muslim block-vote as a usefull ally, that's maybe for another time. Especially as to how dangerous it is to underestimate it and just think of it as just a voting "trend". Until it bites them on the arse and they can do nothing about it.

What a Weekend!

I did say that the Dan Hannan video marked a turning point in the importance of the blogosphere, but this weekend trumps that completely.

Guido's triumph over the Labour smear-vendors shows that given the right circumstances, online blogs can have just as much relevance as the mainstream media outlets. For too long the MSM has been in the grip of the old boys network: deals done, winks winked and nods nodded.
Its been plain to see for too long how the ruling elite have captured every media prize in order to control dissent.
The Blogosphere cuts through all of that: thousands of independant outlets cannot be controlled by done deals.

But thats where the collective entities of the blogosphere on all sides need to be careful, stay united and deny any chance those in power would seek to silence us.

Right now, in his bunker I can imagine Gordon Brown is scheming to silence us, because one of our number has dared to interfere with the machinations of his inner circle. I can well imagine some new law to regulate blogs will be mooted after this, because thats the way the control-freaks currently in power work. This weekends news will be twisted and spun as an attack on the government, spin that will state a government needs protection.

Those on the left of politics need to be wary. Its very easy to be swayed by "your" government that silencing dissenting comments on blogs is in the greater good, but what happens when the balance of power changes and a right-of-centre party is in power? Your right to independantly protest at injustices would be gone. Therefore I urge you especially to protect the right of free speech in blogs. If you are approached by anyone, or anyone close suggests that you promote such action, I ask you to tell them in no uncertain terms: NO!

We all need to stand firm and protect the blogosphere, all the voices within it need I would say have to be heard, it is our right to hold the government of the day (of whatever political spectrum) to account.

Are our Police Politically Motivated?

According to this article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7918326.stm Lib Dem MP David Howarth thinks so.

There are plenty of people in the UK that already know the Police have been increasingly politicised over the years. It started with Maggie's crushing of the miners and continued with greater pace under Labour.

The demanding of new powers by the Police (Headed by ACPO Ltd) and the puppydog rolling over of politicians and granting their every whim has got us to this stage.

It should be for the politicians to put forward new laws and the Police to enact them as public servants, it shouldn't be for the Police to request their own self-serving legislation.

Now the Police are tooling up for a "summer of rage". They expect a glut of protests by activists all over the country, taking advantage of public anxiety and getting people out onto the streets.

It mustn't happen. If protests happen at all, they should be peaceful and within the law. That way, the establishment is denied any reason to bring even more legislation into play. Its even hinted that "middle England" will take to the streets. I do hope so; those middle classes need to see and feel for themselves the monster they and the media that panders to them has created in the para-military Police we have today.