Book of the month The nights draw in and the mind turns to that which lurks in the dark… Music of the month Nostalgia makes my teeth itch but this is something special. Visuals of the month The Helen Saunders exhibition at The Courtauld is fascinating. The lives and work of women in 20th centuryContinue reading “…sway the forest like a troubled sea”
Author Archives: radiobeartime
Policymanship
Readers of the late great Stephen Potter’s works on Lifemanship and Gamesmanship may wonder if the same techniques can be applied in government. The answer is “Of course!” Here are a couple of examples of Policymanship in action. “Cutting grant fraud” Ministers are very keen to launch a big new business grants programme which willContinue reading “Policymanship”
What is Twitter?
The ongoing destruction of Twitter by the idiot Musk has occasioned vast amounts of noise as people flee to Mastodon or even renounce social media entirely. As carts of apples are knocked over and small children separated from their mothers in the rush it’s becoming clear that everyone has a different idea what Twitter is…Continue reading “What is Twitter?”
Trunk Calling
Just set up a Mastodon instance and my own account – @mark@artraige.masto.host. Like all of us I have no idea what I am doing but it is a grey wet Saturday so why not. <a href=”http://Mastodon
Sometimes I want to murder time
October ends in fire. Book of the month I have been rereading “The Further Inventions of Daedalus” by David E. H. Jones. I loved reading these when they were a column in the New Scientist and his ability to come up with plausible sounding yet impossible ideas. Very useful experience for listening to pitches fromContinue reading “Sometimes I want to murder time”
Measure twice, cut once, weep daily
Remember when you could just buy something? You handed over money in exchange for goods or services and that was it. But now we are pursued forever by the furies of online shopping, service metrics. And so it goes on and on. The comforting notion that all this data has value, that the overhead inContinue reading “Measure twice, cut once, weep daily”
The crosses of old grey churches
And it’s September and we are back. Book of the month I have mainly been reading comfort fiction to quiet the Stone Monkey but catching up with Backlisted.fm I listened to the excellent episode on Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers and so I paused the podcast and reread the book. It’s well described asContinue reading “The crosses of old grey churches”
Efficiency
In my last blog post I said that whilst greater efficiency may reduce the number of staff needed it does not work if you try to do it the other way round, that is cutting staff numbers and expecting greater efficiency. But assertions are not evidence so let’s show the consequences of cutting staff withoutContinue reading “Efficiency”
Carousel
I have said many times that working for any large organisation, public or private sector, is like being on a merry-go-round. There is a constant sense of motion but for some reason the same sights keep coming round again and again. And here we are again with Francis Maude being commissioned to look at CivilContinue reading “Carousel”
Roffa!
I have put all the Roffa! stories on a single page which I will update as I go along.
Mark O'Neill 