Entries from December 2006 ↓

A new report by the Attention Company suggests there is hope for the online blogging community when it comes to our career prospects. Stay with me on this one. The “Out There” generation differ from the rest of the world as they are more likely to:

Value fame as an “asset”
Willing to share certain types of sensitive information on the web
Believe it is appropriate to criticise their organisations on the web
Believe that “organisations need to be more transparent to succeed”
Believe “there’s no harm in openly discussing the work I do inside my organisation with others”

Where some managers will see this approach as a sackable offence, the Attention Company suggest that the “Out There” generation help maintain an internal pressure within an organisation that aids success. Here’s the full pdf “Out There” report.

Clive Soley points to a couple of powerfully written reports from the Information Commissioner(pdf) and comes up with an interesting idea.
Continue reading →

Dave’s Part top 10 Trotskyist chat up lines. This man should be expelled from the Labour Party for bad taste.

Political Penguin identifies an employee of the Liberal Democrats in Walsall calling Bob Piper a racist.

The author of the blog, Colin Ross, does not display many liberal sentiments with the use of such intemperate language. His allegation is also completely and utterly baseless in fact. Bob Piper has spent his entire life fighting racism. Whatever your view of his cameron minstrel post, to use the word racist is tawdry. He should take down the post.

Skype are going to offer lie detectors as an add-on for their users. Fabulous. It’s almost worth signing up for now.

I think I might call for every government, newspaper and lobbyist office telephonist to be replaced by skypists.

This is the sort of story that would have Home Office ministers bouncing of the walls. The company that has helped build the fence to prohibit illegal entry to the US from Mexico has been fined for hiring illegal workers. Irony at its richest.

A rather dispiriting article in the Times about Amazon and their cavernous and soulless warehouse in Slough.

I enjoyed a couple of hours with my son today. He literally jumped for joy in the picture book section of a big bookshop in Birmingham.

Reading the Times article made me feel slightly guilty that this Christmas I’ve made people run 12 miles around a warehouse “with hand-held scanners that tell them to go to row 12, column 6, box marked A and grab your CD or book or camera….” It was the line about the journalists not being allowed onto the warehouse floor because of “company policy” that made me shudder. What if they’ve kidnapped the workers for Christmas and they’re not going to let them out for even a glass of sherry until every last Mr Benn DVD is sealed in bubblewrap and dispatched by express delivery to our homes?

What kind of misery are we imposing on those hard working warehouse workers in Slough, just because we can’t be bothered to fight the masses in the Bull Ring? I’m surprised the Sunday Mirror haven’t got a crack undercover investigative team in there right now.

If any Amazon workers manage to read this, drop me an email just to let me know that you’re all safe.

Nighthawk is sanguine about the lack of airtime dedicated to the closure of 2,500 post offices. As he says “following a three-year investigation, the Stevens enquity has concluded that the death was an accident. I could have told them that nine years ago.” He has patience. If it was me, I would be hopping mad.

Make up your own words to deal with the new demands of life.

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Belgian TV created uproar with a fake story about the country being split in two. It would never happen here of course. Who on earth would be daft enough to split up the UK?

Former US Majority Leader Tom Delay starts a blog then gets criticised for not writing it himself. Personally I think you can get away with getting others to write on your blog when you’re busy, provided you distinguish when it is a post from you or your research team. Boris Johnson does that and it looks OK to me.

Head-cam CCTV looks like its on the way if you read this response from police minister Tony McNulty. A huge potential saving is being lost by Tony McNulty failing to centralise major procurement decisions in the police service and he hears no evil from ACPO on the possible introduction of listening technology to CCTV systems. Finally, the government doesn’t know how much local councils are making from renting shchools out as sites to erect phone masts.