The blame game

We all know how slippery politicians can be when we try to pin them down to a commitment or ask them how something went wrong. Previous red-line, 'no-ifs-or-buts' commitments turn into 'aspirations that were not met'.

The master of this was Michael Howard in his famous not-answering-the-question with Jeremy Paxman. Whoever's fault it was, it certainly was not his.

Successive Ministers have learned the technique and adopt it instinctively.

The Coalition government blamed the previous Labour government for the recession as though the American sub-prime market had not existed, and we swallowed the lie. No wonder Ministers went on and on. They were high on the drug.

Under investment in schools, the NHS, transport, housing or employment were automatically blamed on others. Schools fail to perform? Blame the teachers and try to turn the schools into academies. The NHS waiting lists getting longer? Blame the doctors and adminstrators, and make them work harder. Housing failing to deliver? Blame the local councils for holding up planning applications. And so it went on.

The really easy person to blame was Europe, those supposedly faceless bureaucrats. It was always a soft option to ignore the fact that the UK government had agreed with the majority of environmental and other standards introduced by Brussels and to blame Europe. The public would never know the difference.

We reap what we sow. Successive governments have shrugged off responsibility for under-investment in our own country and shifted the blamed onto Europe wherever possible. Is it surprising, after such a narrative, that the public turned on the apparently easy targets and ignored the beam in the government's own eye: its complete lack of honesty over who was really to blame?

Helping those that help themselves

Should we help those that help themselves or rescue those who are struggling? You can make an argument for either course, no doubt depending on the situation, but let us consider two cases.

A funding body, let us call it Lottery, only likes to pay for a proportion of a project: let us say 50%. They also have a rule that 'work done so far cannot be counted as match-funding in your bid'. This is understandable otherwise all those in possession of a picture by Leonardo da Vinci would never have to provide any match funding since the 'value' of the work done so far would be so transcendent.

What are the consequences of this rule?

An enthusiast finds a box of pictures in his attic and settles down to catalogue these, working many hours as a volunteer. At the end of the project, it appears that the collection is unique and there would be benefit in the collection and the catalogue being more widely available. He approaches Lottery for financial support to get them on line. But Lottery's rules kick in and it asks for match-funding which our enthusiast cannot afford. All his meticulous cataloguing work does not count. The project cannot go ahead.

In the attic next door is a canny individual who discovers another box of pictures. He opens the box, casts an eye over them, judges them to be worthy of publication and applies, immediately, to Lottery for financial support both to catalogue the pictures and to put them on line. 'Fine in principle', says Lottery, 'where is the match-funding?' 'Oh', says Canny, 'I shall catalogue them myself and that is the match funding.' 'OK' says Lottery, 'we will pay for them to be put on line.' The project goes ahead.

Which, as the prophet might ask, is the better case? Should Lottery be supporting those who have already shown effort and contributed volunteer effort, or should it be encouraging a dependency culture where no one does anything without putting in a bid?

It is galling for those of us who have shown effort and contributed voluntary time to be seeing neighbours who haven't, being fully funded for similar work. Talk about rewarding historic failure. They may need help but it does not do much for our morale or encourage us to put in more voluntary effort.

Dealing with a customer

Dealing with a customer complaint is an art.

We have the great joy of running a car park. One day, when we have the time and energy, we will gather together some of the excuses that folks use to justify why they should not pay a parking fine and publish them here. Many produce the most wonderfully convoluted arguments which double back on themselves to avoid the simple admission 'OK, guv. It's a fair cop.'

The wind turns tickets face down or blows up through the air conditioning units to blow them into the foot well. Then here are the sob stories: 'I had two children and a pushchair and I had just got back from shopping and one of the children was screaming and ...'

Then there are the urban myths 'Your clock was wrong' or 'I only overstayed by two minutes and ...' not knowing there are actually fifteen minutes' grace. Or the malicious one 'The wardens are known to open car doors which have been left unlocked and ...'

But I digress. Here is one of our own about which we are still puzzling. It was from an investment house we will call simply Nice Unit Trust. To precis it, the story runs:

December 2012 - Us: Please close our account. Nice Unit Trust: Will do

March 2013 - NUT sent through the usual vast wodge of papers showing that we still had about £40. Us: Please close this account. NUT: Will do, here is a cheque for the balance

June - NUT sent through the usual vast wodge of papers showing that we now had £0.17 in our account

August - NUT: Here is a fascinating magazine all about how we invest your money. Us: It is awfully difficult to close an account with you, isn't it. Please close this account. Don't bother to send us the £0.17, simply give it to charity. NUT: Thank you for your instructions, here is a piece of paper confirming that we have closed the account

November - this is where it gets surreal - NUT: Thank you for your complaint (?). Please accept apologies for the delay in replying. we will 'investigate' your complaint. As your complaint was received 8 weeks ago mutter, mutter Ombudsman ... enclosed were a leaflet and a Complaint Handling Policy

NUT (in a letter dated two days later): Apologies ... appreciate your patience ... list of the dates on which things happened ... accept apologies for any inconvenience ... and here is a cheque for £25 'in recognition of the fact that we failed to investigate and respond to the complaint within an acceptable time period'

Collapse of stout parties. So we now have a cheque for £25 for a complaint that we did not make. Nice Unit Trust have spent far too much money chopping down trees and on postage and now they compound the problem by spending another £25. Know any good charities anyone?

Now back to my car park letters: 'And precisely why did you leave your Doberman in your car with your parking ticket in its jaws ...?'

Lacking in vision?

A current favourite is a poem by Kipling called the Gods of the Copybook Headings. This argues that the old sayings have stood the test of time and are much better guides than following the call of the market: Kipling in his reactionary phase, perhaps.

It contains some wonderful lines which are so appropriate for some of the funding bodies, agencies and bureaucracies with which we deal. The best is the verse:
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn 
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
How often we are told the obvious as if it were some new discovery ...

But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
How could we possibly think that bureaucrats were 'lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind ...'?
Unheard of. They have lists of boxes that need ticking.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place ...
Good customer-responsive stuff then. Or try:
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch ...
By now you should be beginning to say yeeeees! ...

Love the lines; we just wish Kipling's conclusion was not so backward-looking.

Belbin strikes back ...

... or the rise of the Monitor/Evaluator.

We have just been reading through a thrilling 340 page document called a Business Survival Toolkit. This includes some 69 different rather 'tools' for business planning drawing largely on the works of various academics. For those of us who have been around a bit, it is notable that few of the basics have changes much from the work of the great business thinkers of the post-War generation: people like Hawthorne, Herzberg and Maslow whose work was so able summarised by people like Charles Handy and others. A new generation must have its say, however (Smith & Jones 2013).

Somewhere deep inside this riveting document is a quotation from someone called Richard Piper of the NCVO (National Council of Voluntary Organisations). He says:

Some people in our sector concentrate more on the technical problem of measuring outcomes, and less on the strategic problem of achieving them. This is a disease, an affliction, and we can call it measurement anxiety. It can paralyse us and it seems to be contagious. 

It goes on to describe an exercise in which he asked 50 people to word associate with 'outcomes' and 48 of them mentioned something about assessment or measurement.

Now this is interesting for three reasons. The easy one is that we all know it has happened and has become endemic over the last twenty years leading to paralysis of action. The word Ofsted is enough to send quivers through any teacher's bloodstream as Accreditation should in the Museum world: inspection and measurement by those who can't of those who can and are doing their damnedest to do better.

We have mentioned before Einstein's remark that Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted. This should be written over every Monitor/Evaluator's desk.

The second is that someone is brave enough to say it out loud, knowing that a whole cohort of assessors will round on him from a great height and claim that they are absolutely convinced that achieving objectives is the Most Important thing and that their systems are designed to be Entirely Helpful... a this will hurt me much more than it hurts you response.

The third is that he seems to have been quoted as saying it and this suggests that the report writers approve of what he is saying. This is a document of 340 pages almost wholly given over to the thoughts of academics setting out the 'best practice' way of doing things which, you guessed it, include lots and lots of monitoring and evaluation. And being the work of academics even the most banal or self-evident remark is referenced (Smith & Robinson 2013) but that is a topic for another time (Mumblings, date to be announced).

Every Belbin group needs its different role-players, even including Monitor/Evaluators, but when they start to impose their vision of how business should be done, acting as judge and jury, we do feel inclined to agree with the old ladies in Arsenic and Old Lace, that they would be much happier with a nice dose of elderflower cordial which, you may recall, contained something less harmless to end the existence of those who were lonely or did not have a fulfilling life. It would do wonders for this particular disease or affliction.

Who are you?

We have just had one of those delightful conversations with an insurance company. It went along the following lines:

Me: Hello, I would like to cancel my insurance policy and receive its surrender value.
Them: Can I just confirm your identity: what is your policy number?
Me: [reads out the number]
Them: What is the first line of your address?
Me: [gives it]
Them: What is your date of birth?
Me: [gives it]
Them: When did you start this policy?
Me: (reading from a letter they recently sent me) February 1988
Them: How much have you been paying monthly?
Me: I think it is about £18 a month
Them: OK, I shall send you a form to close the thing down … we will need evidence of identity for both you and your wife.

Me (thinks): So you have been taking £18 a month off us for over 25 years and only now, when we want OUR money back, do you even think to ask us to prove who we are. What if we had been funding this policy by some criminal activity all these years?

Saying it as it is

Just occasionally we trip over someone saying just what we are feeling. This time it was Selina Scott who launched into the Heritage Lottery Fund at a reception in Yorkshire: What the Dickens! Selina Scott in novel row.

It was good to see such an articulate speaker highlighting the insulting and unhelpful adult-child mindset at the core of that organisation. Did anyone consider the heritage instead of whether the bid had been 'impressive' or not? 

Oh to have been a fly on the wall.

PS: we have been a bit quiet recently: not through lack of ideas, simply lack of time. More follows soon. 

Counting what counts II

... a little PS to our last posting is inspired by a recent ten page questionnaire from Arts Council England - there are 24 pages of notes on how to fill it in.

This questions about the ethnicity of any permanent or freelance staff split by 'specialist staff', 'managers' and 'others'; and they want their ages too.

It then asks us for a whole range of turnover figures which could be picked up from our published accounts if they bothered to read them. But what is this we see ... ah yes, they want those figures presented in a different way. 

It might have been good if they had warned us in advance that they might want to know this. We don't collect the ages of freelance staff and such things.

Among a whole range of questions which are irrelevant for a museum -such 'how much of your work is 'touring activity' and 'attendance at film screening days' - is a real gem: 'Please indicate the hours worked by volunteers at your organisation in the last financial year. Round your answer up to the nearest hour.'

It is the last bit we really love. Anyone who has worked with volunteers knows that they do not keep regular hours and, although we do ask them to sign in and sign out, we do not waste our time totaling the hours actually worked 'to the nearest hour'. We know how many shifts they work; will that do?

Looked at another way, rounding up the time to the nearest hour gives an accuracy of about 0.005% or better than one part in 20,000. No, we have not made a mistake. What on earth are they thinking of, asking for that level of accuracy? What are they going to do with the answer? Why have they not asked how many hours our staff work which might at least have provided a useful comparison or ratio.

It is the same mindset that tells us that visitor numbers are 5.14% up. So nice to know that the figure is accurate to one left leg. 

The questionnaire could only have been put together by someone with no concept of basic statistics or mathematics, or who has ever been involved in the real world.

It is that time of year and another questionnaire is waiting in the wings ... oh joy!   

Counting what counts

A recent report entitled Counting What Counts by Anthony Lilley and Prof Paul Moore encourages us to use what they call Big Data. We don't say that we follow every step of their argument which seems to confuse use of data in decision-making  with data drawn from web usage but we were struck by some of their general comments which echo our views on the use of data generally. Here are some paragraphs from their report.

They start with that brilliant quotation from Einstein: Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted. Essays should be written on this.

Their two main themes are language ... The sector exists in a context of narrative of subsidy and market failure which means that measurement is too often seen as a burden placed on defensively-minded organisations as a form of accountability and the use of data ... Data and information are most often used in arts and cultural settings somewhat passively, mainly to satisfy the needs of accountability.

Too often the gathering and reporting of data is seen as a burden and a requirement of funding or governance rather than an asset to be used to the benefit of the [organisation]. This point of view ... arises partly from the philosophy of dependence, subsidy and market failure which underpins much of the cultural sector.

The subsidy model tends to trap many cultural organisations in a survivalist, financial mindset and that, in turn, makes it difficult to adopt an expansive, entrepreneurial perspective when under regular implied threat by accountability.

Without the pull of a more enlightened approach to data from funders and regulators, the likelihood of widespread adoption of a more modern approach to data at the level of organisations is low.

A shift in mindset ... is a requirement. Such a shift would match much of the rhetoric of 'investment' which is used in the sector, particularly by policy and turning bodies. ... this rhetoric has largely been just that: a new term to replace the loaded word 'subsidy' rather than a genuine change.

The Arts Council England's recent ten-year strategy, Achieving Great Art for Everyone uses the term 'investment' itself no less that twenty-one times. However, there is considerable mismatch between this use of terminology and the reality of how commercial investment actually works. Too often 'investment' is used as a synonym for 'subsidy' and this linguistic sleight of hand is, in fact, sometimes harmful.

'Subsidy'. ... is a loaded term which indicates an in-built power relationship. 'Subsidy' is given to something which is weak. Conversely 'investment' is something from which we expect returns and which is thus imbued with potential. Framing public investment in culture as 'subsidy' positions it as a weak, dependent activity. When in harmony, investor and investee should be committed to achieving the same ends.

Being data-rational is a skill and not something that can imposed or encouraged by the dull demand for 'metrics' so beloved by funders. You first need to collect the right data - data which is relevant and representative - then to turn this into useful information for decision-making. 

Not understanding the difference between good and bad data, or the way figures can tell a coherent story, our funders frequently ask the wrong questions and seem satisfied with any numbers. 

I suppose you would not expect 'artists' to understand something as rational as 'numbers' which come from the other side of the great arts-science divide. Their use of the word 'investment' is probably the same: a desperate attempt to adopt the language of a business world they so little understand.  

Teaching us to lie

Can I borrow £2?
Thanks ... come to think of it, I don't need that much. Here is £1 back.
When do I get back my £1 back?
What £1? I have just paid you £1.

In a telephone call to a potential business partner in Germany, this form of economics was described as milkmaid economics after a story by La Fontaine. We are not sure there is a direct parallel but the title has a certain charm, even if if politically milkmaidist.

It is much the same sort of economics as that required by (both British and European) grant-making organisations. These fine, upstanding organisations have a clear view of best practice and priority when dealing with public money, and encourage good behaviour in funded bodies on all occasions. But, with the year-end approaching, what is my moral position on the following?

We bid let us say £10k on the basis that we would contribute match-funding of 4 days of staff time. In totalling the staff time involved I find we did it in 2 days. Do we:

1. 'Find' another 2 days in our diaries so that we can show that we contributed what we said we would?
2. Spin the work out to 4 days - a few bows and ribbons on top perhaps - so that we can honestly say that we provided the full match-funding?
3. Confess all and tell the funder that they should only be paying us half the cash sum as we did not provide the match-funding we promised?

We could of course get a life and do what everyone else does: adopt option 1.

But imagine the implications of the other two approaches. One would encourage inefficiency as we spent our time cutting out paper doilies to adorn our already-completed project. The other would produce a reaction like a Bateman cartoon The organisation that said it did not need the money that had been promised. 

How would they ever cope with an efficient and honest organisation? Are we the milkmaids or are they? 

Getting the point

Jeremy Hunt (Health Secretary) has helpfully summed up the problem of remote management by KPIs: You are hitting the targets but missing the point. There was a good discussion to be had there about the way in which one can measure performance and encourage improvement but sadly, he went on to use a current buzz phrase, talking about those that are coasting along and not achieving excellence.

The BBC version of the pre-speech release - why bother to have a speech at all when the main aim is to get media coverage twice: once when you issue the I am going to say and then the speech; perish the thought that something more interesting might happen and push you off the news - goes on to say:

It is commonly said about a 10th of hospital trusts are failing, although double that are actually not meeting all the essential standards set out by the Care Quality Commission. That leaves about 80% of trusts that are doing what they should. Some of these will be excellent - perhaps about 10-15% - and some will be striving to become excellent - perhaps a similar number. That leaves close to half that could be said to be stuck in the middle, coasting along.

Hitting the targets but missing the point is a well-turned phrase which must have cheered the speechwriter. It is only when you ask Who set the targets? that the reality dawns: it was, of course, Ministers. As so often - take Education as a very obvious example - if you give people boiled-down or simplified targets then they start delivering on those targets whether they make sense or not. If you set targets involving going up and down at the same time, we will find a way of doing so if that is what you say you want.

Policymakers want to set standards for Education and seem surprised when teachers teach to the test. This leads to complaints that teachers are in the wrong. Look in the mirror. Teachers may be missing the point but if you tell them that you will judge them by their ability to hit targets do not be surprised if they aim for those targets. The hint is in the word.

The interpretation of Excellence in Health is clearly following that of Mr Gove's Education department: achieving targets or being satisfactory means you are below par, coasting, not striving hard enough. Is there a statistician in the house? When will someone explain the meaning of average: the concept that there are as many in the top half as there are in the bottom; that a normal distribution includes a large bulge in the middle. 

Or is it like some of our politicians and Orwell's animals where we are average, the other 95% are below average?

And just how intellectually insulting is the sentence: that leaves close to half that could be said to be stuck in the middle, coasting along. It is not even justified by the copy which appears to estimate the number that are excellent and the number striving, and then guesses at the proportion in the middle. Might this middle bunch not be actually trying their damnedest against almost impossible odds such as funding cuts and nonsensical government targets? Statistics tell us to expect them to be there. Oh no, they are coasting and missing the point. 

As someone called Jo Webber says people in the Health Service come to do the best they possibly can for patients. I am sure many do. How about celebrating their efforts instead of kicking them for once?

Wielding a vague stick vaguely in the direction of the enemy never improved anything. But it makes a good line for a cocktail party and good copy for the Daily Mail.

Nice lines

A recent article in the Guardian talks of the cuts in arts funding saying:

The matched nature of most arts funding – with charitable, local and national grants being made conditional on one another – spells chaos, because after one block of funding is removed from a particular museum, gallery or theatre it will find that other elements begin to wobble too. The appropriate image is less the salami slice than a Jenga tower.

What an excellent and vivid description of the reality. If only others would talk like this and less about 'active positive stakeholder engagement'.

On a separate issue, the government announces a new healthy eating campaign. Food campaigner Jeannette Longfield asks the pertinent questions:

The government tells us it is showing up the hidden nasties in food. Well frankly, why are they hidden and, if they are nasties, what are they doing in our food in the first place?

Umm ... It would be difficult to put her question more succinctly or directly. 

So that's clear then

We are becoming very familiar with intermediary organisations - or 'bridge' organisations are they are now known. These are the sorts of bodies which get between you and a main funder and syphon off money which could go to the frontline in the interests of 'coordinating' and 'bringing together'. In reality, they are stepping into the gaps left by the bonfire of the quangos who have had to reduce staff and reach, and in so doing have retired into their ivory towers. See our earlier post

We were offered the following summary paragraphs about one bridge organisation today:

• In places of least engagement, it will strengthen networks and working relationships to develop innovative solutions to the variety of challenges that these areas face
• It will be looking to support and build strong connections and relationships across the region to ensure they provide the best possible offer to ... in our region

I am glad we have cleared that up. Looking to seems particularly carefully chosen in the second. Is anyone any the wiser as to what do they actually do ...?

Greater fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em ...

Can you turn the sheet of paper round?

It has been a week of forms and requests for information on forms. One particular delight came from a well-known organisation in response to a request for grant.

Please will we supply data on our visitors in the following age groups: 17-18, 19-25, 26-59 and 60+
Now why did we not think of collecting our data in such a logical format? For some silly reason, our surveys collect it in groups of 14 and under, 15-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65+. It won't take us long to change it for next year but let's hope no one asks for it in any other, less useful, groupings.

Gender: they seemed to know that there should only be a choice of two but this is not something we ask in surveys and stupidly don't record at the point of sale as visitors are not terribly keen on telling us the gender of every member of the family. The same is true for the ethnicity and disability questions they expect us to answer: we have estimates but do not ask everyone. And actually we do not distinguish how many of the Irish are Irish or Irish (travellers).

And then there are the socio-economic groups. They use the government's NS-SEC groupings: Higher managerial and profession, Intermediate, Lower supervisory and technical, Routine, Lower managerial, Small employers and own account workers, Semi-routine occupations and Long-term unemployed/never worked.

I know that we are a bit out of date but the standard grouping used for marketing is the familiar NRS grouping: A: Higher managerial, B Intermediate managerial, C1 Supervisory, clerical and junior managerial, C2 Skilled manual workers, D Other manual workers, E Pensioners and the unemployed - or more complicated ones like ACORN or Sagacity groups. So we need one to fill in their forms and another one for our marketing. Thanks Guys.

Oh, and can we have that data on a landscape sheet instead of portrait? Sorry, no we cannot as you have asked for the data to be submitted on an online form which we cannot print out and cannot be turned around.

Oh the joys of good, reliable, accurate data for decision-making.

Oh I do love to waste time

We all know that bidding for money has a fairly random success rate; although not as bad as bidding for a contract where succeeding in one in three would be par for the course. The Directory of Social Change recently estimated that 'ineligible applications made to the largest trusts in 2010 equated to seven years of wasted effort'. It is so good to know that we have this money to burn.

Oh and praise for the Joseph Rowntree Trust who insist that bids must not cover more than four sides of paper.

Support success or reward failure?

Arts Council England (ACE) has announced a new museums and schools programme designed to increase the number of educational visits by schools to museums (yippee!). The £3.6m programme, funded by the Department for Education, is not apparently open to applications. Instead 10 regional museums will be commissioned to work with clusters of local schools. The funding will go to areas identified as having low levels of cultural engagement.

Another conundrum: if there is a low level of cultural engagement then museums are usually accused of having failed in their task. If this is the case, then why is the new money going to museums in these areas? Do we not usually reinforce success?

Is it facile to ask exactly what the process for choosing the areas will be?

Signs of tourism development ...

Under a heading 'Boost to Olympics Tourism Legacy', Jeremy Hunt has announced that he is planning a £2 million pilot scheme to create new county boundary signs to showcase the region’s best features. It will be piloted in Cornwall, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Devon, Norfolk and North Yorkshire.

So that's around £300,000 per county ... we don't know whether to be amazed at the cost or dumb-struck by the genius of such a novel idea which is bound to see tourists flooding in: or more likely knowing they are there when they arrive. It is good to know we have a minister who really knows how to churn out the big ideas. Coem to think of it, Cornwall already has a sign saying It's all right, you have left Devon or something similar.

And talking of signs, he also wants to see improvements to the traditional tourist brown signs, ensuring that the process for allocating them is more consistent and transparent, focuses on genuine tourist attractions rather than on local services, and supports the growth agenda.' A review of existing guidelines is said to be underway.

How many times is it that we have reviewed brown signs? I remember one when Portillo was a cub minister. OK, so I have been around too long.  

Joined-up administration

Two recent examples of real joined-up thinking amused us this week.

The first was the announcement by Treasury Minister David Gauke that it is 'morally wrong' to pay tradesmen such as plumbers, builders and cleaners in cash in the hope of avoiding tax. We assume that this means that we can pay them cash as long as we, and they, are not hoping to avoid tax. It is clearly the intent that matters.

But hang on, does this not come at the same time as the banks are talking of 'phasing out' cheques? If they succeed then the only way we can pay our window cleaner or occasional lawn-mower will be to ask for their bank account details and make suitable transfers. (Oh yes, we must make it easier/cheaper for the banks to do their work, poor loves.) I think it will be easier to carry on paying them cash and adjust our intent not to avoid tax.

The second were requests for identification under the money laundering regulations and for a CRB check. Both asked for a tickertape of pieces of paper proving we were who we are but the paperchain breaks down under any sort of detailed analysis and results in sheer irritation for the 'normal' citizen'. Much of it would be relatively easy to circumvent for the evil-hearted. (Can someone explain why one has to provide the counterpart element of the Driving Licence as well as the photocard? The proof of identity elements - name, date of birth etc - are all carried on the face of the photo card. No, don't tell us, we prefer to live in blissful, confused, ignorance).

The most problematic was the 'utility bill'. Firstly, the utility bills are all in one name; my wife has no bill in her name. Secondly, we are being encouraged to manage bills online to save the planet and so I have no utility bills. Um ... I found a Council Tax bill in the end but it was more than six months old. We await Sir Humphrey's response.

Newspeak

A funding agency asked us to produce a more robust project plan for a consultancy. 

We were not sure how this adjective could be applied to a project plan but it turned out to mean more detailed. We are still trying to work out how we can produce a detailed project plan when the project is going to be carried out by a consultant and they are meant to be 'exploring all options'.

Telling them what we would be doing on 5 September, and who would be accountable for doing it, apparently makes a project plan more robust. We think it just makes it more of a fiction.

Carbon footprinting

HLF has become the first major funder to require carbon footprinting in all large projects funding applications. HLF will work ... to provide applicants with a carbon footprinting tool, already piloted at the British Museum. ... [applicants] will be required to calculate the carbon footprint of the utilities consumption and visitor travel associated with their projects and encouraged to pursue reductions.

We wonder how the British Museum has been encouraging their visitors - the vast majority of whom come from overseas and will have flown to the UK - to reduce the carbon footprint of their travel. Perhaps with well-meaning messages such as: please walk or use a bicycle (!?) or use public transport such as buses and the underground.

Museums and attractions who do not have ample public transport going past their doors will presumably be asked to close their car parks as part of their encouragement measures. Or perhaps they expect us to offer reduced price admission to those that travel by bus, thus reducing our income and making us pay for their policies. Thanks a bundle, folks.

What this well-meaning policy reminds us is that an attraction has absolutely no control over how the visitor travels: they just turn up on one's doorstep and jolly grateful we are that they do. There are enough barriers to visiting without preaching to them about climate change and making it hard for them to get here without upsetting an eco-warrior.

And how does this fit with the argument that part of the reason for the British Museum receiving government funding is that they attract a large number of overseas visitors.


Oh polly-political correctness,
Half dead and half alive.
... as the poet did not say.