Totally OT: Pet hates

[The Natural Philosopher]

"Burglarized"

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, because the above is not a description of 'forward planning' as I was taught it in the 60's.

There was no contingency about it.

We were in the business of getting large projects out on time, and we needed to work back from delivery date using build times and lead times to know when to order in stuff for the project. And book time on the various manufacturing plant and equipment, and look at human resourcing.

Its what is now called 'project management'.

[Mike Barnes]

They're not alone... "septics" is longer than "yank". :-)

[Mike Barnes]

The one that gets me is this road sign: USE BOTH LANES

Just try it and see what reaction you get.

Sign writers, copy out 100 times: USE *EITHER* LANE

[Tim Streater]

Aren't you talking about - what's it called now, Critical Path Analysis? Think that's the name, anyway. Where you bung in all the task dependencies and completion times and it calculates overall project time and what the critical path is - i.e. which tasks *must* be completed in the stated time, and for which ones some slop is allowed?

[pamela]

"There're" doesn't seem to work. :-)

[michael adams]

That would probably depend on how many people actually understand what a contingency is; and how they're likely to feel about paying out large sums of money, either as taxpayers or shareholders, in planning for things which are very unlikely to ever happen.

Whereas "future planning", well everyone needs to plan for the future, now don't they ?

But then again, maybe everyone should be forced to use the somewhat ugly term "contingency planning", in the interests of transparency, if nothing else.

Maybe you'd like to write to the EU Commission about your concerns and tell them all about it. Or after July, maybe it will be Boris who will be lending you a sympathetic ear.

michael adams

...

[michael adams]

It would help of course if I could distinguish between future and forward. But the rest holds.

[The Natural Philosopher]

That came out of it, yes.

But most of the stuff we had was not very 'critical path' it was mainly 'there is only one path' - i.e. logistics

[The Natural Philosopher]

The're ?

[Tim Streater]

Well that's presumably where risk analysis and judgement come in. You have to decide what the risks are and how likely they are. Then you have to have a plan for what to do in each case. You may decide that some possible events can't be planned for (such as Earth's collision with a 300-mile diameter body, which would melt the whole surface of the Earth and sterilise the planet completely. Not much to be done about that one) in which case you don't bother.

I would have said that one of Government's responsibilities is such planning. The large sums of money would only apply if your mitigation involved it. E.g. a one-mile diameter body crashing mid-Atlantic causing a 3000 foot high tsunami (which would wash across the whole UK). Try costing a sea wall for that.

[michael adams]

Don't really care if people use the wrong words; life's simply too short; except for brownie points on here anyway.

Go into Toolstation with a printed list. Queue back to the door. The usual cast of dribbling morons draped over the counters craning around to see the monitors so as to finally decide whether to lash out a tenner on something or not.

And to top it all one drip with glasses spent all of ten minutes humming and hah-ing only to walk out with 4 rolls of brown parcel tape and one roll of black duck tape. I passed a remark but as it wasn't in Polish it probably fell on deaf ears.

It would have maybe been a different story had it been crumpet serving but it wasn't. All blokes today. My fault maybe for going in at the wrong time of course.

Oh and the bastards have chopped down all the nice variegated maple trees at one side of the "estate".

michael adams

...

[Chris J Dixon]

"Dogs must be carried on the escalator"

Bother! I don't have a dog, so I'll have to use the stairs.

Chris

[michael adams]

Well yes and no. The problem is that nobody is ever going to vote for a politician or a chairman of a board, or even a football manager who admits for one minute that they're not 100% sure of what's going to happen. After all Winston Churchill didn't get where he did, by ever admitting in public the possibility that Britain might well lose the war. Those plans were probably the first to go on the bonfire in 1942 or whenever.

So all such planning would probably need to be conducted in secret both so as not to alarm the public - who have a notoriously shaky perception of risk; and they're not alone in this apparently - and so as to not undermine confidence in the authorities.

michael adams

...

[Tim Streater]

Of course. In a situation like Churchill was in, you're not gonna

*admit* that your risk analysis looks bad. But you have to plan for it, nonetheless. I'm sure there was a plan for what might have been the remnant of the Navy to flounce off to Canadian/US ports, in the event of an invasion having nearly succeeded. For example.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

With Churchill on one, of course.

[michael adams]

First things first.

This was October 1939 with Churchill re-installed as First Lord of The Admiralty

Gold first, then women and children.

One of the amusing suggestions from conspiracy theorists is that there were avenues specially laid out in London Parks close to Buckingham Palace so as to allow aircraft to take off and fly the Royals to safety.

When in fact they spent every night at Windsor Castle. Which Adolf was saving for David for when he had him reinstalled as King Edward VIII. While by the looks of things anyway, the main drive through Windsor Great Park could probably have accommodated a jumbo jet had any been around at the time..

michael adams

...

ApparenrOne of the big turm

[David Lang]

Aaaaargh!!!!

I hate that!

[Sam Crean]

Must be why they mostly use TV instead of television, OK instead of what they used before that. GOP instead of the alternative, prez instead of president, etc etc etc.

[Tim Watts]

Ah, but that one is targeting you (plural) as in the group of drivers.