BBC diversity ?

[Jim K..]

Really?...

[whisky-dave]

Just had an email sent around from the BBC asking if any computer expert who was working here at the time of the Millennium Bug, this is for the One Show. But as they are commited to diversity they want to hear from women working in the industry at the time.

Nice to know equality exists.

[Scott]

Tell them you have now become non-binary and intend to seek legal advice about a potential claim for discrimination :-)

[Andy Burns]

You could self-identify as female ...

[Andrew]

The insurance company I worked for back then (GAN Croydon), used the date in the form YYMMDD PIC 9(6) as the significant part of the key to all their indexed sequential files.

This required a new common date handling routine to read and write any records with this key structure, overlaying the 9(6) with PIC X(6) and extending the character set of the year.

All the contractors were male, but the female permi in charge of all the Y2K updates was the most annoying person going.

[Andrew]

And French, with unshaven underarms ?

[Brian Gaff]

Well, no, they are looking for an angle that is the be and end all of it as the subject matter itself is hardly mind grabbing is it?

I beet if it was a very pretty Asian lady it would be even better. Brian

[Cursitor Doom]

Play 'em at their own game. Tell 'em you identify as a woman and when do you start?

[Cursitor Doom]

Oh bugger you beat me to it.

[Brian Gaff]

I think the way to go is to point out that the current thinking is that we are all non binary in gender and could they be more specific on percentages of female to male!

Brian

[newshound]

Beat me to it :-)

[whisky-dave]

Funny you should mention that as we do have such a person and is the school manager. I was asked to change my working day from 9-5 to 10-6 I did this 2 years ago and noticed that she had changed her hours from 9-5 to 8-4 for 4 days a week and taking the the 5th day as working from home. The school services manager changed her hours from 9-5 to 8:30 - 5 meaning an extra 2 hours/week because she choses to work 4 days a week too the 5th day takes 1/2 day off and works from home for 3 hours of that day.

So I asked why I can't do a similar thing and was told it is because I have H&S responsibilities and they as mangers don't have any H&S responsibilities so they can work from home.

But I did suggest that perhaps if we got the technicain back we lost when a previous Head of department had an affair with a secretary and got her pregnant and 17 years later we employed her to sort the filing cabinets, the head of dept. took the technicain post and converted it to a secertarys post. So I've asked for that back then we can keep the lab open until 6 or perhaps even 7pm

You should have seen their faces drop, they had no idea I knew of the fiddles that go on here, and I didn't even mention the course work fiddles of the time I'll leave that until another meeting.

[whisky-dave]

Nah that's italians & greeks.

[Cursitor Doom]

The Greeks and Italians eat garlic in bed, according to Flanders & Swann.

[Scott]

Yes, I remember visiting Italy and there was a topless (naked?) female in the beach shower, with a huge crowd of onlookers. Funny thing is she was oblivious to them!

[Pamela]

I'm all ears for a bit of goss on those course work fiddles. Please go ahead.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

When I worked in TV, the company I worked for were committed to equality. To the point of advertising trainee etc posts in publications where other than white males would be likely to see them. But, I'm told, didn't discriminate either way at the entrance board - simply chose the best candidates. But even then, my area remained mainly white and male - well outside the percentages in the country.

[whisky-dave]

They say the same here.

You mean like choose your wedding dress type publications, or makeup for beginners. I saw my job advertised in New scientist, I guess women & black people are banned from reading such publications. When I got the job my boss was black and so was his assistant.

Depends on what you mean by best doesn't it.

Well here the admin department is mostly women in fact 87% women last time I checked, and most of the higher end academics are white males. And in the past the Head of department picked ONE person to go on trips to china with and she just happened to be female. A year or so later she gave birth, and after 17 years she came to work here taking a technician post but allocated to the secratarial side. A few years ago even the guys in the postroom noticed that this Head was parading around the college with 3 young female research students in tow.

Equality is a difficult thing to sort out but in some cases we know sex discrimination is blatant and supported.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Are you saying a female interested in working as a cameraman or soundman would only read that sort of publication?

Think one route they went down was advertising in music etc mags aimed at the young black population. The sort that might cover music production too.

[newshound]

You'll have to wait until he retires!