enviROI dot guv dot not

Mixed results for green IT goals

In view of the squillions of public funding pumped into comms efforts and initiatives, it is hard not to be more than a tad depressed by: 'A majority of public sector employees do not know about environmentally friendly IT targets set out in government's Greening ICT Strategy.'

In the soup

An interesting set of 'servings' in this morning's news.

I was already unclear as to why our national broadcaster was devoting prime news time to the wife of a foreign country doing some photo op work in a soup kitchen, when it soon became clear as she had obviously just served the Plane Stupid protester who then lobbed the First Lady's dollop over Business Secretary Peter (I fear his ennoblement was a step too far for me to see any substance to the honours system any more, not that I did much before) Mandelson.

However, not that he is my favourite pol, I will concede that he conducted himself pretty well afterwards, I must say.

Which brings me to the protest, and its effect. The successful 'attack' on a high profile figure (what were the security up to... or not? Maybe they'd outsourced it to Pakistan?) will have the desired result to many, namely extensive publicity. However, my immediate reaction was sympathy for Mr. Mandelson, and that takes some doing. He claimed she stated no point during her action, but I'm pretty sure I heard her mouth off quite a lot, so who knows?* And in any case the scrum who interviewed her soon after left us in no doubt that it was about the 3rd Heathrow runway. Not a bad point with a climate conference held as soon as Gordon Brown has just landed back from one of his crucial overseas jaunts.

We also were treated a lot to the hundreds of thousands of green jobs (I still am trying to equate meeting environmental aims and targets with all the rhetoric about growing economies to satisfy growing, more aspirational populations).

My ears pricked up when Mr. Mandelson was asked about the car industry in this regard, as a few things didn't quite compute, and sadly the 'reporter' (some bozo holding a mike and script) failed to press him.

First up was that I think I heard he thought cars were the major CO2 emitters in the world. Not too sure that's true.

Second was in answer to why there are notions of propping up car makers such as Vauxhall if cars are not the best thing. Ignoring the 'costs' of making new ones and simply trying not to travel so much as options, the reply was that they have plans for an electric one on the drawing board.

I have to come back to what I bang on about so often in this regard. Electric cars do emit CO2. They emit it being made, and in the generation of the energy to run them; the exhaust pipe is just in another place.

Without sensible clean generation and distribution of 'leccy in place FIRST, I can't see how they match up on any enviROI level. So my box-ticking, target meeting, subsidy-collecting, lobbyist-satisfying antennae are aquiver.

Reuters - "Green New Deal" to help fix economy

Addendum -

BBC - Mandelson custard attack probed

BBC - Degree honour Clarkson hit by pie - Different event; different reporting?

*Addendum 2 -

Indy - Why I threw green custard over the Business Secretary - from the horse's mouth, as it were. I didn't even know you could get green custard.

Guardian - This is not youthful rebellion. We see the catastrophe ahead

Times - Why I custard-pied Jeremy Clarkson - Not getting the best reaction, it seems

Onside rules

My deep appreciation of bureaucracy is , to any who read this blog, well known.

Especially when in complement to grants that seem more designed to put money in the pockets of those tasked to dole 'em out than actually getting anything worthwhile to the beneficiary.

So when a chicken comes home to roost, especially on a Friday afternoon, I am soooo onside already.

However, when it kicks off 'You are required to take part in the programme evaluation ...' I feel less than inclined to jump to it. And as it didn't come registered, I feel I might just stick it where de sun don' shine until asked again. Maybe more pleasantly ('We'd appreciate your help with... as agreed when the award was made...'). But that, I doubt.

What really gets me is the majority of the form is stuff they have already had from me, scores of times. And almost none has any bearing on the key aim as suggested by the line 'it is important that we continue to highlight the positive impact [the programmes] have on local companies.'

How pointless is that?

There's no opportunity to give any qualitative analysis, so they are simply designed to get in ticked box form what they want to hear to justify their existence.

So many things these days seem to operate on this idiotic basis. Surveys that take as gospel the word of a person saying they don't smack their kid whilst recycling 110%. Job references that forget that a glowing positive might not just mean they're keen to pass on a deadweight, or a negative might mean a good candidate has fallen foul of an idiot boss. Or the 101 times that an honest reply means censure where lying through your teeth gives a clear pass.

These things are totally self-serving, and offer no value to the recipients or those who pay for all this. The only thing they do is keep make-weights in fruitless nirvana.

There's also whether they add up

It was about, I believe, drug programmes, but as easily can apply to every aspect of current government policy.

In a rather matter of fact BBC news piece there was the choice insight that 'all that matters is the numbers who sign up, rather than whether anything effective gets done [with them].'

This target-based, box-ticking culture is spiralling us ever downwards.