El Reg procures OGC mousemat

We're absolutely delighted this morning to bring readers concrete proof of the Office of Government Commerce's rebranding folly, in the form of this splendid mousemat: The OGC mousemat When we first reported the OGC logo outrage, our inside source claimed the government tentacle had already spunked a not inconsiderable sum …

[dervheid]

"Cracking Stuff"?

More like 'cracking one off' stuff!

FNAAR!

[Dan]

Harumph...

Disappointed to find I bought that ITIL service management book with the old logo on, this is absolute genius...

PS Never mind what he's holding, what I want to know is why is he bow-legged?!

[Jeconais]

So .. erm...

Where can I get one?

[Roy Stilling]

Mousemats? How quaint.

Haven't they heard of optical mice at the OGC yet?

[Christoph]

There's a lot of it about

There seems to be a fashion for 'unfortunate' logos.

There's the Olympics blowjob logo, and the OGC logo.

Now have a look at the logo at http://www.a-style.it/

And think of the circles as people's heads.

[Anon Koward]

Ahhh the good ol OGC...

I remember quite clearly my foray into the world of Government IT and the OGC, what a travesty of government bureaucracy!

I believe the OGC is the world’s best example of how to take a really good idea and implement it so badly that it is impossible to get anything done. It brings back the pain of trying to explain in multiple 30+page documents as to why VMware was chosen without a full competitive bid, (at the time it was the only virtualised environment software on the market!).

Nice Logo though, I hope the taxpayer enjoys all the money that was spent by the OGC on this.

/Tongue out of cheek

[Risky]

Handjobs for the boys?

Of course if they really were delving value from their spending, they'd have moved to optical mice that don't get gummed up and junked and don't need a stupid mousemat.

[Paul Darcy]

hmmm

It could just be me.....but it just does not read correctly. "Helping 'the' government" or " helping government's'" would seem 'bit more proper English'

[Frank]

@Christoph re. logo

Thanks for that Christoph, nice clean lines and a modern look to it :)

Here is a link to a classic 'unfortunate logo' (from a brazilian based school of oriental studies). I think the base of the pagoda looks too fussy and could be greatly improved.

http://www.wait-till-i.com/2005/05/06/how-not-to-design-a-logo/

[Geoff Mackenzie]

@Christoph

That A-style logo is absolute class.

Oh, and @Roy Stirling, on a point of pedantry, optical mice do have balls; the ball turns rollers which turn wheels with many small gaps near the rim, through which a light shines on light sensors.

Don't know what you call these eunuch red shiny ones.

[Anonymous Coward]

Victorian japester

The term "spend" had more than one meaning a century ago, meaning something more along the lines of, uh, how can I put this over a work-monitored line... "to reach the end"? Strange but true. And don't ask me how I know (Alan Moore knows the score...)

Mine's the frockcoat with matching waistcoat and top hat.

[Natalie Gritpants]

Nice logo but.

they should have spent less money on that monster glass table and then, maybe, the budget would have stretched to a laptop for the woman. Or don't they count?

[Hugo]

Another phallic logo

Another phallic logo I saw recently in Helsinki on the side of a very big, very long, very shiny tanker ----> http://www.monten.fi/

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Dan

"PS Never mind what he's holding, what I want to know is why is he bow-legged?!"

Because he's been holding on too tight!!

[michael]

@Christoph

the a-style logo looks worse when it is srinked for the tab on firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

In government, everything spawns a mousemat

When I joined MAFF, they had MAFF mousemats and also MAIDEN (MAFF Integrated Desktop Environment for the Nineties) mousemats. When we became Defra, there were Defra mousemats. Once they'd sorted out the new Zep-trefoil-that-could-be-turned-into-Rolf-Harris'-face logo, there were more mousemats. When our IT was contracted out to IBM, there were E-nabling Defra mousemats (yes, that's how it was branded). When the (unreliable, Oracle-driven) self-service personnel system 4-ME (!) was introduced, it got a mousemat. When the Veterinary Field Service became Animal Health (accompanied by a prodigious burst of whalesong), it naturally got a mousemat.

The only major initiative that didn't get a mousemat, as far as I am aware, was the UK presidency of the EU in 2005. That had to make do with a square scarf, pen, heavy metal key fob, glass paperweight, folder, ID lanyard, box of mints, rubber eraser, ceramic mug and three different notepads, all bound up in a branded goody bag. There were quite a few bags spare at the end of our presidency, so a few months later, they sent them out for reuse. I'm pretty sure every civil servant in London got one, and possibly in some of the regions as well.

[Andy Barber]

@Roy Stilling

Mines a Trackball.

Mines the one with a ball in the pocket!

[robert cooke]

Entirely appropriate

well i think it's the best logo, in fact it's so good it should be used by every government department. they are quite clearly a complet shower of tossers from the office of the PM down to whichever numpty in greenwich council wants to replace my 5 year old communal door with a £30,000 example that is not required.

UK.GOV, They are all wankers.

[TeeCee]

@Geoff Mackenzie

I turn over my optical mouse with deep foreboding and am relieved to see that it hasn't suddenly aquired a ball since I last looked.

It's true that some ball mice have balls and optical chopper disks inside to register the movement and these are usually referred to as opto-mechanical mice. An optical mouse tracks the movement of the beastie with no moving parts at all (except the whole mouse itself of course) by shining an LED on the surface beneath it and interpreting the light reflected from the surface.

You do still need a mousemat sometimes though. On a completely smooth and featureless surface an optical mouse will often fail to measure any movement. A mousemat with a nice piccy or pattern on it will cure this.

[Francis Boyle]

re: There's a lot of it about

Given the amount of erm, ejaculation, going on on the first page I can't help thinking that the logo is 100% deliberate. And that both figures are male.

[Peter Davies]

An excellent use of..

.. £2000 of our money! Huzzah! Long live the government!

Now where do I get one of those bottles of OGC Water I've heard about?

I say bring back Guy Fawkes he had some good ideas.

Paris because she doesn't need a quango to help her waste someone elses money.

[Dodgy Geezer]

A little bit of history....

The government used to have a competent central IT consultancy unit, called the 'Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency'. When it was involved with departments' IT projects, they were delivered on time and to budget.

During the Thatcher era, the word 'Agency' was used to denote an outsourced, profit-making, self-funding part of government. So the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency was asked to change it's name and get a new logo. £100,000 was set aside for this.

Director (CCTA) thought about this for a while, and then he announced that from henceforth the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency would change it's name to 'CCTA'. 'CCTA' was not to stand for anything, and specifically the 'A' was not to stand for 'Agency'.

Job done - £100,000 saved.

After a few decisions like this outside companies saw that they could make no money out of CCTA, and they lobbied for it to be closed down. OGC was put in it's place.....

[William Towle]

Not forgetting [other logos]

Clinica Dental

The Computer Doctors

http://www.anvari.org/cols/Worst_Logos_Ever.html

[E_Nigma]

@Natalie

No, as it is, it's the best value from the spending.

P.S. It took me quite awhile to realize what's so funny about that mouse pad. I must be getting blonde.

[Kenny Millar]

2 Things

1. You should adjust the whitebalance on your camera, it's way off!

2. Mousemats - just shows how out of date the UK Gov is.

Oh, and 3, Buy a Mac, they're better than windows machines.

[Anonymous Coward]

Something I forgot.

If OGC is anything like Defra, then there are no optical mice. You can get ergonomic keyboards, dual-head and triple-head graphics setups, laptops, keydrives aplenty, but optical mice are still considered an expensive luxury.

I wonder how many mice have been binned because nobody could be bothered to ungunk them

[pctechxp]

makes me want to go self employed

So I can withold my tax from these legalised thieves.

I used to think tax exiles were the scum of the earth, now I completely understand them.

If our taxes weren't spent on this crap and things such as the white dome, we'd have the finest health service/police force/military in the world, I have no problem with paying taxes for that stuff but not for stupid mousemats, mugs and t-shirts.

I'd like my tax back please, you red box toting highwayman.

At least Dick Turpin wore a mask.

[Steve B]

The picture backs the logo.

Aren't the two outside players watching what the central figure is doing with his right hand?

[Alan]

@pctechxp

If you'd have added:

We're going to hell in a handcart.

and:

You couldn't make it up.

...you could've passed as Richard Littlejohn.

[pctechxp]

@Alan

Yup true, Littlejohn speaketh the truth.

Seriously though, do you want your hard earned cash that you are forced to hand over spent on this crap along with extensions to MPs second homes etc?