So, the problem is that men are arseholes that are incapable of co-operation?
Bit much.
Bletchley Park board member quits amid TNMOC split-off spat
A Bletchley Park Trust board member has stepped down in protest against the charity's failure to sort out a long-running dispute with the National Museum of Computing. Dr Sue Black, senior research associate at University College London's department of computer science, quit the Trust's board at the end of last year. She …
-
-
Tuesday 11th March 2014 10:43 GMT Jim 59
Rats and snails
Dr Black thinks that BP is awesome. She also wants a constructive and mature discussion between the feuding parties. Getting things off to a mature start is her own submission, viz. that girls are better than boys.
The vein of generous diplomacy continues:
"[BP] is an awesome place. The place where more than 10,000 people, mainly young women, worked to save millions of lives."
While those lazy 1940 men just couldn't be bothered.
-
Monday 10th March 2014 16:04 GMT Michael H.F. Wilkinson
This lack of colaboration is a disgrace
Pure and simple.
I really feel somebody needs to bang some heads together and tell both trusts to act in the interest of the public, not in the interests of overinflated egos. I am not laying blame on any particular side (as I do not know enough of the details), but they should sort things out in a grown-up manner and get on with the work of preserving and presenting an essential part of both British and computing history
</rant>
-
Monday 10th March 2014 16:19 GMT Aaiieeee
Re: This lack of colaboration is a disgrace
I assume it eventually comes down to money, as does everything. I agree that if the individuals were primarily interested in the history/preservation then they would be working together long ago, or have joined forces or become a single entity or something. My money is on the money.
-
Monday 10th March 2014 17:16 GMT Psyx
Re: This lack of colaboration is a disgrace
"I assume it eventually comes down to money, as does everything."
I suspect that it probably comes down to egos more. It seems that part-time administrators and directors are some of the most viciously egotistical people in the world, as anyone who has tried to get planning permission past a village council can attest.
-
Monday 10th March 2014 22:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: This lack of colaboration is a disgrace
Yes, sadly self appointed guardians of a small patch of the earth tend to think they are Napoleon. Whether it's cause or effect (do Napoleons seek out these jobs?) and whether it's just men or it's just that there are a lot of men in these positions are anyone's guesses.
-
Wednesday 12th March 2014 15:10 GMT Psyx
Re: This lack of colaboration is a disgrace
"do Napoleons seek out these jobs?"
Yes. Yes they do.
By very definition, people who like telling other people what to do in a petty bureaucratic manner are going to make up a disproportionally large amount of a career field heavily featuring such behaviour. Especially when such work is done for gratis, because then the person is being motivated by personal desires, rather than cash.
-
-
-
Tuesday 11th March 2014 13:48 GMT Jim 59
Re: This lack of colaboration is a disgrace
Agree entirely with Michael H.F. Wilkinson. BP (the site) is meant to honour the great deeds that happened there, and to explain (with TNMoC) the related history of computing devices. The two sides blend brilliantly together. It is a place everyone can be proud of and fascinated by. In the morning you can sit in Alan Turing's office, discuss Winston Churchill with some knowledgeable old buffer, then PM, wander off to look at slide rules, 2 foot diameter Winchester disks and the rumbling bomb decoder.
Using all this as a political football is or a platform to say boys smell, or whatever, is cheap and tawdry.
-
-
-
-
Tuesday 11th March 2014 16:44 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: Smoke?
Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack. Finally I can't stand it anymore. "Well?" I demand.
"A fellow I used to know, his name was Ulyanov, once said something rather profound" Angleton looks like the cat that's swallowed the canary — and the feet are sticking out of the side of his mouth; he wants me to know this, whatever it is. "Let your enemies sell you enough rope to hang them with."
"Uh, wasn't that Lenin?" I ask.
A flicker of mild irritation crosses his face. "This was before he took that name," he says quietly. Clack. Clack. Clack. He flicks the balls to set them banging again and I suddenly realise what they are and feel quite sick. No indeed, Bridget and Harriet — and Bridget's predecessor, and the mysterious Mr McLuhan — won't be troubling me again. (Except in my nightmares about this office, visions of my own shrunken head winding up in one of the director's executive toys, skull clattering away eternally in a scream that nobody can hear anymore . . . ) "Bridget's been plotting a boardroom coup for a long time, Robert. Probably since before you joined the Laundry — or were conscripted." He spares Josephine a long, appraising look. "She suborned Harriet, bribed McLuhan, installed her own corrupt geas on Voss. Partners in crime, intending to expose me as an incompetent and a possible security leak before the Board of Auditors, I suppose — that's usually how they plan it. I guessed this was going on, but I needed firm evidence. You supplied it. Unfortunately, Bridget was none too stable; when she realised that I knew, she ordered Voss to remove the witnesses then summoned McLuhan and proceeded with her palace coup d'état. Equally unfortunately for her, she failed to correctly establish who my line manager was before she attempted to go over my head to have me removed." He taps the sign on the front of the desk: PRIVATE SECRETARY. Keeper of the secrets. Whose secrets?
-
-
-
-
Monday 10th March 2014 17:28 GMT GotThumbs
This comes off as a pretty sexist statement and is offensive to me.
"It has often occurred to me that maybe it would have helped to have more women involved at a high level,"
I'm not familiar with the full details, but perhaps she simply wasn't very good at making her case in the first place.
Just another possibility she may want to admit to.
Her quitting does display her action/choice to not getting the results she wanted after how many attempts? I'd like to hear other members feedback regarding her justification for her desired outcome.
-
Tuesday 11th March 2014 16:06 GMT Rich 11
Re: This comes off as a pretty sexist statement and is offensive to me.
I'm not familiar with the full details, but perhaps she simply wasn't very good at making her case in the first place.
I'm not familiar with the full details, but that's not going to stop me commenting either. Perhaps she was very good at making her case but a couple of people in positions of influence valued their own opinions far above those of anyone else.
Just another possibility she may want to admit to.
Just another possibility you may want to admit to, given the general tendency for people in power to entrench themselves and to exercise their prejudices.
-
-
Monday 10th March 2014 17:59 GMT ElReg!comments!Pierre
Disgraceful; but more women ain't the solution.
As an admirer (and part-time maintainer) of ancient kit, I find this situation disgraceful. I Actually wrote to the Trust about that, and got a reply that I posted in the comments for another Reg article. This needs to stop, and external mediation seems to be the only way. It's a pity that this fine lass failed to get the knobheads on the Trust's board to agree to it.
On the other hand I don't think more women would change anything about the current quabble. I work a lot with women in position of power; they are certainly not less aggressive nor smoother in conflicts than men. Quite the opposite, in fact: as one of the few men here I am often sent to ease blocked situations between female co-workers. The reasons for this are probably many, some would suggest that they had to fight harder to get there; I really don't have an opinion on the matter (not enough data at hand). But to think that having more women on the boards would somehow mellow the conflict is naive at best.
-
Monday 10th March 2014 19:11 GMT Charles Manning
How is it that you can say "we need more women for job x because they think differently", but you cannot say "we don't need women for job y because they think differently"?
If, as a generalisation, women do think differently from men then "women think" is surely suited to some functions and "bloke think" to other.
For example, the massive gender imbalances in programming might just favour "bloke think" and no matter how hard we try paint programming pink, it just won't appeal to women in general.
Now of course gender should not be used as a selection criterion. We should just select people on their individual merit. We should not assume that a bloke is going to be a good programmer (there are thousands of counter-examples) and nor should we assume that women won't be. However artificially moving the needle to seek some ideological balance is surely broken.
-
Monday 10th March 2014 20:07 GMT Jon Bright
If you're trying to "paint programming pink", you may be part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Artifically moving the needle of hiring standards would be wrong: everyone hired should achieve at least the same standard.
You can move lots of other needles: trying to get a more diverse group of candidates to apply for jobs, trying to make candidates (whoever they are) feel comfortable in interviews and subsequently in the workplace, etc.
If a great chunk of the population isn't prepared to apply to your company because whenever you think "women" your mind immediately comes up with the association "pink", you're artificially *lowering* your hiring standards because your pool of candidates is half as big as it could be but you still need to employ the same number of people. I hesitate to call this a triumph of blokishness.
-
Tuesday 11th March 2014 04:35 GMT xperroni
If you're trying to "paint programming pink", you may be part of the problem, not part of the solution.
An unfortunate choice of words, but his point has merit. The fabled "womanly way" is often touted as an argument for getting more women to play male-dominated roles. But clearly if women are a better fit to some situations, they must be a poorer one for others (you certainly wouldn't think women are better always, that's sexism). Yet try saying "maybe this problem wouldn't be so bad if we had less women involved" and see how long it takes for the femi-SA to show up.
-
-
-
Monday 10th March 2014 22:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
Albright on women leaders...
"Well I do think, when there are more women, that the tone of the conversation changes, and also the goals of the conversation change. But it doesn't mean that the whole world would be a lot better if it were totally run by women. If you think that, you've forgotten high school."
-- Madeleine Albright
-
Tuesday 11th March 2014 03:27 GMT TheFatMan
"It has often occurred to me that maybe it would have helped to have more women involved at a high level,"
Well done for quiting in protest
"Boo Hiss" for thinking arrogance and stupidity is related to gender.
Actually I have found it quite common for SOME women to think that if a man wont come round to their way of thinking then it is because they are a woman rather than because they are wrong
-
-
-
Tuesday 11th March 2014 22:14 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: With a name like Dr Black
"And "Baroness Trumpington" has a certain ring to it also"
Yeah, as does the location of her "seat", Camberwick Green.
<sings>
Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dible and...er... the other one"
</sings>
-
-
-
-
Tuesday 11th March 2014 17:51 GMT 2E0VPX
Re: Not Only The NMOC at Bletchley Park
Ah... common sense. All things to all men (and women). The RSGB and BPT are two organisations blighted by the same disease (and are perfect bed fellows for that reason). Sadly MKARS was up against both of them...and lost. Both (the RSGB and BPT) will, I suspect, go the same way unless they change. Fortunately, MKARS continues to flourish (quite nicely, thank you very much). Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the RSGB's little green hut on the park. Such a shame that, like BPT, the RSGB couldn't bring it itself to value its partners.
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Tuesday 11th March 2014 12:54 GMT smartypants
Visitors to Bletchley: Have your cake and eat it!
Decades ago Bletchley Park was devoted to overcoming devious security measures.
In that spirit, when we paid a recent visit, we naturally decided not to let a silly little barrier put us off, and in the end, we found the fence didn't actually stop us anyway. It looked more like a fence you put around landscaping works and after a couple of wrong turns, and a bit of a smile at the sheds housing the memory of our cherished computer history, we made it.
It was well worth it. TNMOC was easily the most interesting bit of the whole day out, and it would have been a great shame if we'd been prevented from seeing it all in one go.
In short, trustees, you should be ashamed of yourselves.
-
Tuesday 11th March 2014 19:56 GMT Tom 13
Re: In short, trustees, you should be ashamed of yourselves.
Quite like politicians, I rather suspect if any significant number of them were capable of being ashamed of themselves the current mess wouldn't have happened.
On the topic of the vindictiveness of people people in positions where they don't yield a great deal of actual power I will note the following observation about Senator Phil Graham. When he arrived from academia in DC people were amazed at his adroitness in playing the long-knife game. Then someone pointed out that because the stakes are so much lower in academia, the fights are even more competitive than they are in DC. I suspect much the same is happening here.
-
-
Tuesday 11th March 2014 15:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
Quitting was a mistake
If someone is the only voice of reason in an ocean of big egos, she shouldn't have quit.
Calmly ask the same rational questions over and over again: "yes, but how will that solve the problem?"
"yes, but what is the added value for the trust?", "I see, but how will that get us closer to our goal?"
This will have the big egos foaming at the mouth in a couple of weeks and room for fresh blood is only one heart attack away.
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
