Best Of

OT rant about government meetings. I've been sent this email for a Teams call:-

Please join the meeting 5 minutes before your allocated time of 11:15 by clicking on the link.
...
Join the meeting 10 minutes before your allocated time by clicking on the link. It is important that you are ready and join on time.

So in the course of a paragraph, they want me to join at 11.15, 11.10 and 11.05. This automatically generated nonsense must have been sent out for months if not decades with no civil servant bothering to read it.

How much deadweight unproductive time is accounted for by those 10 minutes wasted? People should join meeting on time, keep to the agenda and leave promptly

Er, this is an *online* meeting. JUst make sure it's all set up at 1105, in case of e-hiccups, and then get on with one's desk work till 1115. Makes sense to me.

Presumably the extra five or ten minutes is so you can discuss your cats with colleagues you've never met in person and not take up the timetabled call for this purpose.

I'm amazed at the visions of working life some people on PB have.

I defend to the death the right of colleagues I have never met to discuss their cats.

Seriously you should. Meetings should be focused on decisions and outcomes but people are social animals. Time spent on socialising is time well spent as long as it doesn't interfere with the job.

Ukraine starting to lose German and French voter support which is pretty concerning. I suspect we shall get a bad peace deal in 2026, which will give the global economy a temporary boost but at the expense of emboldening Putin and might is right generally.

https://www.politico.eu/article/french-and-germans-lean-toward-dialing-back-ukraine-support-new-international-politico-poll-shows/

We won’t, Zelensky will only accept a ceasefire on current lines and Putin will only accept a ceasefire with Russia getting given more Ukrainian territory

A settlement on current lines wouldn't be good for VVP. Odessa might just make it all worth it. It was the Kulkovye Polye protests/massacre and subsequent firestorm of disinformation from both sides in 2014 that so inflamed Russian ire and germinated the conflict. Getting Katherine's city back would be the sort of sentimental symmetry that nourishes the Slavic psyche.

I see Big Z has now given up on joining NATO so you can sort of see the hazy outlines of a deal that could emerge. Russia will need more though.

Given the state of the Russian Black Sea fleet, Odessa looks unattainable.

Russian navy down one submarine, taken out by Ukranian suicide drone sub while in port at Novorossiysk.

https://x.com/girkingirkin/status/2000583441344028779

Stand by for a few more Ukranian drone subs heading for Novorossiysk in the coming days and weeks.

I was watching video of that yesterday. The drone rounded several ships and harbour fittings before hitting the submarine. It was seriously impressive but also a bit scary. I really wonder if the RN would have fared any better if facing such an attack.

Very scary. This new drone is basically a navigable torpedo that can go anywhere.

One assumes that the Royal Navy takes port security a little more seriously than the Russians, and can spot an enemy vessel approaching!

That's the rational for the sea drones the RN is testing. But it would require an awful lot of them, and I doubt the MoD has the money.

They surely need satellites to navigate and I imagine in a big war scenario those satellites will be gone in minutes?

There’s probably an inertia/star chart/object recognition/local radio towers based solution that doesn’t need satellites.

The Helsing system uses inertial navigation, but surfaces to satellite transmit data. For now, it's primarily intended to lighten the burden of peacetime maritime surveillance, I think.

But it's just the first of what is very likely to be many such systems.

OT rant about government meetings. I've been sent this email for a Teams call:-

Please join the meeting 5 minutes before your allocated time of 11:15 by clicking on the link.
...
Join the meeting 10 minutes before your allocated time by clicking on the link. It is important that you are ready and join on time.

So in the course of a paragraph, they want me to join at 11.15, 11.10 and 11.05. This automatically generated nonsense must have been sent out for months if not decades with no civil servant bothering to read it.

How much deadweight unproductive time is accounted for by those 10 minutes wasted? People should join meeting on time, keep to the agenda and leave promptly

Er, this is an *online* meeting. JUst make sure it's all set up at 1105, in case of e-hiccups, and then get on with one's desk work till 1115. Makes sense to me.

Presumably the extra five or ten minutes is so you can discuss your cats with colleagues you've never met in person and not take up the timetabled call for this purpose.

I'm amazed at the visions of working life some people on PB have.

I defend to the death the right of colleagues I have never met to discuss their cats.

Seriously you should. Meetings should be focused on decisions and outcomes but people are social animals. Time spent on socialising is time well spent as long as it doesn't interfere with the job.

Quite right. Above all when there is split site working, of the kind that happened at my organization. In that era it was a case of actual physical departmental meetings, which my boss rotated between sites as a basic point for morale reasons, plus he used to try and book the meetings just before coffee or lunch break anyway, which encouraged people to keep to time. But in that case people had to arrive a little early in case of traffic, which leads to your point. (Also such visits were useful for other small jobs that needed to be done at the meeting site without being particularly urgent.)

Ukraine starting to lose German and French voter support which is pretty concerning. I suspect we shall get a bad peace deal in 2026, which will give the global economy a temporary boost but at the expense of emboldening Putin and might is right generally.

https://www.politico.eu/article/french-and-germans-lean-toward-dialing-back-ukraine-support-new-international-politico-poll-shows/

We won’t, Zelensky will only accept a ceasefire on current lines and Putin will only accept a ceasefire with Russia getting given more Ukrainian territory

A settlement on current lines wouldn't be good for VVP. Odessa might just make it all worth it. It was the Kulkovye Polye protests/massacre and subsequent firestorm of disinformation from both sides in 2014 that so inflamed Russian ire and germinated the conflict. Getting Katherine's city back would be the sort of sentimental symmetry that nourishes the Slavic psyche.

I see Big Z has now given up on joining NATO so you can sort of see the hazy outlines of a deal that could emerge. Russia will need more though.

It does not help using Z to mean Zelensky while Russian advocates use Z to mean their SMO.

They need to get back to selling Russian oil pipelined (at a commission) through Ukraine. Currently no-one can buy or reliably deliver the stuff owing to American secondary sanctions and Ukrainian explosives, so this is probably the economic win-win both sides need once the face-saving part has been agreed.

Typical from Russian shill, they are uncouth oafs , hopefully they get their comeuppance big time. They can continue crapping in the streets and living in hovels.

OT rant about government meetings. I've been sent this email for a Teams call:-

Please join the meeting 5 minutes before your allocated time of 11:15 by clicking on the link.
...
Join the meeting 10 minutes before your allocated time by clicking on the link. It is important that you are ready and join on time.

So in the course of a paragraph, they want me to join at 11.15, 11.10 and 11.05. This automatically generated nonsense must have been sent out for months if not decades with no civil servant bothering to read it.

How much deadweight unproductive time is accounted for by those 10 minutes wasted? People should join meeting on time, keep to the agenda and leave promptly

Er, this is an *online* meeting. JUst make sure it's all set up at 1105, in case of e-hiccups, and then get on with one's desk work till 1115. Makes sense to me.

Depends whether your desk work involves busy work or whether it involves thinking. If others are also joining 10 minutes early then surely they will distract by talking to you or others

Mute, minimise window ...

OT rant about government meetings. I've been sent this email for a Teams call:-

Please join the meeting 5 minutes before your allocated time of 11:15 by clicking on the link.
...
Join the meeting 10 minutes before your allocated time by clicking on the link. It is important that you are ready and join on time.

So in the course of a paragraph, they want me to join at 11.15, 11.10 and 11.05. This automatically generated nonsense must have been sent out for months if not decades with no civil servant bothering to read it.

Indeed, no civil servant will join before 11:20

The cheap jibe aside, one of my perennial bugbears in my local Government career was senior officers moving from meeting to meeting and often arriving late and unfocused and that applied both in the office and on Teams calls.

Managing meetings was a perennial struggle - I acquired a bit of a reputation for being a tyrannical Chair but I always wanted a 60 minute meeting to end after 50 minutes to allow those moving to the next meeting time to move, both physically and mentally, from the one issue to the next.

Part of what is perceived as the issue with decision making stems from this, I believe. Senior and especially middle management are overworked and become scared of taking decisions because they fear there has been inadequate discussion and the standard response is to arrange another meeting which rehashes all the old arguments wasting everyone’s time,

Whisper it quietly, but I suspect this happens in the private sector too.

Speaking of which it seems this site has still not resolved the Brexit debate, if we could just schedule another discussion for tomorrow evening* perhaps it might all finally get sorted.

* Unfortunately I can't make it so send my apologies in advance.