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A Fright at the Museum – politicalbetting.com
A Fright at the Museum – politicalbetting.com
What on earth has been going on at the British Museum?
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* and now they're having their stuff stolen too! LOL!
Reportedly, this included Reinhard Heydrich.
Anyone want anything?
My personal in-house Art expert tells me that a big part of the problem at the British Meseum and similar institutions is the crap pay for the staff. Poor morale and low levels of honesty are therefore not surprising.
I will add, though, that my experience of public organisations in Britain is generally positive - for example, asked to find a home for my seriously unwell uncle, Cornwall Country Council offered a number of options and recommended one that was not the least expensive (although they were paying for it). A few days after he'd moved in, a member of the Cornwall council team turned up to ask if he felt settled and if he needed anything. At individual staff level, there is still a very considerable level of public service attitude, which gets obscured by the horrid exceptions.
I keep a database of 100,000s of photos, documents etc on a NAS box that cost 2k. Multiple dimensions for search, currently playing with AI to deepen/broaden the search capability .
Ah, here comes the cry - But we must set up a department. We must have a 10,000 page report. We must employ 150 consultants (no actual museum related skills). We must have a proper, separate office building - don’t want our precious people too near all that dusty museum junk. We need leadership from the NU10K - and they don’t come cheap….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_kHPHHC8tY
For many millions of people things ARE going great.
Not many of them are willing to admit it though as everyone yearns for another government handout, subsidy or tax cut.
On International Dog Day this country is truly doing it's bit by going to the dogs.
If they can't or don't want to show something why not earn some money by letting someone who does want it buy it.
Plus it makes it much harder to find where they put the Ark of the Covenant.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12445989/BORIS-JOHNSON-Yevgeny-Prigozhin-assassination-Putin.html
I don't think that makes museum staff special. It should be against the ethical principles of the employees of any employer not to steal from their employer, but you know, people do.
We've had this argument with the Flatland Museum. They've just had a new building constructed (cost overrun, surprise surprise) with a cafe and visitor facilities but they are totally incapable of looking after their actual stuff, most of it collected and catalogued by their Victorian founders, who were naturally all volunteers.
They had it all in 'safe storage' and had a contractor come in to do some building work in part of their storage facility. The contractor drilled through the ceiling and showered the whole archive in plaster dust. How on earth was that allowed to happen?
Their nationally important collection of insects is currently being eaten by insects. We suggested they give them to somewhere that cared, or at least got them all DNA sequenced (they are reference specimens in some cases).
I think the problem is that the they concentrate too much on the public face and not enough on their primary objective. For some reason there doesn't seem to be much kudos in doing things unseen.
Can't someone just take pride in doing a good job?
The indignant denial that anything is wrong.
The blame the messenger stage.
The blame anyone else at all stage.
The wait until everyone who could possibly be responsible has left the scene of the ineptitude*
The reluctant acceptance that it did indeed go wrong but the smug assurances that lessons have already been learned.
Trebles all round.
* in fairness, this particular example seems to have fallen somewhat short on this stage.
But it might be scientifically valuable, and interested parties might need to come and look at them.
Why must everything be displayed?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_British_Museum_is_Falling_Down
International Dog Day is an annual event on August 26 to honour all dogs — no matter their shape, size, age, or breed.
Dog lovers are encouraged to make an extra-special fuss of their forever furry friend and those who want to be dog owners are encouraged to look into adoption centres near them to try to give every abandoned pooch a home.
Animal rights charity OIPA say it is a “special day to raise awareness about dog adoption because, if you are looking for a life’s companion, shelters are full of four-legged friends who are waiting for their chance and will bring just happiness to your days”.
How often are the vast un-displayed hoards museums have ever looked at and how does any outsider know what exists in any case ?
What you say is right except of course that the British Museum no longer has a blank canvas. It is not starting anew. My suspicion is not that the museum lacks the money so much as the will. There will always have been something more important than to finish off the database with all those uncatalogued items in the basement (and remember that some expertise is needed just to describe each artefact which in practice might mean waiting for a PhD student to be researching that particular shelf).
They link to past tables, not those reflective of the numbers and there seems no corresponding tweets so I'm going to ignore these until we see some verifiable numbers.
(Which has faced some of the same problems as the British Museum.)
And I began to wonder as I read whether its complex governing structure isn't, at least in part, designed to make it difficult to assign blame for any failures.
Here's the kind of thing that can happen when someone rummages through a museum's collection:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31521719
“Hi, would you like to come and dig through the collection that is your specialty at the British Museum? We can pay you *some* money to help catalogue it. Oh and we will sponsor any papers you happen to write as a result.”
I know he’s a divisive figure, but a genuine well done to Boris Johnson on his efforts in Ukraine.
Many other leaders in Europe took much longer to fully understand the situation, and in the US the issue of support has become very political in the run up to the election.
Having just been there, the Ukranians are big fans of the British and of Johnson.
Not being prepared for that offer, he winced. Which I think was the right thing to do.
The scandelous behaviour at the British Museum is repeated time and time again right across the country. Moat museums have only the vaguest idea of what they have in storage. They have neither the time nor the money to properly catalogue collections and as organisations (rather than individuals) they have little interest in ensuring the artefacts are kept safe and secure.
When a local museum was being refurbished a decade ago they simply skipped a large part of their stored collections because they no longer fitted with the new ethos.
I would always encourage people to report finds via the local FLO but don't let the museum get their hands on the stuff.
Our tree isn't producing much of a crop this year, so we'll be takers rather than givers this time round.
Plenty of blackberries to be harvested too.
I recently went to the National Railway Museum in York and requested to view a number of steam locomotive drawings which interested me, dating from between 1850 and 1875. They allowed me, after signing a disclaimer that my visit was non-commercial, to handle and photograph the original, fragile, linencloth drawings, one of which has turned out to be a very interesting "missing link" in the development of a particular locomotive builder's products.
For general advancement of human knowledge, my discovery wasn't particularly significant, but to a few of us who are interested in that particular period and area of railway development it's answered a lot of questions and pretty much proven at least one commonly believed minor historical 'fact' wrong.
I suspect that I was probably the first person to request some of that batch of drawings since they were donated to the science museum in the 1960s, and the only other person to so much as glance at them since then was whoever was tasked with cataloguing the archive and placing it into plastic sleeves to stop the drawings disintegrating further.
Obviously I'm incredibly grateful that the NRM has stored and indexed that collection - I don't know what my day out cost them (probably hundreds if not thousands if you add up the storage costs alone, never mind the staff who got out and returned the drawings on the day, and kept half an eye on my activities), but they didn't charge me a penny.
If they were to put that collection on Ebay it would almost certainly realise many thousands of pounds - I'd cheerfully pay £500+ for an original drawing I wasn't particularly interested in just as wall art (they are stunningly detailed hand draw engineering drawings, beautifully shaded in colour), and also save a fortune in ongoing costs, but a little of the richness of human knowledge would be lost forever - once a collection like that is broken up, you'll never put it back together.
Even so things go missing - one of the drawings (of something more well known and popular than most of the ones I requested) I asked for the NRM couldn't find in the archive. I know it used to exist, it's still in the catalogue, and there is a low resolution version photo of it out in the wild on the internet. I suspect someone "borrowed it" to create a copy and it's never been returned.
That said, for all the harsh things that one can say about the NRM, they go out of their way to make their stored collection material accessible to ordinary mortals with an interest.
I've dealt with other collections of railway drawings, trying to trace drawings for steam locomotives which still exist on behalf of the owners so we can effect repairs, and blood out of a stone isn't in it. In those cases they might as well ebay the lot for all the good it is doing anyone (although one always hopes that these sort of collections will one day get passed over complete to people who are more helpful).
The BBC weather site says London will have a dry Monday with possible showers in the evening.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather
I am thinking of applying to become a trustee and director of a charity myself, actually.
Absolutely nothing wrong with it to my knowledge but, strangely, my first thought was that she'd be the first person I'd call for advice if I heard about any allegation of malpractice or wrongdoing, and my second was about how I'd convince my fellow directors to act (my default assumption being they'd be terrified of the embarrassment and reputational damage it might cause, be inclined to dismiss it, and would probably bracket me as a troublemaker/gullible and not a team player).
In short, I'm not sure this is a bad apples thing: I think most organisations and institutions are just culturally wired like this with human nature being what it is on top.
How many of those who go into managerial or trustee roles with large 3rd sector organisations, see their primary tank as being custodians of this famous institution, and therefore when a problem occurs their first reaction is to think of whatever best preserves the reputation of the organisation, rather than what’s actually the right thing to do in the circumstances?
BorthwickOut.
Bad news: they’re in the hands of Russian investogators, who are probably going to have to stay away from windows if their report tells the truth about the accident.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/26/yevgeny-prigozhin-jet-black-box-recovered-as-dna-testing-be/
God Bless Fiji.
You wouldn't want to overegg it though. This was hardly comparable to Churchill warning about Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
But Johnson also lied and partied through lockdown and brought disgrace to the office and ruined this country.
So I am not going to say he's a good PM just yet. Still the worst in history by my count.
PS: puzzled by the expression "trustee and director". Aren't those roles kept separate? [PS Not asking personally or about the specific case - just the general point.]
I first went to Warsaw in 1995 when there was still, sadly, some child begging on the old trams, potholes in the motorways, and everyone drove ladas and volgas. The food was limited, spartan and unappetising, and the zloty had just been revalued dropping four zeros. Another of my memories was men wearing strong perfume, where it was clear that's what they did in lieu of regular washing. And I can't recall a single skyscraper, just a few cheapish office blocks starting to go up.
All that's changed. Look at it now.
Worst in UK History? Hmmmm.....Lord North usually gets the nod, but Boris definitely runs him close.
For some species it's been a win/win, for example, apple trees. For others, for example chickens, less so. According to a quick search, there are more than 34 billion chickens in the world, but not all of them live happy lives. (In recent years I have come to believe we should treat chickens better, though I know that will increase the costs of the eggs and chicken meat I consume.)
"The Director resigns, apologises for his accusation against the dealer and withdraws it."
All too often, whistleblowers, or even people just trying to be helpful, get it in the neck from much more powerful people and/or organisations who are trying to protect their reputations.
But at least he resigned and apologised. That makes him better than many other managers in a similar situation - see other Cyclefree threaders passim.
(The situation was probably not helped by the way art and antiquities dealers are often viewed by institutions. The Lovejoy tendency is sadly common in the multi-billion dollar art and antiquities market. But when someone in that market actually tells you that you have a problem, you should listen. White hats exist.)
The other day you asked me when if we followed my policy of construction we could expect new cycling paths, would it be after a decade, and I said immediately - you never responded so not sure if you saw that. You also agreed that if the UK caught up with the Netherlands for road density it would represent 90,000 extra miles of roads and asked if we did that how much cycling infrastructure I would expect with that - to which I said about 180,000 miles of segregated cycling paths.
Besides motorways, all new roads as standard should come with safe, segregated, cycling paths. And building new roads to relieve traffic on old ones allows them to be converted to LTNs or have cycling added to them once the road's throughput is relieved so it can be narrowed to cars and give land space over to bikes once relieved.
How many miles of cycle paths do we have in the UK today? Do you think if we followed my plan and added ~180k miles of dedicated cycle paths thanks to new road construction, then do you feel that would be better for cycling or not in this country?
Its not reinventing the bicycle wheel - its what the Dutch have done for decades.
But how do you compare it with Blair's disastrous decision over the Iraq War? We are still seeing the consequences of that today, and it was a totally unforced error.