Woohoo - precedent !
Now everyone at Devon CC can send letters to their boss congratulating them on being an class act, missing spell class to with another C word and blame the printer.
Devon County Council techies: WE KNOW IT WASN'T YOU!
Devon County Council has pointed the finger of blame at a "new IT printing system" for a letter littered with spelling mistakes that informed a father he was being fined for taking his son out of school in term time. penalty notice from Daniel Moore - used with permission. Do not reuse without his permission The letter Daniel …
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Friday 10th August 2018 13:03 GMT Aaiieeee
At the very least the writer of the letter could have said "oops, sorry about that I was really busy and doing 2 things at once." Not only does this acknowlege the issue but sublty suggests that its actually a permissable mistake.
The fact they screwed up and then tried to blame someone else is just pathetic personal ethics.
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Friday 10th August 2018 13:54 GMT }{amis}{
I think you mean “...is modern politics.”
Modern?? you will find this kind of crap is the pages of Punch from the 1840s there is nothing new about it.
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Friday 10th August 2018 13:20 GMT Warm Braw
I'd be surprised if Mrs Dawn Stabb (who sounds like someone to avoid in the wee small hours) had actually typed the letter herself - presumably they have some boilerplate text somehwere.
In fact it looks a bit to me as if the boilerplate text was moved from their old system to the new one by OCR from a printed copy. Could explain a lot...
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Saturday 11th August 2018 18:52 GMT Celeste Reinard
You will be amazed at what OCR can do, having seen what I have seen the past ten years, besides misreading. Not only dropping text, but adding text that is not there on the page or the entire book as well. ... That being one of the reasons why I think, excuse me, know we are doomed when Artificial Idiocy will take over the planet.
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Friday 10th August 2018 14:28 GMT Craig 2
"The fact they screwed up and then tried to blame someone else is just pathetic personal ethics."
Indeed, this kind of "casual lying" is pervasive in society today. It should not be accepted, especially from official bodies such as representatives of the people since it hints at a greater general dishonesty.
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Friday 10th August 2018 16:13 GMT phuzz
Re: Spelling!
"If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written."
(and yes, it's supposed to be spelt like that)
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Friday 10th August 2018 17:25 GMT Antron Argaiv
Re: 3rd party
From the looks of it, these 3rd parties are not local operations, but have been outsourced to a country where English is not the primary language (and quality control is not a priority)
..also: lowest bidder...you get what you pay for (best case)
I had the joy of attempting to pay a medical bill online today. One pop-up window after another, and the last one had nothing at all in it! Until I switched browsers to Windows Explorer. But that was only the beginning of my troubles. The fill-in-the-payment-details dialog proceeded smoothly enough, until I was confronted by a space marked "Date". What it meant, it turns out, was credit card expiration month...but not the usual drop-down, you typed in a number, then had to click on a popup (of the same number)...sort of a truncated drop-down. The year entry was even more bizarre. Pretty much all of the Windows standard conventions for data entry and editing were violated. I'm guessing offshore code, and cheap code at that (or the owner's grandson)
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Friday 10th August 2018 19:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: 3rd party
In the last 5-6 years I have twice dealt with government websites (one local, one national), where the ONLY way to get them to work correctly was with obsolete versions of Internet Explorer.
The local government one wouldnt work with anything beyond IE6, the National one was slightly more advanced and could cope with IE 7,8, or 9.
However the latter was the biggest PITA, because it didnt fail until the VERY LAST entry in the form I was submitting, and then failed silently with no error message beyond a technical fault had occurred.
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Monday 13th August 2018 23:35 GMT Alan Brown
Re: 3rd party
" the ONLY way to get them to work correctly was with obsolete versions of Internet Explorer."
"But, but but, MS is the standard, not this new fangled w3c standards checker thing!"
I used to have a lot of fun with twats like that by invoking the blind web browser with a braille interface who now had an open and shit case for discrimination. It seldom worked in getting the twats off their high horses, but it sure as hell rattled the shit out of local government administrators who had visions of "breach
of legal duty of care" being slapped on their arses,
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Saturday 11th August 2018 04:59 GMT FuzzyWuzzys
Re: 3rd party
A story about four people named Everyone, Someone, Anyone and No-one.
There was an important job to be done and Everyone was sure that Someone would do it.
Anyone could have done it, but No-one did it.
Someone got angry about that because he thought that it was Everyone’s job.
Everyone thought that Anyone could do it, but No-one realised that Everyone wouldn’t do it.
It ended up that Everyone was angry with Someone because No-one did what Anyone could have done!
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Friday 10th August 2018 13:55 GMT Robert Carnegie
Re: Thanks, Labour
Wikipedia has incomplete records for recent Devon County Council elections, but they appear to have been Liberal Democrat after 1997 and before 2009, since when they've been Conservative. And UK.gov put the screws on state school term-time holidays in 2013 (and I'm disinclined to disapprove). So, "thanks, Labour" not so much. Good news is that there won't be any state schools left soon, and, leaving your daughter in the pub after a good lunch - presumably still fine, and by "fine" I don't mean money taken off you. Unlike Devon Conty Cuncil.
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Friday 10th August 2018 14:41 GMT Rich 11
Re: Thanks, Labour
I don't think you can blame the council for the quality of the letter, though you can certainly blame them for the piss-poor excuse. If you look closely you'll see the contact is 'within Babcock LDP', a firm of educational consultants.
On second thoughts, you can blame the council: they outsourced the enforcement of their statutory obligations to a private company who employed someone unable to use a spell checker and took a slice of taxpayers' money as private profit. It also seems to be a private company which is owned by a chain of other Babcock limited liability partnerships, possibly culminating (the chain is too tangled for me) in a Babcock Corporate Secretaries Limited which holds interests in over 200 companies in the services, aircraft and arms sectors. Sounds like a nice little earner.
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Friday 10th August 2018 18:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Thanks, Labour
It also seems to be a private company which is owned by a chain of other Babcock limited liability partnerships, possibly culminating (the chain is too tangled for me) in a Babcock Corporate Secretaries Limited
Part of Babcock International plc, formerly world renowned engineering firm Babcock & Wilcox. How the mighty are fallen. From being proper, skilled engineering types, to scabby, illiterate "support services" twats ripping off the parents of schoolkids by virtue of poorly conceived and written laws, through partnerships with the morons of local government.
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Friday 10th August 2018 15:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Thanks, Labour
Wikipedia has incomplete records for recent Devon County Council elections, but they appear to have been Liberal Democrat after 1997 and before 2009, since when they've been Conservative. And UK.gov put the screws on state school term-time holidays in 2013 (and I'm disinclined to disapprove). So, "thanks, Labour" not so much.
That's sophistry and we both know it. The political make-up of a county council has no bearing whatsoever on the hegemonetic politics of the ATL. Nice try, though.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
