back to article Blighty's Department for Culture, Media & Sport gets 'digital' rebrand

The Ministry of Fun - aka the UK government's Department formerly known as Culture, Media & Sport - has received a "digital" rebrand today, making it DDCMS for short. As with job titles, The Register has a theory that the more words required to describe what a department does, the less meaningful it actually is. Contrast, for …

  1. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Headmaster

    Well, I'm still not much the wiser

    Is it Digital Department for Culture, Media, and Sport or is it the Department of Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport?

    And if it's the second, shouldn't it be Department of Digits, Culture, Media, and Sport seeing as 'digital' is an adjective?

    1. Allonymous Coward

      Re: Well, I'm still not much the wiser

      > 'digital' is an adjective

      Not in UK.Gov it's not...

    2. find users who cut cat tail

      Re: Well, I'm still not much the wiser

      It is probably just a single Digit anyway. And it is not a thumb up...

    3. John 110
      Joke

      Re: Well, I'm still not much the wiser

      According to this Twitter thingy (https://twitter.com/i/moments/881841500618977280), it's the Department of Digital, Culture Media, and Sport.

      In a previous life, I was a Virologist. I used Culture media extensively, but as the world turned and we no longer kill monkeys for their kidneys, culture media doesn't take up huge amounts of space in Virology labs' coldrooms.

      It makes perfect sense that a new Government department should be created for this obsolescent technology...

  2. djstardust

    Just like in business .....

    Rebranding is a way of covering up a bad past and hoping punters think you are a new company

    DHL > Home Delivery Network > Yodel

    Currys > Dixons > Currys Digital > PC World > Dixons Travel > Whatever ......

    Travel and holiday companies do it too.

    Maybe WH Shit, Boots and Marks & Spencer and "British" Airways should try it as well.

    Lipstick on a pig. Simple as that.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Just like in business .....

      I like your thinking, may I suggest the Ministry of Windscale?

  3. Redstone
    Happy

    Thank God it' now Digital...

    ..the analogue department was rubbish.

    1. EnviableOne

      Re: Thank God it' now Digital...

      give it 10 years and it will become the Dept. of Cyber, Culture, Media & Sport

  4. Peter Prof Fox

    Challenge

    How do you make a complaint about them not replying to your emails?

    Phone and ask for the complaints department? Nope. Absolutely not.

    Try it yourself.

    1. Steve Goodey

      Re: Challenge

      "How do you make a complaint about them not replying to your emails?"

      You just make a complaint about them not replying to your emails

      As per Wittertainment.

  5. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It is the first time I've heard gambling described as "innovative financing to create an inclusive economy". I suppose what they mean is that it brings the poor gambling peasants into some "inclusive" arrangement with rich bookmaking companies?

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        It is the first time I've heard gambling described as "innovative financing to create an inclusive economy"

        It more or less describes the National Lottery.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Data protection?

    '"[It] is fitting now to include Digital in the name. The department has taken on significant new responsibilities in recent years, so that half of its policy and delivery work now covers the digital sectors - telecommunications, data protection, internet safety, cyber skills and parts of media and the creative industries," she said.'

    Eh?

    Data protection is overseen by the Information Commissioner who reports to the ever-Orwellian sounding Ministry of Justice.

    I wouldn't trust Bradley to competently organise an egg and spoon race for five year olds, having her overseeing GDPR is the stuff of nightmares.

    1. EnviableOne

      Re: Data protection?

      see https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/information-commissioner-s-office

      ICO is an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport.

  7. druck Silver badge
    Megaphone

    Keep it Simple

    There shouldn't be more ministries than fingers on one hand; Home, Foreign, Defence, Justice and Treasury. The rest of these long acronyms should just be a department sitting in a dusty corner of a ministry.

    1. IHateWearingATie
      Happy

      Re: Keep it Simple

      Health? Spending £50bn doesn't deserve its own department?

      Education?

      Welfare?

      Agriculture and fisheries?

      Just a few to mention that might be big enough for for their own department, and would still fit on the fingers of one hand for those MPs from Norfolk :)

  8. J P
    Headmaster

    There's more to culture than punctuation

    As I understand it, the department now considers itself responsible for "Digital, culture media & sport" (see departmental page at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-culture-media-sport - although elsewhere on gov.uk they have used more commas). Either they're now in charge of agar jelly, or they should brush up on the punctuation of lists.

    (Those who still aren't convinced of the importance of punctuation should read up on the US Oakland Dairies case, in which millions of dollars of overtime payments turn upon the use (or rather, lack of use) of an Oxford comma.)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: There's more to culture than punctuation

      i dont no why you old people keep banging on about correct spelling and punctuation it oviously dosent matter any more cos nobody has to write sentences properly or anything i mean if it mattered they woud still be teaching it in skools and they dont so it obviously dont matter no more anyway nobodys going to loose there job if they cant write or spell or put the silly dots or comas in the rite place are they.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: There's more to culture than punctuation

        "nobodys going to loose there job if they cant write or spell or put the silly dots or comas in the rite place are they"

        Do you work for the BBC News web site?

    2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Re: There's more to culture than punctuation

      Either they're now in charge of agar jelly, or they should brush up on the punctuation of lists.

      Don't be silly - do you really think that PPE degrees cover anything as mundane as grammar?

  9. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Bradley said the traditional core of DCMS remains "as important as ever" covering Arts, Culture, the Creative Industries, Sport, Tourism, Heritage, Gambling, boosted by responsibility for civil society, charities, volunteering "and innovative financing to create an inclusive economy".

    So she's not so much Minister of Fun as Lord High Everything Else.

  10. sebt
    Alien

    A-ha!!

    "and innovative financing to create an inclusive economy"

    NOW I understand. I always thought that PFI was a way to splurge taxpayers' money on incompetent monopolists, guaranteeing them returns for decades while avoiding public scrutiny.

    But I was wrong. It's "innovative financing to create an inclusive economy". And since it's in the remit of the Ministry of Fun, it must be fun as well.

    I'm all in favour of it now.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Double D CMS?

    Seriously?

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge
  12. Alister

    So... how's that digital culture working out then?

    And the digital sport? is that any good?

  13. Jonathan 27

    Should just re-brand to Department of News and Entertainment. Covers all those things and has less words.

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