Stefan Czerniawski
@pubstr
Blogging less than the olden days. Still working to make public services better, now in healthcare regulation.
It's taken a while, but here we are... But more seriously, yes, crikey
That's more or less the view from my office window. The cat, sadly, does not generally appear, though I have always hoped it would.
He was the smartest person I have ever worked with and probably the hardest working too. He became expert on a whole new area of law, seemingly overnight, and navigated deep disagreements by charm and understated intellect. Fox's Glacier Mints will never have such significance again.
And for extra fun, there is a footpath which goes through the Chequers estate on the inside of the security gates. Though there more than most places, when they say stick to the path, they really mean it.
Which reminds me of this powerful recent blog post by @mastroianni.bsky.social on rules, compliance and integrity. www.experimental-history.com/p/shame-them...
The northern line is experimenting with autonomous route creation. This is a southbound train with ideas of its own. As an opening move, Borough has been relocated to the Charing Cross branch. But wait for the punchline in the final seconds.
I got to seal a document a couple of weeks ago for the first time in my life. Made turning up for work all these years suddenly seen worth it. Particularly as back in the last century I spent three years as custodian of the seal of a government department and never got to use it in anger once.
The postman delivers a single CD in a ludicrously oversized box. Which suddenly makes sense when the box is opened - a page to disc ratio of 230:1 must surely be unbeatable
Tube strike with a twist - trains, but apparently not for passengers
It is pretty obvious from the design of lasting power of attorney forms that they are set up for bulk scanning, as is entirely sensible. So to require six weeks just to open an envelope and drop the contents into a hopper is quite remarkable, and not in a wholly reassuring way.
And the B2 2W? format linked to PO boxes is clearly a common one. Just this one overlooked.
Lasting Power of Attorney is an important and sensitive government service. Once the form has been filled in, it has to be sent off - to an address in Birmingham which Royal Mail doesn't believe exists. Hardly reassuring. #FixTheForms
Completely changed, but completely unchanged too - as everywhere, history comes in layers. This was how a view you'll have seen looked in 1978, in the glorious days of the people's republic
One Login does that too. The app's only other purpose seems to be face matching. Truly we live in interesting times.
Light dawns - apparently it may be possible to share information across government. How exciting.
I have just verified my identity using my driving licence. Which has my address on it. So yes, it's fine to ignore that and ask me to enter it from scratch.
And worse still - I am going through this mad process because I need to renew my driving licence. So yes, do by all means let DVLA know that.
And it gets worse - we the government put you on notice not to trust the government. Don't blame us the government if the government messes up.
The root cause of many government problems is that the government does not exist. Sometimes the polite fiction holds up, and sometimes the seething mess is laid bare. The question of why a login service requires 1700 words of Ts&Cs we can leave for another time.
An election leaflet drops through the letterbox - one of many, this is the most intensively leafletted election I can remember. But I've never seen anything quite like this before.