5 ms·

I worked as a technician for GCHQ twenty years ago and heard some good stories in the London Office at Palmer Street (loose lips guys!) it was so obvious that w

by boznz 9y ago

I worked as a technician for GCHQ twenty years ago and heard some good stories in the London Office at Palmer Street (loose lips guys!) it was so obvious that wearing the right tie or being a Freemason would get you further than any degree in this circle. But lets face it, it's the same at the top levels of all civil service they are all really just job clubs for people with Latin and History degrees.

Declanomous 9y ago
As much crap as people give the civil servants in the US, I feel like our government does a pretty reasonable job at finding competent employees. I'm from Chicago, so I definitely know how false that statement can be, but most other places in the world seem a lot more about who your parents were and who you know. I mean, the social stratification of the public/private school thing is somewhat baffling to me, as someone who attended school in one of the best community-run school districts in the US.
- jimnotgym 9y ago
  In Britain we have state schools, private schools and most expensive of all the old 'public schools', with a name almost designed to confuse. Most of them are ancient, and look a bit like Hogwarts. The real power of the schools is the 'old boys network'. When you need help getting into university, or beginning a career, there will be an old boy of your school you can write to for help. It seems daft in 2017, but ex public school boys still seem to dominate public life. What still surprises me is the willingness of brits to 'doff their caps' at them like they are still Lord of the manor. I see it daily where there is still a feeling that they are somehow better, because they had an expensive education. This is one of the huge things that holds Britain back. So many 'businessmen' in the UK were in fact set up in business by their father, or family. They then run their business with a sense of entitlement, and not a hint of maybe sharing equity with founders. Private Equity is dominated in the same way. If you want to meet a VC in Britain, you would do much better if you had the right old school tie. Access to capital for ordinary people with a good idea seems impossible, unless it is via some kind of research funding. It is the same thing that makes UK business so male dominated. It will carry on too, until Brits stop believing in the Downton Abbey model of British identity. I thought the article was really good too. Thanks for sharing
  - jrs95 9y ago
    While there's a lot wrong with that, replacing it with the hysterical corporate politics of the U.S. wouldn't make for much of an improvement imo
  - gerdesj 9y ago
    Anecdote != data, mate. Counter examples: I went to Abingdon School which is in the town called Abingdon (Oxfordshire). Before that I went to a school called Wolborough Hill School which was perched on top of Wolborough Hill, in Newton Abbot, Devon. Both are (were in the case of Wolborough which passed away some time ago) fee-paying schools. My dad was a soldier (as was my mum but she was told to leave on marrying dad - things were different back then). Me and my brother went through five schools/kindergartens by the age of 10 (three in West Germany, one in Manc (MCR)). By that age we were pretty good at looking under cars for devices because dad was an ATO and taught us - a handy skill for a family going to a restaurant or whatever: you never knew when you car was going to explode. Dad didn't hand over the family business to me and my brother because the RAOC (Rag And Oil Company) is now part of another org these days - RLC (Really Large Corps) and besides I'm a nerd and a sysadmin and my brother is loosely HR. We are both grateful for the start in life that both he and mum and a contribution that the army gave us in life - whether it made us better or worse people is debatable. We had less schools is definite. OK, my job title is MD these days but you doff your hat and I'll kick you in the nuts (and take you out for a beer until the swelling subsides.) Cheers Jon PS You failed to initial capitalise "Brit" - I am better than you 8)
    - confounded 9y ago
      Triggered, much? I've never met a public school boy that didn't have an "excuse" along these lines, and a mockney accent to "mate" and "cheers" me with. I always find this response baffling. About 6% go though private schools in the U.K. You serve a role. All the MDs I worked under in London were also public school boys. No-one who didn't go will find your exceptionalism interesting. We will all listen to your story and "mate" you back while cringing inside. Just accept your privilege, and own it (it's worth quite a lot).
    - deleted 9y ago
- adfkhjhdsf 9y ago
  Oh come off it. Most of the world is this way; if not who you know, it's often just plain old bribes.
Declanomous 9y ago
As much crap as people give the civil servants in the US, I feel like our government does a pretty reasonable job at finding competent employees. I'm from Chicago, so I definitely know how false that statement can be, but most other places in the world seem a lot more about who your parents were and who you know. I mean, the social stratification of the public/private school thing is somewhat baffling to me, as someone who attended school in one of the best community-run school districts in the US.
rl3 9y ago
>... or being a Freemason would get you further than any degree in this circle. That's rather disturbing. This is why storing everything on everyone is a terrible idea. Insiders with loyalties that may lie with a particular Old Boys' club, with access to the most intimate details of people's lives. Strict rules with regard to access control are meaningless if the people abusing the system are either sufficiently high-level or are able to use side channels.
- kwhitefoot 9y ago
  > This is why storing everything on everyone is a terrible idea. Perhaps we need to embrace the Panopticon instead of resisting it. Really store everything on everyone and make it _available_ to _everyone_ instead of the privileged few. Make only one rule on access control: it is forbidden to refuse access. Edit: on -> one
  - Sunset 9y ago
    If we ever come to live in such a dystopian society I'm going to use our new found peeping power to mark political enemies and remove them all in a night of the long knives stile ordeal then overthrow the government and burn everything to the ground.
    - AimHere 9y ago
      But the panopticon also stares right back at you. Your political enemies can also use it to google you up, find what you're up to, and night-of-the-long-knives you first. You've already blown it by writing this post, so it's on Your Permanent Record For All To See. Once the panopticon's switched on, YOUR first priority, Sunset, is to make sure you don't have any enemies who care enough to check out your posting history, because once they hit this post, you're toast. Concentrate on being super-nice to everyone you meet for the rest of your life. See how this works? You're already out of the running as Evil Dictator Overlord. This everyone-sees-everything society is starting to look a bit less dystopian than it first appears!
      - 9y ago
crdb 9y ago
I immediately thought of Peter Wright's bio [1]: > The Registry employed enormous numbers of girls to maintain efficient delivery of files within the building, as well as the massive task of sorting, checking, and filing the incoming material. In Kell's day the Registry Queens, as they were known, were recruited either from the aristocracy or from the families of MI5 officers. Kell had a simple belief that this was the best vetting of all. [...] > By the early 1970s the staffing of the Registry had become a major problem for MI5. There were more than three hundred girls employed and with the surge of file collection at that time the pressure for more recruits was never-ending. Openly advertising was considered impossible. Yet it was becoming very difficult to recruit this number of girls, let alone vet them properly. In at least one case, the Communist Party managed to infiltrate a girl into the Registry, but she was soon discovered and quietly sacked. This problem, rather than dissatisfaction with the increasingly antiquated filing system itself, finally pushed MI5, belatedly, into accepting a computerized [sic] Registry. As the quote hints, large landholdings and a family with long standing ties to the country (i.e. old money) are great ways to ensure loyalty, both emotional and financial, and loyalty is much more precious than ability in intelligence work. The Cambridge Five were a very public (and rare, if costly) failure of this system, and Yuri Modin (their handler) claims [2] that the tension between the middle class, Scottish-accented John Cairncross and his upper class colleagues was part of what pushed him over. The British merchant banks' eventual deaths at the hands of meritocratic American ones is strong evidence that this is not a good system in areas where ability is more valuable than trust. [1] Peter Wright, Spycatcher - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spycatcher-Candid-Autobiography-Intelligence-Officer/dp/0670820555 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spycatcher-Candid-Autobiography-Int... [2] Yuri Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Five-Cambridge-Friends-Cairncross-Controller/dp/0374216983/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Five-Cambridge-Friends-Cairncross-C... - Modin died a hero in Moscow after a prestigious career including heading the KGB's Active Measures department, so it could be mostly disinformation, but his observations on human character are still great.
- branchless 9y ago
  Another example: Cameron. Led us into Brexit due to a massive miscalculation. Not a capable man but the Brits insist on picking leaders from a few thousand upper-class twits. His Chancellor and Eton chum was also a disaster.
adfkhjhdsf 9y ago
Sir Humphrey ?

by boznz 9y ago

Declanomous 9y ago

As much crap as people give the civil servants in the US, I feel like our government does a pretty reasonable job at finding competent employees. I'm from Chicago, so I definitely know how false that statement can be, but most other places in the world seem a lot more about who your parents were and who you know. I mean, the social stratification of the public/private school thing is somewhat baffling to me, as someone who attended school in one of the best community-run school districts in the US.

jimnotgym 9y ago
In Britain we have state schools, private schools and most expensive of all the old 'public schools', with a name almost designed to confuse. Most of them are ancient, and look a bit like Hogwarts. The real power of the schools is the 'old boys network'. When you need help getting into university, or beginning a career, there will be an old boy of your school you can write to for help. It seems daft in 2017, but ex public school boys still seem to dominate public life. What still surprises me is the willingness of brits to 'doff their caps' at them like they are still Lord of the manor. I see it daily where there is still a feeling that they are somehow better, because they had an expensive education. This is one of the huge things that holds Britain back. So many 'businessmen' in the UK were in fact set up in business by their father, or family. They then run their business with a sense of entitlement, and not a hint of maybe sharing equity with founders. Private Equity is dominated in the same way. If you want to meet a VC in Britain, you would do much better if you had the right old school tie. Access to capital for ordinary people with a good idea seems impossible, unless it is via some kind of research funding. It is the same thing that makes UK business so male dominated. It will carry on too, until Brits stop believing in the Downton Abbey model of British identity. I thought the article was really good too. Thanks for sharing
- jrs95 9y ago
  While there's a lot wrong with that, replacing it with the hysterical corporate politics of the U.S. wouldn't make for much of an improvement imo
- gerdesj 9y ago
  Anecdote != data, mate. Counter examples: I went to Abingdon School which is in the town called Abingdon (Oxfordshire). Before that I went to a school called Wolborough Hill School which was perched on top of Wolborough Hill, in Newton Abbot, Devon. Both are (were in the case of Wolborough which passed away some time ago) fee-paying schools. My dad was a soldier (as was my mum but she was told to leave on marrying dad - things were different back then). Me and my brother went through five schools/kindergartens by the age of 10 (three in West Germany, one in Manc (MCR)). By that age we were pretty good at looking under cars for devices because dad was an ATO and taught us - a handy skill for a family going to a restaurant or whatever: you never knew when you car was going to explode. Dad didn't hand over the family business to me and my brother because the RAOC (Rag And Oil Company) is now part of another org these days - RLC (Really Large Corps) and besides I'm a nerd and a sysadmin and my brother is loosely HR. We are both grateful for the start in life that both he and mum and a contribution that the army gave us in life - whether it made us better or worse people is debatable. We had less schools is definite. OK, my job title is MD these days but you doff your hat and I'll kick you in the nuts (and take you out for a beer until the swelling subsides.) Cheers Jon PS You failed to initial capitalise "Brit" - I am better than you 8)
  - confounded 9y ago
    Triggered, much? I've never met a public school boy that didn't have an "excuse" along these lines, and a mockney accent to "mate" and "cheers" me with. I always find this response baffling. About 6% go though private schools in the U.K. You serve a role. All the MDs I worked under in London were also public school boys. No-one who didn't go will find your exceptionalism interesting. We will all listen to your story and "mate" you back while cringing inside. Just accept your privilege, and own it (it's worth quite a lot).
  - deleted 9y ago
adfkhjhdsf 9y ago
Oh come off it. Most of the world is this way; if not who you know, it's often just plain old bribes.

Declanomous 9y ago

rl3 9y ago

>... or being a Freemason would get you further than any degree in this circle. That's rather disturbing. This is why storing everything on everyone is a terrible idea. Insiders with loyalties that may lie with a particular Old Boys' club, with access to the most intimate details of people's lives. Strict rules with regard to access control are meaningless if the people abusing the system are either sufficiently high-level or are able to use side channels.

kwhitefoot 9y ago
> This is why storing everything on everyone is a terrible idea. Perhaps we need to embrace the Panopticon instead of resisting it. Really store everything on everyone and make it _available_ to _everyone_ instead of the privileged few. Make only one rule on access control: it is forbidden to refuse access. Edit: on -> one
- Sunset 9y ago
  If we ever come to live in such a dystopian society I'm going to use our new found peeping power to mark political enemies and remove them all in a night of the long knives stile ordeal then overthrow the government and burn everything to the ground.
  - AimHere 9y ago
    But the panopticon also stares right back at you. Your political enemies can also use it to google you up, find what you're up to, and night-of-the-long-knives you first. You've already blown it by writing this post, so it's on Your Permanent Record For All To See. Once the panopticon's switched on, YOUR first priority, Sunset, is to make sure you don't have any enemies who care enough to check out your posting history, because once they hit this post, you're toast. Concentrate on being super-nice to everyone you meet for the rest of your life. See how this works? You're already out of the running as Evil Dictator Overlord. This everyone-sees-everything society is starting to look a bit less dystopian than it first appears!
    - 9y ago

crdb 9y ago

I immediately thought of Peter Wright's bio [1]: > The Registry employed enormous numbers of girls to maintain efficient delivery of files within the building, as well as the massive task of sorting, checking, and filing the incoming material. In Kell's day the Registry Queens, as they were known, were recruited either from the aristocracy or from the families of MI5 officers. Kell had a simple belief that this was the best vetting of all. [...] > By the early 1970s the staffing of the Registry had become a major problem for MI5. There were more than three hundred girls employed and with the surge of file collection at that time the pressure for more recruits was never-ending. Openly advertising was considered impossible. Yet it was becoming very difficult to recruit this number of girls, let alone vet them properly. In at least one case, the Communist Party managed to infiltrate a girl into the Registry, but she was soon discovered and quietly sacked. This problem, rather than dissatisfaction with the increasingly antiquated filing system itself, finally pushed MI5, belatedly, into accepting a computerized [sic] Registry. As the quote hints, large landholdings and a family with long standing ties to the country (i.e. old money) are great ways to ensure loyalty, both emotional and financial, and loyalty is much more precious than ability in intelligence work. The Cambridge Five were a very public (and rare, if costly) failure of this system, and Yuri Modin (their handler) claims [2] that the tension between the middle class, Scottish-accented John Cairncross and his upper class colleagues was part of what pushed him over. The British merchant banks' eventual deaths at the hands of meritocratic American ones is strong evidence that this is not a good system in areas where ability is more valuable than trust. [1] Peter Wright, Spycatcher - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spycatcher-Candid-Autobiography-Intelligence-Officer/dp/0670820555 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spycatcher-Candid-Autobiography-Int... [2] Yuri Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Five-Cambridge-Friends-Cairncross-Controller/dp/0374216983/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Five-Cambridge-Friends-Cairncross-C... - Modin died a hero in Moscow after a prestigious career including heading the KGB's Active Measures department, so it could be mostly disinformation, but his observations on human character are still great.

branchless 9y ago
Another example: Cameron. Led us into Brexit due to a massive miscalculation. Not a capable man but the Brits insist on picking leaders from a few thousand upper-class twits. His Chancellor and Eton chum was also a disaster.

adfkhjhdsf 9y ago

Sir Humphrey ?