Tuesday 2 August 2011

Bitch move vs shitfers

I mind finding out about the spin that was going to be spun following the takeover of a company - any redundancies would be in the hundreds was going to be the party line, except by hundreds they meant potentially 19 hundred and 99, which any normal person would call 2,000. Except thousand is a nasty word in this context whereas hundreds is much less bad. What reminded me of this deliberate spin was Barclays announcing they were going to be chopping heads again using their own fantastic obfuscation tatic.

To recap an earlier post, this involves announcing X number of planned redundancies one day and another X number of redundancies a day or two later. In 2009 this meant 2,100 followed by another 2,100 a wee bitty later.

The rationale for this is straightforward - in an age of google and lazy fact checking, chances are the two announcements will get mixed up and the total number lost sight of. And please don't think for a second the two numbers being the same was a coincidence, rather query how arbitrary the decision making was behind both totals, like were extra people made redundant to hit that magic 2,100 in one area despite the impact this would have on service quality and stress levels? Or alternatively were 200 or so lame ducks retained in the second wave, sacrificing shareholder funds in the process, to secure moderately better PR?

Anyhoo, aren't financial service sector employers cunts? This time round Barclays are talking about 1,400 followed by a further 1,400 so it could be worse I guess. And the political and public response is .................................... yeah right.

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