h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In a situation like that BB, I'd forward his email to you to everyone, along with forwarding the original one you sent him.
What he's doing is actually a very bad thing.

I'd also make sure that at the next meeting, agreeing the previous minutes is on the agenda, and I'd make sure not to allow them through.

Or you could do that old chestnut. At the next meeting, make some snide, but fairly loud comment to someone about the Chairman, e.g. "The chairman's a complete *******". When they announce haughtily, 'Address your comments through the Chair!", get up, then crouch down and say through the gap in the back of the seat "You're a complete *******!"

I think I made myself rather unpopular on one committee as the agenda item minutes of the last meeting was obviously supposed to go through without comment. I often queried lots of points, so that eventually they sent the minutes to me for comment before they were published to everyone else...

It's a tricky issue. I'm currently chair of another group & get the mins sent to me first. I feel if there are factual errors, it's my fault for not making points clear at the meeting.

Leads to the PH of when we get to that agenda item, everyone looks at their copy of mins as though they haven't read them before - I only give them a few seconds to speak up re corrections before I sign them.

Normally you're right – people don't bother reading the minutes, however when one of the subjects discussed is the possibility of redundancies, everyone tends to take a bit more notice...

I've spoken to a few people about it, and it seems that while a few are outraged on my behalf, most people seem to think that as the minutes were rewritten by the Chair, the Chair has the right to rewrite the minutes so that they say what she wants them to say, rather than be a true and accurate reflection of the meeting.

Oh well, as Sir Humphrey said, 'It is characteristic of all committee discussions and decisions that every member has a vivid recollection of them and that every member’s recollection of them differs violently from every other member’s recollection. Consequently, we accept the convention that the official decisions are those and only those which have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, from which it emerges with an elegant inevitability that any decision which has been officially reached will have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials and any decision which is not recorded in the minutes has not been officially reached even if one or more members believe they can recollect it, so in this particular case, if the decision had been officially reached it would have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, and it isn’t so it wasn’t.'

Still annoyed, though I don't want to rock the boat at the moment. We're in 'keep quiet and try not to be too noticed' mode at the moment.

<BB<

Meetings of meetings are a legal record. No-one has the right to rewrite them.

If it all goes titsup, the minute taker will get the initial blame.

Always keep your eyes out for the Committee Hacks.

A1165475

What's worse is when a sub group does something different that they thought was better, despite what was minuted.

That is more than a Petty Hate, <BB< - I feel the . Sho's suggestion of e-mails is a good one, so you can point to the original version in case of any problems...

My first experience of minute taking made me 'laugh' as the group leader liked to make wild promises verbally, but when it came to the minutes he would quietly change all the timescales to "soon" or "in due course" rather than the actual dates that he had specified (he obviously didn't like the whooshing sound of deadlines going past...).

"I feel if there are factual errors, it's my fault for not making points clear at the meeting. "

Very good point. It is an interesting personality trait if a person rewrites minutes to record what they should have said rather than what they actually said because they think it is the minute taker's fault for not understanding what they *meant* to say, whereas Chair and minute taker should work together, really - the best committee I took notes for wanted rough summaries of general discussion, which were quite hard to record, but it didn't matter too much as the Chair made the action points very clear, and they were the main thing

I worry that I'm a committee hack, but I think Brownian Motion is the more likely explanation...

PHoTD: The new Name/Settings/Sign in (or Out) area at the top of the page. It looks a tad clumsy, and would probably be better if it was arranged horizontally.

Oh, is that new? I thought it was a glitch - several times recently my page has loaded with me signed out, but another time it's OK.

I also think it might be a glitch - for the last few days the bar at the top didn't look quite right in Brunel (sort of truncated) and now it has truncated so much it's gone vertical

I look forward to getting the proper Pliny Front Page back, too...

I've seen this before, and often (if I'm seeing what you're seeing). It is a common issue in Ripley (Brunel). It usually goes away, maybe when the servers update or reset.

I thought that was because I've just loaded 2 years worth of windows updates on my computer in an effort to fix a problem recognising my new sat nav! If it's not just me, it might go away, yay! Looks horrible in Goo.

Since I'm in petty hates, though, here's one for today. Estate agents using the phrase "The property comprises of..." in their write-up. "Comprises" means "consists of" so what they're really saying is "The property consists of of..." I understand there's the argument that language evolves and all that, but really I do think professionals should be getting their words correct.

That's just a niggle, though, unlike that other common use of "of" (should of, would of, could of )

Deb

I was wondering what you were on about for a while there, but I use Pliny

Yes it's a definite bug - looks fine in my tablet computer's browser, but not in Firefox.

I agree with your petty hate, deb - always niggles me when I see it. "is comprised of" would also be acceptable, but no, they only want to use exactly two words to say what they think they mean...

I've also seen the phrase "a system of nomenclature" recently - a system of a system of naming things Professionals should try to keep their language plain, I think. Not necessarily easier to write plain English, as you still have to be careful to choose the right words, but definitely easier to read when it's finished...

I was going to say I couldn't see anything unusual, but opening this window to post, I can now see it. I thought it would sort itself out in a few seconds, but it seems permanent. Why can I only see "Sign out" if I'm actually on a page to write post, but not when I'm just reading a conversation or an entry?

I found out what causes it - the top bar contains images that aren't secure, so some browsers won't load them with the https.

You're a genius Sasha, ty

So... maybe it does have something to do with that warning I've been getting on these pages from Chrome informing me that these pages are trying to load scripts from unauthenticated sources.

This could be a serious security issue that's being overlooked.