Golden Bull award winners 2018

Here’s this year’s best in terrible communication.

The following is just a sample from a 303-page document Keith Teall sent us, a Lake District National Park Authority ‘Local Plan Review’...who wants to read the whole thing?

We have produced an Options and Suggested Approach Document, which provides the options we have considered and which ones we have chosen as our preferred option, our suggested draft planning policies and our suggested draft site allocations. This is a summary version of the above document and only provides the suggested draft policies and a brief overview of the intention and main issues which have informed the policy development. In order to deliver our collective vision our strategic objectives all relate to delivery of this Vision. The strategic objectives for the Local Plan are presented as “specifically this means” and the “cross cutting objectives”. The Vision for the Lake District National Park is an expression of what sustainable development looks like in our locally distinctive context. In turn, the policies in the Local Plan will provide a spatial expression of the Vision, the focus of which is to support sustainable development, and the proposed land allocations will further that spatial expression by proactively facilitating sustainable development throughout the Lake District National Park.

Thanks to Steve Stretch for this garbled rugby report by Jonathan Twigg...

Such a magnificent occasion on Friday, a Quarter Final of the Heinekein European Cup in the depth of West Wales at Parc Y Scarlets, French giants, metaphorically and physically La Rochelle in town; reminiscent of King William in 1066, to conquer, greeted by a capacity 16,000 natives. A warm message of welcome from European Rugby’s Chairman Simon Halliday, a flying England winger from the last millennium his roots stretched with longevity to his birth place, Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire. Like King William, having conquered the struggle for La Rochelle was to consolidate their assets, something they failed to do after securing an early 7-3 lead after six minutes, through a converted try by second row Romain Sazy.

Deloitte Digital US forgot to make any sense when releasing this...whatever it is. Anyone?

Reorienting linear-thinking decision-makers toward exponential possibilities can be challenging, but it is necessary if you want to get out ahead of the curve - or even just to keep pace with technological change that shows no signs of slowing down.

AB Business Training sent us the following incomprehensible nonsense from Antonio Horta-Osorio, the Lloyds Bank Group Chief Executive...

Our differentiated, customer-focussed business model continues to deliver with our multi brand, multi channel approach, cost leadership, low risk positioning, investment capacity and execution capabilities positioning us well for sustainable success in a digital world.

An anonymous supporter sent us a dire email courtesy of East Riding of Yorkshire Council, from which here’s a sample...

Community Engagement

We will use the life-course approach across multiple domains (individual, family, street, community and environment) to better understand peoples’ motivations and attitudes. Using this approach, we hope to demonstrate what we have learned at each stage of the life cycle and therefore enable the methodology for the pilot to be replicable in other areas. We recognise that an active co-production of local solutions based on behaviour change theory needs constant engagement and refinement of innovations with local community members and therefore want the community alongside to have a strong and influential voice in developing and implementing Active Withernsea.

Here’s Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson in great form. Thanks to Steve Read.

While certain demand headwinds are transitory, and some of our cost increases are appropriate investments for the future, our recent performance does not reflect the potential of our exceptional brand and is not acceptable. We must move faster to address the more rapidly changing preferences and needs of our customers. Over the past year we have taken several actions to streamline the company, positioning us to increase our innovation agility as an organisation and enhance focus on our core value drivers which serve as the foundation to re-accelerate growth and create long-term shareholder value.

Michael Mellor sent us the following awful nonsense, courtesy of IBM.

Whilst Business War Rooms are structured by Channel and appear to be effective in triaging Business issues to enable both technical and operational defect remediation, they do not intergrate technical change, i.e. change could be made to the same architecture component by different War Rooms without a holistic assessment. The short term focus should be stability, enforced by central design authority working with the business and the IT run organization to do defect triage and determine the priority of fixes.

James Middleton read and re-read the following without success. Matthew Moore at The Times is the culprit.

BBC staff have been told to use non-binary pronouns when addressing gender-fluid or transgender employees to ensure that the corporation does not develop a ‘heteronormative culture’.

W P Reed wondered what we made of the following from the DWP. Not a clue!

The decision maker has proceeded to consider whether regulation 29 & 35 of the Employment and Support Allowance regulations apply to X and has decided that he suffers from a specific disease or bodily or mental disablement and by reason of that condition there would be substantial risk to the mental or physical health of any person if he were found not to have limited capacity for work.

The following gibberish was forwarded by Jerry Dzanc from Italy, who has asked us not to say which global telecommunications giant is responsible, since he works for them...

This project is Agile and there is no traceability matrix. The acceptance criteria can be found in the individual EPICs which are listed below for the current release development of a self-service capability which allows customers to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the Overlay capability to manage their service with much greater flexibility, and using the more advanced self-service capability to direct customers to the portal as the default way to manage their service, improving the customer experience and reducing our cost to serve.

Steve Barclay, MP for North East Cambridgeshire, was in full ‘snake-oil salesman’ mode when peddling the following meaningless drivel to promote the Prime Minister’s much-maligned Brexit deal. It means nothing, Steve, nothing. Nominated by Tom Jennings.

Under the Brexit deal, we have agreed to strike an ambitious new flexible and scalable relationship that allows us to combine resources worldwide for maximum impact.

Candice Mason couldn’t understand what Transport for London were on about. Here’s a mercifully brief sample of their letter.

T-Charge was introduced to the Congestion Charging Scheme Order on the 23 October 2017 as a confirmed amendment by the Mayor of London following a public consultation. It introduced an emissions element to the scheme that requires specific vehicles to achieve certain emissions standards for Particulate Matter (PM) and Nitrates of Oxygen (NoX). PM and NoX standards apply to compression ignition engined vehicles, normally diesel fuelled vehicles. NoX only applies to spark ignition vehicles, normally petrol fuelled vehicles. The emissions surcharge applies to most vehicles that use the charging zone, from cars to heavy goods vehicle and also extends to some tricycles and quadricycles defined within the L type definitions in the scheme order.