Benjamin P. Taylor @antlerboy Twitter profile

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

7 years

Me on the future of #commissioning and #transformation at the Public Sector Show

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

5 months

@deltaIV9250 I like the idea of some historian jumping up and down and 'well akshually... those are anachronistic titles - 'House Washington' was at the time know as 'the Allies' and 'House Windsir' was called 'the European Economic Community''

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

10 months

@GrumplessGrinch I think about this quite frequently.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

1 year

@bmay @GaryLineker Wait - is it really that controversial to say that lawyers who break the law might be imprisoned? I'm horrified at what's happening to our country, and I understand this is another terrible party of it - but this headline of itself doesn't seem that bad?

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 months

@silvesterldn Have they discovered BACS interbank payments yet?

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

5 months

@MNateShyamalan Yesterday I uploaded an image to Gemini and said 'convert this image to text' and it said 'I don't have access to images. But from the context you've given me, the text is...' and then converted the image to text.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

10 months

@nise_yoshimi

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

5 months

@CptButton @deltaIV9250 A lot of people in this thread don't seem to get the bit at all at all...

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

10 months

@RachelReevesMP what? why? why is this a priority?

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

3 years

Oh god. I have worked in public services for 24 years. Now trying to make an enquiry for an elderly relatives. Switchboard. Option 1 - social care. Goes through to 'children and families'. Shome mishtake? Try again, no, that's right - Recorded message about recording my call...

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

3 years

@sellottie I was once cornered by an aggressive pack of stray dogs after a Big Night Out in Yerevan. After cowering and calling my wife, I began to shout 'I'm a human! You're just dogs! I'm a human!' and wave my arms. It worked. Well, long enough to run.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

10 months

@heavyweight please keep it going - it's the best

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

5 months

@yesilpelikan @deltaIV9250 Ah no, I'm sorry that theory was discredited in the 27th Century. While popular for some time, it asks us to believe the obviously counter-factual position that the Global South was once ruled from Boston Lincolnshire.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 years

OK - everyone should calm down. This isn't a government intention to spend £70bn on an unknown consultancy. But this is a slightly different type of scandal. It's a Framework Agreement - a legitimate way of setting up easier purchasing through a pre-qualified and legal contract.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

8 months

@kateferguson4

Sam Freedman

@Samfr

8 months

Bishops can't vote against the whip as they're not in any party and so are not subject to one. (Also it's the Conservative whip not the government whip - it applies to party MPs/Lords not in the government as well as ones who are).

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

1 year

I was once in Napoli and an entire nuclear family (complete with baby) on a moped had stopped in the middle of a junction to argue vociferously with a dignified old man in a micro-car.

milo edwards

@Milo_Edwards

1 year

i’m in paris and what i’ll say is you’re never prepared for quite how french the french are - no more than 5 minutes have i been sat outside this cafe eating lunch when a kind of nice-with-it 50 year old woman walking a pomeranian in a beret ambles past and says “bon appetit”

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

4 years

Gonna keep repeating this. 2020 is when the Americans learned what it's like to be occupied by the USA. And the English learned what it's like to be colonised by the English.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

1 year

@ContraPoints I recommend listening to the @verybadwizards discussion of the film - completely changed my understanding and my view.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

4 months

@crulge @CHECKYSTOMPER69 Try +("search term") (Actually just try + I've been resorted to is as 'must have' for ages in gmail and it sorta seems to work?)

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

10 months

@PolitlcsUK Well done @hammersmithandy

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

8 months

@NoContextBrits Lovely hedges.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

1 year

@SamuelWeeps Eric Williams: “British historians write almost as if Britain had introduced Negro slavery solely for the satisfaction of abolishing it.”

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

3 months

@kendrictonn

Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

1 year

I was once in Napoli and an entire nuclear family (complete with baby) on a moped had stopped in the middle of a junction to argue vociferously with a dignified old man in a micro-car.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 years

Are there podcasts from other countries which have the intellectual depth, range, interest, and fun of @amitvarma 's the seen and the unseen?

Amit Varma

@amitvarma

2 years

Vast expanses of time lie ahead of you on this torrid weekend. What is one to do? Fill it with the insights of @MukulikaB : This was such a rich, thought-provoking conversation for me. TIL, again & again & again.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

9 months

@londonette I appreciate the fact that he's actually on his phone rather than using the mac...

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 months

@bebee02855324 @royalist9112 @echetus Yes Yugoslavia was famous for its immigration.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

1 year

@sonsofgeorge3 @skooookum I was in the back of a friend’s car driving out of Yerevan, Armenia to their little Dacha. His father-in-law, driving, asked him about my wife. There was a few moments of confused Armenian. 'He says, if you are married to a Serbian woman, you will know the darkness and the light'

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

1 year

@Samfr Need to start talking now about needing a generation to to sort things out. Could be quite a unifying and inspiring message, if done right. No sign that they have a communicator with that capability, mind you...

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

3 years

That feeling when... you look in the Invitation To Tender document metadata... and find it was authored and last edited by two people at a competitor consultancy...

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

11 months

@soundrotator I say go for it - if you're thinking about turning 30, it's probably a good sign you're ready.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

4 years

Was going to tell a public service consulting joke, but it was awarded without competition to one of the big firms.

Janet Hughes

@JanetHughes

4 years

I had another civil service joke but it got tied up in governance and I lost the will to tell it

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

6 months

@nominalthoughts Enormous respect. Who doesn't??

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 years

Swedish Researchers Have Developed The First Female Crash Dummy, First Tests Reveal Significant Differences Between The Sexes

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

7 years

It’s been 20 years since John Perry Barlow declared cyberspace independence

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

5 months

@LeakyLandy @HeleneBismarck Those went out of service at least... ten years ago?

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

6 years

as a systems thinker...

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

4 years

I'm increasingly thinking that the sudden, enforced lurch to 'working at home' told us a lot about the agility and adaptability of *people*, very little about the agility of *organisations*

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

4 years

Remarkable Advice from Kevin Kelly

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

3 years

@Dominic2306 @DavidGHFrost It's the fact that he didn't. Actually. Achieve. Anything.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

5 months

@Elijah1917_2 @deltaIV9250 No, no - the EEC was the cause of the war, when the Archduke Chirac was assassinated by Slovenian separatists.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

1 year

@JoelRessell @ContraPoints @verybadwizards Eh... I guess - but isn't it better if a film can be seen one way and, with just a twist of thinking, mean *a completely different thing*? And even better if it can mean four or five completely different things?

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 months

@ovchinnikov @crankynotions It's true, there's never been a civil war in a monoethnic state.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 years

@BogusThought @redesign @elonmusk And also

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

6 months

@butleriano It's Norwich

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

4 years

Our Parliament is a Dead Parrot. Write now and ask your MPs what they are being paid for, since they are not doing their jobs - Mail Online - Peter Hitchens blog

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

1 year

@geofftech It still works perfectly well, but the SMS service, which was even better, was discontinued.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 years

What's dodgy about this is: - was the original competition actually visible to the market or a stitch-up? - are the sub-procurements under the framework being done legitimately? Who decides which suppliers even see each opportunity? Who decides which supplier wins?

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

3 months

@mott_73 From Blueksy

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

1 year

@eigenrobot

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 years

Sorry this was so long and obscure, it is complex but I've not had a coffee yet...

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

7 months

@IntractableLion Also the so-called 'tart' end - these days - is not tart *at all* - these are mostly all crap mass-produced variants which make me despair when the so-called 'choice' of six types in the supermarket all have the same flavour, sweetness, and texture - all bland.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

3 years

The system is in the eye of the beholder

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

7 years

Dancing can reverse the signs of aging in the brain

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 years

Tender requiring innovation where the scoring is: 50% price 30% experience 10% plan 10% approach I say again: 50% price. 10% how you'd actually approach the situation. :-(

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

4 years

“There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion.” - Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 years

@__justplaying You know there's a whole sort of 'sovereign citizen' sub-genre on the internet TV licenses, right? Except, weirdly, they're right, I think. e.g. no right of entry, dubious right to fine, detector vans are empty propaganda, it's mainly Capita that makes money on enfocrement

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

1 year

David Chapman

@Meaningness

1 year

Metaphysics makes you stupid and miserable. Escape into the concrete using a tree identification guide.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

3 years

@RexChapman

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

5 months

@BumpiePickle @deltaIV9250 You can say that but you will have to pay attention to the historical facts sooner or later!

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

4 months

@HeleneBismarck yep. It has a lot of heart, is extremely professionally done-and flawlessly pretends it isn't, good entertainment and very much doing the job of The Archers in 'educating' on farming. Also impeccably progressive messages, to be fair. Your choice if you hate Clarkson's buffoonery!

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

3 years

This actually makes me weepy. Systems leadership, systems convening, place-based working, whole system, systems change, complexity in public services, methods, model. Yeah, na. That ain't it, chief. This is worse than the mystery shopping I did in 2003.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

1 year

@IanDunt

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 years

@Moctezuma_III @codexeditor I have questions. Not least because evry fule know Jesus Christ is Serbian.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

6 years

The @jomillerdonny Uncertainty Matrix #solacesummit18

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 years

What kind of a person puts a tender deadline at 9am Monday?

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

4 years

WHY is Microsoft Teams so bad? why why why why why why?

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

5 years

If you find yourself in despair right now, my advice is to dive into a group working to make things better, or, better, working to make themselves better. I'm blessed that I spent last night with such a group and virtual time with three such groups this morning already. It helps!

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

4 years

@danbloom1 ‘Some [Covid contracts] have gone to firms which campaigners say have little experience in the field’? Did that statement really need qualification?

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

5 years

wow - @ManCityCouncil , I'm deeply impressed Sent email 11:50 asking if there was a register of potentially vulnerable for an elderly family member. At 11:54 I was called by a brilliantly reassuring, professional, human person - reassuring, informative and practical. #localgov

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

1 year

@brianluidog

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

1 year

@Aintropy @Noahpinion This is the correct response.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

7 years

I'm listening to a guy doing a facebook live broadcast from #kodiak about the possible #tsunami and he has the local radio on and a caller is discussing the guy doing the facebook live podcast and now I'm tweeting about it...

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 years

So what happens then is: - obscure public body advertises a weird sole supplier framework - only one company sees it, and bids - amazing really, cos they suggested it in the first place

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

11 months

@ArthurCDent Wait till he finds out about Intensive Care! :-o

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

4 years

Ooh. I'm about to have a fiction short story published in an anthology. Just a runner-up but very chuffed. More details to follow because I know you'll all want a copy :-D

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

1 year

@TaylorShone @SamuelWeeps Who did we pay, Mo?

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

10 months

@AliPlumb Breakfast in American homes

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

5 years

So if you are serious about transformation my advice is to rip up all those wordy strategies that hardly anyone even reads. They just don't work. Get out there and start leading change with communities. #stateoftransformation

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

3 years

We need Tony Benn's 'five questions for people in power' at least as much as ever: What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you?’ #Governance

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

4 years

I don't think I've ever seen anything like this.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 years

Urgh - my facebook has been hacked. Or banned, or blocked, or - who knows? I've sent Facebook all my ID now, great! Now I await decisions... very mysterious....

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 months

@giulio_mattioli Vesna Goldsworthy in 'Inventing Ruritania' makes the case that the wild, untamed, atavistic, uncivilised 'East' is always... a couple of countries or about 600 miles East of your home.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

4 years

@helenbevan @HarvardHBS Helen, you might like this:

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

3 years

If anything ever tips me over the edge, it will be UK public sector procurement portals.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

5 months

I'm not much for conspiracy theories - but the depth, rigour and insight here is worthy of your time.

Bill Moon

@BigBillMoon

5 months

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY PROTESTS: A THREAD ON WHO IS DIRECTING THEM As you've seen, there have been many protests on US universities over the past few weeks. Take a good look at this image. Who organises and funds these groups will both shock and surprise you. 1/24

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

1 year

@bmay @GaryLineker If we're going to fix this broken country, we're going to have to be sophisticated enough to hold two different aspects of reality in our heads - and the public debate - at the same time... - the right to asylum is an old, fundamental, critical, international human right...

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 years

What *could* be done is informal action to clamp down on obscure organisations letting single-supplier frameworks that are valid across the whole public sector, and receive only one bid. I wonder how many bids there were for this framework?

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 years

- a HUUUGE rise in obscure public sector organisations ('institutional clutter') mysteriously awarding these 'sole provider frameworks' which we haven't even seen the procurement advert for... (And my company, I'm told, is among the top ten subscribers to UK tender alerts)

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

1 year

@schisam @IntuitMachine

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 years

The latest antlerboy / RedQuadrant recommended! Thanks to @joannepetersco1 @Frances_Coppola @BaddCompani

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

3 years

@tommixhelsinki @daridrea

ClearURLs - Chrome Web Store

Remove tracking elements from URLs.

chromewebstore.google.com

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

7 months

@WorldFamousHot1 @GreggAWallace I think he means 'fully laminated' for shower reading.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

1 year

@tomlukejohnson To be clear, given this has roughly 500 times the views of of my normal tweets, I have a feeling *someone* did, but this was just a question to Tom (who is probably busy dealing with the responses on... nearly a MILLION views?!)

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

6 years

Nine reasons why targets make performance worse

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

4 years

"The world is nonlinear. Trying to make it linear for our...convenience is not usually a good...Boundaries are problem-dependent, evanescent, and messy...Being less surprised by complex systems is mainly a matter of learning to expect, appreciate, and use the world’s complexity."

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

6 years

I'm deeply deeply disappointed that the tendering conditions for CCS Management Consultancy Framework 2 explicitly exclude all but the *biggest* existing consultancies. Government is perpetuating the no-SME closed shop and it is anti-competitive and counter-productive :-(

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 years

But there's very little scrutiny or public right to information about what happens below the initial contract let, and I've heard tell of this kind of framework in construction where the supplier charges companies to be on the framework (which I think is illegal).

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

8 years

UK citizens will get individual opt-in to remain EU citizens, chief negotiator Guy Verhofstadt confirms :-)

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 years

@CaileanSteed @MelanieShSm @MyGeekBlasphemy Spoiler alert.... It's the dead fetus that became the titular spirit, now kept in embalming fluid in the study of the father... yup.

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Benjamin P. Taylor

@antlerboy

2 years

2- would they meet the normal tests of good, fair, competitive procurement? (Not open to scrutiny and not even in question, really, since only the letting and operation of the main contract falls under procurement law)

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