The recent spate of incredibly lunatic actions from local authorities sent me off meandering down memory lane. I was elected to Lancaster City Council in May 1999, when plans for warding off the civilisation ending 'millenium bug' were in full swing. For my sins I was on the Audit and Support Services committee, which I was soon to chair.
At one of our first meetings the CEO was rambling on and on and on. To relieve the sheer tedium a colleague came out with a flippant remark which got us tittering like naughty schoolboys, you know the situation I am sure. We were duly rebuked for not taking the 'millenium bug' seriously.
The CEO then announced that the council wished to spend £30,000 issuing booklets to every household containing emergency telephone numbers should the worst happen. I questioned the wisdom of this as the numbers were already in local telephone directories. This sent the CEO into a frenzy about our group not taking the matter seriously culminating in the statement that: "The whole telcommunications system could possibly crash at midnight on the millenium!"
The irony was obviously too subtle, he never did see it.
2 comments:
Tee hee. But we never found out what would have happened if we hadn't spent all that money on people reprogramming stuff. Was it a giant hoax by the IT contractors, or was there something in it?
I suspect some IT johnny got the collywobbles and others saw a golden opportunity to cash in.Countries like Italy, I believe, spent zero and didn't implode.
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