Now Onward

Hi all

‘Paws4Now’ was part of Jock’s Scottie Enlightenment message. 

‘Paws4Ever’ was not.  So now it is back to a lonely keyboard.

There are no ‘big’ stories or ‘little’ stories.  They all connect.  It is the flap of that butterfly’s wing.   

Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah fly.  The refracted light from their iridescent wings shines on us all, coaches, family, athletes, organisers, volunteers, T.V. millions.  Twelve years in, the third millennium, the twenty first century has really started.  This is us; be glad; I am part of it.

There is another Jessica.  Jessica Harper, a middle-aged woman in Britain, worked in the Online Fraud Unit of Lloyds Bank.  She was paid about £70,000 a year.  She was significant but not senior.  It seems that over a period of about four years, she fraudulently obtained £2,400,000 from the bank.  That is some £12,000 each week for two hundred weeks.

It is reported that she submitted false invoices claiming, and receiving, payment to herself.  There seems to be none of the usual trail of fabricated supplier and bogus company names, just Jessica Harper.

Jessica does not seem to have been profligate or a gambler; she bought a house and helped her mother in France.  She has now lost her job, her house, her savings, and faces criminal charges.  Well done Mr Plod, case solved.

A silly, perhaps unwell, butterfly is crushed.  Jessica is no longer a part of Lloyds Bank, but others are.

Who* is the Purchasing Buyer who issued all those repeat purchase orders over four years?  Who* is the Chief Buyer who checked and signed them off?  Who* runs the Accounts Payable Section that should authorise payments only when an invoice is matched both to a valid purchase order and to an inspected proof of the receipt of the goods or services in question?  Who* is the line manager who should have been sensitive to Jessica’s troubles?  Where are the Directors*? How many main board directors* drop by the computer centre at 3.00 a.m. when the nightshift desperately tries to patch and run decrepit software code written back in the 1970’s?

“Well, this is not a senior management issue.  We at Lloyds have an HR department and computer systems that handle such routine stuff.  We have a big business to run.  But we are reviewing our back office structures and systems.”

Yes just like Lehman, Barings, Societe Generale, Knight Capital, et al. 

OK, stress tested algorithms, structures and systems are necessary and useful but they are secondary.   Committed, competent and caring people are the vital primary factor.  Yet surely workers, managers and directors are not the only people responsible?  Well, no, customers and owners have a responsibility also.

Whoops, I have an account at Lloyds Bank and, yes, now you remind me, I own it too.  And so do you.

Jessica, I am sorry.  What* should I and all of us do?

Paws4Now

Bill Papworth, Cambridge, England.

P.S. One thing to do* is to support a proposal from John Fisher Burns, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter from the New York Times.

John gave the Ashby lecture in the University of Cambridge, England, in May 2012. 

He proposed that more of the prestigious universities in the world, including the University of Cambridge, England, should provide undergraduate and post graduate courses in journalism.

We live in; we depend on a globalised world of communication and media.  Who do we trust?  Twitter?  Facebook?  Declining printed daily papers?  Partisan radio and television broadcasters?  Bloggers?  Jock Bytes?

Jessica Harper, Arab Spring, 30th Olympiad, London 2012, all of us need a Fourth Estate we can trust and respect.   We need many many more men and women of the calibre and training of John Fisher Burns.

We need an educated, ethical, skilful, respected, trusted Global Profession of journalist communicators, valiant for truth.   They are our only safeguard from and searchlight into the world of politicians and bankers, systems and structures, fundamentalisms and fundamentalists, and all the  other ......isms and ......ists..