Wednesday, May 15, 2013

ASPER


There are always new Government Departments coming on stream these days. This is the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. It has been split off from the original Department of Finance for a variety of practical, political and personal reasons which it is not necessary to go into here.

My immediate interest here is the logo. Clearly a new logo was required. In recent times, Government Departments and some State bodies have tried to use variations on the harp. I suppose you could say that this retains a sense of consistency across Government but there are clearly limits to the number of variations you can come up with before the thing becomes unrecognisable. Or should I just say limits to the imagination.

Anyway that unstable looking thing above is, I assume, a variation on the harp, though Brian Boru might not quite know what to do with it should he encounter it on a dark night.

That thought provoked me into wondering what else it might be if it was let out on its own, and my thoughts are below. Additional thoughts are welcome. My imagination is limited, or my mind boggled, or I'm just too plain tired to carry on any further.


Before I leave you, I should explain that the new Department likes to be popularly (if that is the appropriate adverb) known as PER and its blog is As PER and ASPER in Latin is rough or harsh, so I'll leave you to mull over that one.

Reactions
A former colleague with a deep understanding of the national psyche and of the present cataclysm suggests:
Two redundant motorway junctions plus ten intermediate entrances to ghost estates.

5 comments:

  1. On a further glance at the blog I notice that, despite the link at top right, there is no Gaeilge version.

    Only the Departmental side headings pop into the first official language.

    Mórán déanta, tuilleadh le teacht?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I just literally don't believe it.

    The Department of PER has just put up this picture on its Twitter account. Secretary General Watt delivers speech.

    You'd be thrown out of Photography 101 if you dared even pretend you took that let alone put it up on a Government account.

    Does not inspire confidence.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have now read the speech to which the photo relates.

    Despite its attempt at an upbeat tone, it is a very depressing speech. I would just mention three aspects.

    It gives the impression that the private sector is the be all and end all.

    It mentions progress or aspirations in areas that were supposed to have been dealt with years ago.

    It continues to plug the line that more will be achieved with less resources. While this is certainly desirable and possible, I fear it may simply end up putting more and more pressure on existing staff. It was bad enough at the point I left it.

    There may, however, be light at the end of this dark tunnel. I see that, in the area of shared services, "significant ogress (sic) is being made [my emphasis].

    Perhaps this female version of a Frankenstein monster will succeed in pulling all the threads together.

    And it is nice to see the gender choice here. After all it was Mary Shelley what wrote the book.

    The full speech is here.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jesus.

    And look how their logo comes up on their Twitter stream.

    And the background image.

    There is something seriously disfunctional here.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Since I wrote the above they have changed their Twitter avatar.

    No improvement, just differently bad.

    ReplyDelete

Bona fide comments only. Spamming, Trolling, or commercial advertising will not be accepted.