Saturday 7 October 2023 – Theirs Not to Reason Why
“It’s not that hard, Alex. Rugby get it right and cricket get it right.” Dion Dublin made this point to Alex Scott on today’s Football Focus about VAR officials verifying on-field refereeing decisions in response to the now infamous cock-up by them disallowing a goal by Luis Diaz in last weekend’s match between Tottenham and Liverpool. As a reminder, during the match, after scoring his goal, the VAR official checked to see if Diaz was offside. Confirming on the playback that he was onside, and the goal should stand, he confirmed by saying “Check complete”. But he didn’t tell the referee what the conclusion of his completed check was. The on-field decision by the referee was offside. Surely the referee should understand that “Check complete” means that the VAR official is verifying his decision: offside? But, for whatever reason that has not been made any clearer by the Professional Games Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) releasing the audio of the VAR room during the incident, he wasn’t. “Use language that the referee knows…”, Dublin proposed. “He probably knows ‘check complete’ [but], ’he’s offside’, ‘he’s onside’: it’s very simple. That’s footballing language we’ve known for years.”
But professionals like to invent their own argot. Perhaps this is to make what they do seem technical and specialised, as if not anyone off the street could do what they do. It may also be used to obfuscate; to create wiggle-room if anyone questions what it is they are doing and why. However, miscommunication can cause uproar when the distinction between an outcome in reality, as opposed to within the language used to invent a reality, is both so stark and calamitous.
Sport and war are two arenas in which mistakes can have undeniable consequences in the real world. Lord Raglan gave the order to his generals for the light cavalry to “attack the guns” in the Battle of Balaclava in October 1854 during the Crimean War. From his vantage point, he could see the Russians pilfering abandoned Turkish guns behind the hill and, unarmed, could be thwarted by a rapid assault by lightly-armoured, sabre-wielding cavalrymen. However, he didn’t realise that, from his generals’ position, they couldn’t see the Turkish guns. All they could see was the Russian artillery atop other hills: right, left and front, all trained on the valley below, primed and ready to shoot. A light cavalry full frontal assault would have no chance against them and it was clear any such gambit would simply be suicide. “What guns?”, one of the generals asked the messenger after he had read Raglan’s note and, with a wide and vague sweep of his arm across the valley, he replied, “Those ones”. So the general ordered the light cavalry to charge the Russian artillery knowing he was sending them into the “the jaws of Death”. The cavalrymen would have been able to see what was going on in the valley just as well as their commanders but, for whatever reason, didn’t question their orders.
On the cusp of what we now understand to be modern warfare, and despite what Captain Blackadder said about World War I, perhaps never has a war been fought so badly as by the Russians and Ottoman, French and British allies as in the Crimean War and, perhaps, Raglan would have thought no more about this one cock-up. But, within weeks of the incident, word of his antics had got home to England and Tennyson had written a popular poem about bumbling management and inability to communicate simple instructions, when rugby get it right and cricket get it right. This was The Charge of the Light Brigade.
This lack of professionalism, or even basic skills, was embarrassing for both the PGMOL and the British High Command because the outcomes of their mismanagement are clear for everyone to see. But, when it is not so clear, and the outcomes of what managers are trying to do are opaque, mistakes from ambiguous communication may go unchecked in the academic world of local government economic development but, when they clash with reality, complaints are made. Eventually, the Housing and Regeneration Team’s much postponed meeting with Higgins Construction about their social value offer (see What if Oil Just Stopped?) was booked in for Wednesday this week. The question left outstanding by the postponements was, how do you employ 212 unemployed residents facing complex barriers to work on the construction of a housing development where it is (now) forecast that it will only take 360 people to build? I’ve been patient thus far, allowing the senior officers in the Housing & Regen Team to satisfy their planning obligations thus allowing construction to commence, before getting bogged down in the social value obligations, even though they both relate to the same residents. Now I get to hear from Higgins’ Director of Equality, Social and Governance how her magic trick is done.
Revisiting our social value bid again, she told us in the meeting, we thought that the jobs related to anyone regardless of where they lived. A lot of our workers have criminal convictions, caring responsibilities or were previously unemployed. No-where does it say in the specification, or in the definitions of the TOMs [social value measures], that those employees must be local residents.
On Tuesday 19 September, while I was on holidays, The Area Education, Communications and Outreach Manager from Veolia, the council’s new £10m bins collection contractor, emailed her contract manager at the council and me explaining that they didn’t consider their social value commitments to recruit unemployed people as relating to local residents because no-where did it say in the specification or the definitions of the TOMs that they must relate to local residents.
On Monday, I replied to her explaining that, although the specification may not have specified “local”, nor the definitions of the TOMs, I was assured some time ago that somewhere on Social Value Portal linking bidders to where they make their social value proposals, is a disclaimer saying that all proposals must be local to Hammersmith & Fulham. I hadn’t seen it myself, I explained, because I’ve never made a bid to the council before, but I have been told it’s there somewhere. I repeated the same spiel in my meeting with Higgins’ Director of ESG on Wednesday.
The Contract Manager for Street Environmental Services replied to me alone expressing thanks for addressing Veolia’s challenge:
“Paul,
“You
put it so much better than I could!
“Thanks
for your expertise mate.”
Perhaps,
but that doesn’t mean it was a good reply.
So, on Thursday, I thought I had better forward the Veolia email to my boss
explaining these two developments:
“Hi [Head of Employment & Skills].
“We have previously discussed this but I just wanted to highlight this again because this is the second case I have had this week, the other being Higgins Construction commissioned to build Hartopp & Lannoy: both Veolia and Higgins have said they didn’t know social value contributions were supposed to be made locally (to the benefit of residents, businesses and schools in the borough) and both have said they wouldn’t have proposed what they did if they had known it had to be done in the borough.
“I have made the point to both suppliers that Social Value Portal has a disclaimer on its page with our TOMs Matrix attached that all proposed measures must be made locally, and I made this point because SVP assured me some time ago that this disclaimer was on their page. I have never seen the page myself because I don’t get cc’d into ITTs.
“In the meantime, I have previously revised the TOMs and shared them with you and Corporate Procurement (attached again). I have specified each Measure individually that they should be local, aligned them with my understanding of the Industrial Strategy (that [the Assistant Director for Economic Development] asked me to do), deleted those National measures that are not relevant or that duplicate CP’s Added Value measures (e.g. LLW [London Living Wage], EDI [Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Training], commitment to 2030 net zero [carbon dioxide emissions] etc.) and updated the proxy financial values to the 2022 national values because, therefore the 2021 values we continue to use no longer have any justification. SVP says that the 2023 TOMs and their proxy values will be released around December (which any public body can use whether or not they are a customer of SVP).
“But, so you are aware, continuing to use the 2021 TOMs is resulting in protests from some major suppliers and my trying to weakly (despite what [the Street Environmental Services Contract Manager] says below) defend the council’s position as I have done again below.
“Just to be clear (I know you already know this) but this procurement-process issue with SVP is not what I have previously stated why SVP can’t possibly work – that relates to monitoring – this is SVP (and us and Corporate Procurement) just being a bit rubbish.
“Paul.”
Why
communication from management to our bidders has to be “a bit rubbish” I don’t
know but, in defence of the referee for the Tottenham v Liverpool match, Alan
Shearer said,
“You can use whatever word you want: ‘chaotic’, ‘shambolic’… He’s got so many voices going on. Can you imagine being the referee there, where it’s hard enough being in that pressurised situation anyway, that you’ve gotta make a crucial decision, and you’ve got four or five voices in your ear pinging away to you?”
Yes, I can imagine it. Between messaging by the Economic Development AD and Head of Strategy, the Corporate Procurement Team and Social Value Portal, for bidders making crucial bids, the contradictory instructions being pinged away to them must be bewildering. I reminded my boss that I have previously spotted all these contradictions and miscommunications and designed an all-encompassing solution that, for reasons I don’t understand, have been ignored (see The Little Things). If there is an inquest into this like there was for the British High Command and the PGMOL, then I’ve covered my back. In the meantime, mine is not to reason why, mine is but to do and take the council’s Social Value policy down with me.
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