Z and bureaucracy

Christine and I looked at each other.  “I’m not sure when we’re going to do it,” I said.  She agreed.  “Not this side of Christmas.”  “Not this year.”  “And the deadline is 10th January.”  We both sighed.

Go through the Articles of Association and change them to suit, write terms of reference, write a decision planner with delegated powers.  It’ll take hours.  And it’ll be extremely boring.  I’d rather just get on with it and be finished, but there really isn’t time now, not unless I spend time on it when I’m with Wink, and I’m not going to.  Tonight, I have to write minutes from very vague notes.

I’m going to have to change the way people register with this blog, I’m getting so many spam registrations which are really becoming a nuisance.  There were 31 notifications of registration between 2.20 this morning and 6.20 this evening and, of 590 registrations, I doubt more than 30ish are genuine.  Furthermore, I suspect the necessity to sign in is putting you lovely people off commenting – not that you should feel obliged in any way, but the number of readers hasn’t gone down, whilst the comments have plummeted.  Hardly any of the spammers actually try to leave a comment, and the first one sent has to be approved so doesn’t get past my email, but it is a bit annoying.

Anyway, I’ve been counting bottles of wine and it’s fair to say we won’t run out over the holiday season.  I suspect we’ll still be drinking them at the blog party, whenever that is.

Number 32 has just pinged in.  Hello, ShavonneBlackbu, of brandy.phippso174 … and goodbye.

10 comments on “Z and bureaucracy

  1. Blue Witch

    Can you not employ a professional to do the necessary admin? It’s enough to be a volunteer – there must be someone who can do it. Schools aren’t strapped for cash these days, surely?

    I had over a thousand spam comments yesterday and was locked out of my own blog by my my hosting company. 6 hours it took to sort out. Scum of the Earth, spammers. I cannot understand why people think it’s a good idea to try to make money that way. if they got off their bums/computer chairs and looked for a proper job, they’d make a lot more.

    Reply
  2. Z Post author

    But we know what needs to go in, getting an outsider is part of the reason our Articles aren’t right at present. We are a very small board of three directors, two of whom are governors – another governor is helping too and the Deputy Head and school Finance director are helping with the policy documents and other stuff. The work this term has been unbelievable, a heavier workload than ever before in over 25 years of being a school governor. Schools strapped for cash? If we hadn’t become an academy and therefore stopped paying 8% of our income to the LA for doing less and less (and passing over our school buildings with literally millions of poundsworth of repairs to be done), we’d have had redundancies by now. instead, we’ve got a healthy bank balance, but expect a falling roll, going by the numbers in the primary schools.

    it’s odd that the spammers don’t try to comment, but I’ve not had ten to delete since I moved here.

    Reply
  3. mig

    Horrible paperwork! We’ve got to buckle down to it soon but we keep putting it off. We’ll do it soon though.
    I don’t find signing in a problem at all, just haven’t been around much recently but what a pain having so many spammers.

    Reply
  4. Mike Horner

    It’s no problem signing in, although the machine does seem to feel the need for us to re-register fairly frequently – but that isn’t a problem either- you’ve made it very easy for us. I suppose the answer, for all of us, is to ‘bash on regardless’ ?

    Reply
  5. Z Post author

    I finally finished the minutes of y’day’s meeting around 11.30 last night. The paperwork is tedious rather than anything else, we’re adapting the school documents rather than starting from scratch. But it has to be specific to the subject and that’s why it’s best for a governor to do it who understands the whole picture.

    Ronan has installed a captcha for registering, so hopefully it’ll help me, if not you!

    Reply
  6. allotmentqueen

    I admit I have to sign in to WordPress and then there is this “Howdy, allotmentqueen” in the top right corner (don’t they know names should have a capital?) but then I’ve told it to remember me so all I have to do is type “a” and it suggests the rest so it’s no big deal. Obviously BW will be horrified by me ticking the “remember me” box, but then we’ve bought our own domain name and I use a different personal name for different categories so I can easily delete that name should it prove problematic. There’s very little I use my real name for. Sorry you’re having so much trouble with the spammers.

    Reply
  7. Z Post author

    There’s been nothing since I installed Ronan’s captcha, so fingers crossed. I’ll have to register myself, with a different name and email, to be sure it’s not too tricky to type, though I only occasionally get a new commenter at present.

    John, it’s as BW says. The only thing worse was spam faxes, which used your paper and ink to print out – I can’t believe anyone ever responded to those!

    Reply
  8. allotmentqueen

    Oh we still get tons of spam faxes – car leasing, T-shirt printing, sell your business, etc – but we have the fax thing programmed to send to computer so we don’t print them, and actually, to be honest, it’s a stupid all-in-one HP thing so most of the time it loses them anyway. But it’s the phone number I give to people I don’t really want to give a phone number to so they just get a fax beeping at them.

    Reply

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