Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Have you heard the GOOD NEWS about Haringey branding?
Since I am sure that Mr. Stanton would be supremely indifferent to a call for God to bless him, I don’t suppose I would be going against my principles to issue such a plea, because he has bequeathed to me nearly half an hour of good solid fun in his request to Haringey for details of the ‘rebranding’ which was recommended last October.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/haringey_new_logo_rebranding...
As you will see, these were furnished to him by the "feedback review officer", an employment category which in itself conjurs up images of what you might be forced to appraise on the pavement outside a kebab joint on a Saturday night.
Anyway, I scraped through the bigger bits and discovered that Haringey is not only "edgy" but it is not in fact a place. According to the Brand Guidelines is is an Attitude. So, not a borough, then. We are the Attitude of Haringey. According to the Collins Dictionary, an attitude is at best a physical orientation and at worst a hostile manner. Judging by the colour of the letterheads and signage it is also permanently in a red mist. From ID cards to care homes, all is red—including the cards that Councillors have to hand to their parishoners. Even the LibDems have to hand out red cards to people, so whatever it is and whoever hands it to you: STOP THAT AT ONCE!
Apart from the graphics, there are also instructions about language. Employees of the Attitude of Haringey are urged to “create energy with short sentences” rather than being “staid, stuffy or formal” (note the use of three words meaning the same thing, right after the request for brevity) and to write as if talking to a good friend. Oh us cuddly folk at Haringey Attitude. We are just so ….LOVABLE.
But the best is probably in the letter heads.
There are two versions for use with the residents, customers …um… Good Friends. The letterheads come in “good news” and “bad news”. Surprisingly, someone has realised that the bouncing buffoonery that now spells out the name of our borough in a font which looks as if a serial killer has scrawled it on the wall in blood, might not be the best thing to put on the top of a letter telling your dying grannie that she is about to be locked out of her flat by Haringey Social Services. I am impressed by their sensitivity. Good news letters, btw, have the bouncing bloodstain at the top of the page, while the bad news ones have “Haringey" in black and at the bottom of the page, so as not to associate our edgy Attitude of Haringey with anything negative.
Since the Attitude now has double designs of stationery, instead of just the one, this means double the number of trees turned into pulp to communicate council wafflings. Oh, and all of us Council Tax payers have double the expense, of course, Which theme should they use to give us *that* information?
That, by the way is not the end of it because there is special stationery for use only within the Council—good news, bad news and something called a “partner” letterhead which has its own category. All of these add to the different stacks of stationery to be printed and wasted but by this time I have lost count of the multiples. You’ll have to work out the trees for yourselves.
Sod the trees, though. It’s the council workers I feel sorry for. Can you imagine the nervous stress of trying to decide in which category they should form their communications? Can you imagine the discussions over every letter to determine whether it qualifies as good news or bad news?
Even with committee discussions about the right stationery dragging on into the small hours, there will still be problems because any fool knows that good and bad news is often a matter of opinion. The continued printing of "Haringey People", for instance: good or bad? A ten-day rock festival in Finsbury Park: good (wow! free music for over a week!) or bad: (how the hell do I get the kids to sleep)? Permission for your neighbours to build a huge and looming loft extension: bad (there goes the light) or good (great! that means I’ll get permission for my basement swimming pool)?
Perhaps some sort of mnemonic would be useful. As they (almost) recite in Full Metal Jacket — “this is for sober-speak and this is for farces, this is for Kober’s clique and — “ ….oh shucks, I can’t think of a rhyme for the rest of it.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Antoinette on
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Billy..I think you already know perfectly well that any such FOI request would be (quite correctly) refused. And I say that as an ISEB Certified FOI practitioner
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/cost_to_council_of_replying_... -
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Alan, (sorry, can't link to the thread as its full). You made a suggestion about going to the Commissioner and I posted about why that wouldn't work. In response to that you did a long post to me about Mr Hoyle that has no relation to what I said. I can't understand why you didn't just say that to Billy. That's why it felt like being a kid in the middle of a mum and dad row.
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I would add to that that you refer to the Information Commissioners guidance on "vexatious" requests when no one said your requests were vexatious. You just make rather a lot of them. Many feel too many. Just because submitting FOI requests is free of charge to you doesn't mean they don't incur a cost to the authority. And 45 FOI requests will have cost quite a lot to answer.
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Authorities claims as to the cost of answering FOI requests vary enormously. The only reliable statistic about what the average cost of answering an FOI is, came from the research conducted by the UCL's Constitution Unit in 2012 which put the figure at £293. So using that average figure your 45 requests would have cost in the region of £13, 185. I am very deliberately writing this post in entirely factual terms because you will no doubt launch into another long tirade as to what I mean by what I have said when I have said only and exactly what I mean.
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Permalink Reply by Lydia R on
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"Couldn't we find something a little more useful to do?"
Think of how much that logo costs.
It isn't only all the stationery that will be scrapped and the stationery that will be reprinted but all the signage, information booklets, sides of vans -- oh, all sorts of things I can't bring to mind at present. It's an immense undertaking and the prices we have been quoted are probably nowhere near the actual costs; I am sure that Mr. Stanton will dig up more in due course.
I am absolutely no fan of the exploding swastika we had before but this is not the time to change it -- and certainly not for the sort of saturation logo-isation of the borough that is in view. Every time you get a letter from the Council, think of that bollard that it cost, Mr. Park Ranger.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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I am absolutely no fan of the exploding swastika we had before but this is not the time to change it -- and certainly not for the sort of saturation logo-isation of the borough that is in view
Yes, agree. The roll-out has affected all parts of Attitude (Haringey).
It's been so wide and deep that the child-like that it, would be even more expensive to change the embarrassing symbol to something less ridiculous, than it has been to implement.
Spending money on branding of any sort at a time when the Council is making severe cuts to Adult Social Services is a misplaced priority.
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I've got a baby buggy you can have...The rest you'll have to take up with the Council
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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"Good to know that Alan has personally kept someone in a job for 6 months."
Why must you tell a lie about me to try to make your point?
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Numbers of FoI's I've made in the past six months? Calculations of costs? One persons salary?
Why do you continue to repeat that I was "suspended" from the Council. I was not.
On a discussion thread about the logo why are you now trying to smear my wife?
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Alan, William Hoyle is, in the vernacular, winding you up. Can I suggest that you do not feed this?
More comment on the Branding Guidelines please!
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Well, they're written in that language that comms companies often use, which can come over as a bit annoying, but if you concentrate on the actual guidelines themselves they seem pretty thorough. Someone raised the difference between the "good" news and "bad" new guidelines. It's a sensible distinction (though again the language is a bit PR speak). The coloured logo wouldn't really be that appropriate on a letter demanding you lay your overdue rent or giving you a court date for non-payment of council tax.
I think Lydia raised the issue of the cost of producing stuff with the new logo. In the reprort it says that they will be replacing stuff when it gets to the end of its natural life. I know when we got new branding at the place I used to work they just set up electronic templates for us to use so there were no printing costs. That seems to be what is proposed here too. -
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You're probably right, Clive. But there's a difference between opinions and lies. William Hoyle told us he's an accountant. He tells us he has looked up the What Do They Know website which shows I made two F.o.I. questions in the past six months. He knows these didn't cost half a year's salary to answer.
From his last post, he clearly does understand the difference between being suspended from the Council - which implies misconduct - and losing a party whip. (Even if the Tottenham Journal muddled it up.) Why pretend he doesn't understand?
You and I often disagree Clive. Sometimes strongly. But we make an effort to be accurate. -
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