Tag Archives: email

Blurt outed

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Sarah Vine is a journalist at The Times.

She is also Mrs Michael Gove, wife of the Education Secretary.

Normally I would find it difficult to justify blogging about the wife of a politician who, as far as I am aware, has absolutely nothing to do with, and quite possibly no interest in, the world of e-discovery.

However, it so happens that The Times of September 21st published an article written by Education Editor Greg Hurst entitled “Gove intrigue over ‘official use of private e-mails’.” In his piece Mr Hurst refers to a controversy which has arisen over the Education Secretary’s relations with his civil servants, some of whom appear to have been bypassed as a result of the alleged use of private emails by the department’s special advisers and possibly also by Mr Gove himself.

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A pointless waste of time

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One of the wonders of the Internet is that almost anything you care to look for is there, somewhere! Not just historical facts, political articles, scientific treatises and the like but almost anything you care to think about.

Has anyone noticed how many people were away from the office in the past few days? The prospect of the last few days of the skiing season, the start of spring, consecutive four day weekends looming and the start of school holidays must mean that Britain’s productivity will fall by a measureable amount in April.

I have resisted the temptation to look and see if there are statistics about this on the internet but if they are not there now I bet they will be before too long. But while engaged in these ruminations, I have come across the most pointless waste of time, namely a website dedicated to pointless websites.  If you are stuck for things to do you can pass the time by playing with the website which swaps dads’ and babies’ heads around, or forget that time exists at all by spending time on the site which allows you to think about beards – yours and those adorning the faces of other people!

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I click, therefore I am

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I’m indebted to Franciso Lorca (of EthosData, Millnet’s Virtual Data Room partner) for bringing to my attention a piece in yesterday’s FT [It pays to think before you click, FT.com, 21st July, 2010]*

The article refers to the emails in which Goldman employees variously described the mortgage based security at the centre of the affair as “God, what a shitty deal, God what a piece of crap.”

Nicole Bullock and Telis Demos, the writers of the article comment, “In hindsight, these sometimes snarky and sarcastic missives from the height of the credit bubble looked embarrassing at best and potentially incriminating at worst.”

It is an interesting moral dilemma whether employees should be discouraged from commenting adversely in email (or in thought or anywhere else) on their firm’s dubious and allegedly unethical practices or whether the firm itself should be discouraged from carrying out such allegedly unethical practices in the first place…

Readers will have no doubt have reached their own conclusions on the Goldman affair and the rise in Goldman’s share price on news of the out of court settlement, indicates that the markets certainly have!

The FT article is an interesting read and a cautionary tale nevertheless.

*Free registration with FT.com is required to read this article