Machine engineering
Recipients of a new funding stream in England are to be chosen by means of a computer program, allowing decisions to be made on purely logical grounds. The fund will distribute one-off ‘reward grants’ to organisations which have contributed particularly strongly to the development of a strategic overview. Respected Organisations Funded by Logic (ROFL) will be chosen by feeding specific statistics into the program, Logic Measures Analysis Output (LMAO), which will score the applications by means of a series of algorithms devised by Manny Pulation, a top information technology consultant. Speaking to AP about this apparent departure from recent moves to self-assessment, peer review and consultation, a spokesperson said, “We’ve tried and tried to do the right thing concerning openness, collaboration and getting the broadest possible picture. Whatever we do, everyone complains, so we decided to remove the human factor completely.” Applications for the new fund close on 1 April.
Wheel of fortune
The Scottish Government has taken the controversial decision to offer the position of Minister for Culture and External Affairs on a rotational basis. Since a large number cabinet members have now held the post, albeit often for a short period of time, the First Minister, Phil McCabinet, has announced that it would be unfair on the others not to have their turn. Acclaimed Scottish-Italian artist Iona Ferrari has been awarded a £962m commission to design a kinetic sculpture which will pick a minister at random every six days. Although the piece is still in the planning stages, Ferrari told AP that the work would consist of “a giant spinning arrow that moves constantly, pausing once every six days to point to a new minister”.
Nature’s call
Recent cutting-edge market research into other business sectors has led one theatre group to implement new ‘subscription’ policies across its entire group. Subscription ticketing was first introduced to UK theatres from the US in the 1970s to encourage the purchase of tickets for multiple performances in a single transaction. Flying Rare theatre group has now taken strategy to its natural conclusion, and is now offering subscription ‘loo-break’ tickets to its customers at the beginning of each season. Chief Executive Bea Price said, ”We recognised that despite successfully antagonising our customers with an ever-increasing array of ingenious wheezes such as per ticket, per transaction, per phonecall, per person, per minute charges for wanting to do business with us, some customers were still getting ‘through the net’ by successfully purchasing our tickets – and turning up to performances, so this seemed
a great way of taking the piss, whilst maximising income.”