Russian about

At Crisis Solutions we offer media training. When taking part in an interview it is important to be relaxed and not to be distracted.

Crisis Lounge regulars enjoyed the clip you are about to watch and although it's in Russian it's full impact is evident.

It is a timely reminder that a colleague - who on this occasion looks to be a little over refreshed - can undermine all your good work.

Disaster recovery - a new approach

In these straightened times, are you having trouble getting a budget for your business continuity plan?

Dilbert feels your pain

Breaking news

News comes to The Crisis Lounge that the UK Tripartite Authorities have decided to reschedule the Market Wide Exercise 2008, which was due to take place between 18th and 26th November. According to the FSA, the decision “has been taken in light of global market conditions and feedback from the industry”.

The exercise is now expected to take place in early 2009, but a definite date will be published ‘in due course’.

The original plan for the Market Wide Exercise scenario was to cover a scenario of severe weather, including flooding, and to revisit “some of the more challenging issues raised during the pandemic exercise of 2006”. This is expected to remain as the focus for the exercise, with the FSA website stating: "Exercise preparations will continue in line with the original schedule, so that the exercise will be substantially ready for implementation as and when financial market conditions are judged to be conducive."

Master of Disaster

The Crisis Lounge's very own Master of Disaster, Yasir, has put together a new Incident Database.

Date: 09/10/08
Location: Leicester, UK
Type: Report
Category: Pandemic Flu
Description: A vaccine is currently being tested which doctors believe could be vital to saving lives in the event of a flu pandemic.

A jab against one strain of avian flu, given years earlier, may "prime" the immune system to fight a wide range of bird flu strains.

Researchers believe that when a pandemic arrives, "pre-vaccinated" people could then be given a booster shot, and be protected far quicker.

Comment: Pandemic flu was called the ’gravest threat’ to the UK in a recent government study. If bird flu mutates allowing for rapid human-to-human transmission there are fears the virus could spread around the world in a matter of weeks.
Click here for more

Date: 10/10/08
Location: London, UK
Type: Incident
Category: Data Loss / Reputation
Description: The MoD confirmed reports from its main IT provider, EDS that it has lost a 1TB portable hard drive from its secure site at Hook in Surrey.

The drive is said to contain information on the names, addresses, passport numbers, dates of birth and driving licence details of about 100,000 people.

This accounts for approximately half of the armed forces. According to protocols EDS Managing Director Sir Robert Fry, stated that as the device was in a secure site it is not required to be encrypted.

Knowledge of its loss became apparent during an inventory. EDS were unable to confirm when the device went missing.

Comment: This is a further example of the need to protect data. Protocols must state that devices will be encrypted even at secure sites.
Click here for more

Date: 10/10/08
Location: London, UK
Type: Incident
Category: Data Loss / Reputation
Description: The theft of a Deloitte laptop last month contained the details of up to 100,000 pension scheme members.

The accountancy firm confirmed that the incident had taken place, when a thief stole a laptop from an employee’s bag.

The data includes names, National Insurance numbers and salaries of scheme members from companies such as BSkyB, Network Rail and British Transport Police.

Deloitte assured clients that the loss represents a "very low risk" of the details being accessed, due to their security measures, which include a start up password, operating system user ID/password authentication and encryption.

Comment: Thefts occur, but in this case the information seems to have been safeguarded. Although a reputational issue remains, the key aspect is the data was protected.
Click here for more

Plug and play

At the Crisis Lounge, data loss, whether it be government computer discs or carelessly mislaid laptops, is one of the hot topics.

The Lizard was interested to see a new twist to the tale.

Andrew Mason from security firm Random Storm bought some network hardware from auction site eBay for 99p.

When he switched it on and plugged it in, the device automatically connected to the internal network of Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire.

Kirklees council called the discovery "concerning" (the Lizard can only imagine what was actually said in private) but said its data had not been compromised.

For under a pound Mason bought what is known as a virtual private network (VPN) server made by the firm Cisco Systems that automates all the steps needed to get remote access to a network.

Mason expected he’d have to input network settings to make the devise work. Not a bit of it – it connected up straight away.

Subsequent investigation found that the internet address to which it connected was owned by Cap Gemini – government outsource provider.

"It is like having a long ethernet cable (directly into) the Council office,” said Mason.

A connection such as this allows privileged access to networks. In the wrong hands, such as criminally minded hackers, it would allow them to conduct reconnaissance and find out if the network had any vulnerabilities worth exploiting.

Internal network access permitted credit card detail theft from retailers TK Maxx last year and Cotton Traders in June.

A spokesman for consulting firm Cap Gemini said it managed Kirklees Council's network from 2000 to the end of May 2005. At that point, he said, control was handed back to the council, which had decided to manage the network itself.

Just shows you can get anything on eBay!

Cybersquatters

There's nothing Crisis Lounge regulars like better than a new take on the financial meltdown...

So called cybersquatters are registering domain names for many of the merging banks.

Lloydstsbhbos.com has been snapped up, and the domain bankofmerril.com is already attracting £1,000 on eBay.

Domain names are big money - at a recent auction huge sums were paid for the new .mobi extension. For example flowers.mobi sold for €200,000 while fun.mobi fetched €100,000.

But as far as making money out of domain names goes, the champion must be Chris Clark who sold the name pizza.com for over $2.6 million in April having bought it fourteen years ago for only $20.

Blue light special

Over the years the Lizard has done quite bit of work with the Emergency Services – particularly the fire service. The Lizard thoroughly enjoys his trips up to the Fire Service College just outside Chopping Norton where he is assured of a warm reception and a delicious lunch. Well, one of those statements is true.

All of which is a long winded intro to tell you that the Emergency Services Show is held this year at Stoneleigh Park Coventry between the 19th and 20th November.

Turn on the blue light and hurry along.

Click here for more

Credit crunch

The Credit Crunch – why does it keep reminding me of breakfast cereal?

Over time we’ve done quite a bit of work for one of the banks that’s just been caught up in the financial tsunami – in fact they engaged up to deliver several major crisis simulations.

At Crisis Solutions we pride ourselves on the reality of our scenarios, in fact some of our consultants like to joke that if they dream them up they usually happen.

At this particular bank we tested them with pandemic flu and then on another occasion with terror attacks – bombs and anthrax as I recall.

Frankly to start with they struggled, but over time they honed their crisis skills.

We might not have known about sub-prime loans when we conducted their training, but a crisis is a crisis and their ability to withstand this financial turmoil has been impressive.

Crises come in many guises and some may be impossible to predict, but if the right plans are in place and those plans have been tested then the organisation involved has a much greater chance of thriving and surviving.

Actress demands screen test

The Lizard remembers a time when computers took up a whole room and were operated by strange geeky men in white coats. Now we can’t do without them. If the Lizard’s broadband connection goes down for five minutes then wailing and gnashing of teeth is heard throughout the land and if you listen carefully you can hear the Lizard’s wife telling him to put a sock in it.

All of which is a pre-cursor to this story, sent in by a Crisis Lounge regular. Thank you Richard.

A Canadian actress and playwright has been charged with holding a computer expert hostage after losing her internet connection.

Carol Sinclair lost her connection with ISP Aliant and, by her own account, spent days trying to fix it.

She said, “I was polite the first 20 times I talked to them. But each one gave me the same routine, 'Is the modem connected? Are the lights blipping?' And then they would tell me it must be a fault with my computer.”

Finally Sinclair said she resorted to impersonating a man's voice and got a repairman sent out the next day, a "huge, strapping young man", 21 year-old David Scott.

Sinclair said that when he couldn't fix the problem she asked him to stay until a second technician was sent.

However, local police disagree with the woman's version of the events.
"She told the technician, in a tirade, that he was not leaving until her internet was working and she told him she was keeping him hostage," said Constable Jeff Carr. "She implied that she had a gun, although he didn't see one."

The technician claimed he could fix the problem, but needed to retrieve a disc from his van. When he got to the van he jumped in and drove off.

Sinclair denies the charges, and says she was shocked at her arrest by five officers. "I'm a Buddhist," she said. I'm a wimp. I'm a pacifist."

She has been charged and banned from speaking to Aliant or any of its employees.

Hi-tech Incident Database

Yasir, our indefatigable searcher after crises, has come up with another Incident Database and as you can see from the title we are in the realm of the nerds and geeks. Yes it's cyber-crime time.

Date: 25.08.08
Location: USA / Europe
Type: Incident
Category: Crime / Reputational
Description: The Best Western Hotel chain has had to refute claims made by the Glasgow Sunday Herald, that an Indian hacker accessed personal data of over 8 million customers staying at their 1,312 European hotels. Best Western hit back saying the story was ‘grossly unsubstantiated’ but conceded that data was accessed by an unauthorized person but claimed only one hotel was affected. The hacker is thought to have obtained the details by accessing the online booking system through a key stroking program.

Comment: This incident demonstrates the ever-increasing threat businesses encounter from hackers, which can anger customers and tarnish the reputation of the company involved.
Click here to read more

Date: 28.08.08
Location: UK
Type: Incident
Category: Crime / Technology
Description: Self-checkout tills in UK supermarkets are being targeted by hi-tech criminals, using stolen US credit cards. Magnetic strips are removed and attached to fake credit cards. Fraudsters use the self-checkout service to avoid contact with staff. The scam only works on swipe and sign transactions, which are still common in the US. Security experts say this type of credit card fraud, where stolen cards are used in another country, is becoming increasingly common.

Comment: The international nature of credit card fraud makes it difficult to combat and indicates the need for the US to adopt pin numbers on a countrywide basis.
Click here to read more

Date: 26.08.08
Location: U.K.
Type: Incident
Category: Crime / Technology / Reputation
Description: A computer, containing approximately one million customer bank details, has been sold on EBay for £35. American Express, RBS and NatWest, confirmed that some of their customers were affected. The computer had belonged to Graphic Data, which stores financial information for organisations. RBS viewed the incident as a serious breach and are working closely with Graphic Data to minimise and resolve the situation. American Express said it was working 'as a matter of priority' to establish which of its cardholders could have been affected.

Comment: This highlights the need for firms that hold client sensitive information to have rigorous security protocols in place. The FSA can fine financial institutions for loss of information. The Nationwide were hit with a £980,000 fine for the loss of a laptop that contained client information.
Click here to read more

Cabin fever

The Lizard is a frequent flyer, so when the Ryanair depressurisation incident hit the news-stands it gave the Lizard pause for thought.

We’ve all sat through the pre-flight chat from the cabin staff about how if deprerssurisation occurs masks will drop down, to then hold them over ones face and breathe normally. Well we now know from passengers on the flight that normal was nowhere in sight.

The Lizard decided to find out more.

Passenger planes fly at altitudes of over 30,000ft. Up in the stratosphere there is so little oxygen that humans only have about twelve seconds before they start to become disoriented, pass out and eventually die. Presumably in a plane the time frame is a little longer – but not by much.

When cabin pressure fails the pilot executes a well-rehearsed procedure.

He needs to get the plane down from the normal cruising altitude to around 8,000ft feet where passengers can breathe normally. The only problem is he doesn’t have long as the emergency oxygen supply only last for about twelve minutes. As a result, the plane is put into a five minute, white-knuckle dive.

During the Ryanair incident passengers complained that nobody told them what was going on. Given the emergency and the fact that both the crew and the cabin staff were wearing face masks this was hardly surprising.

The Lizard listened to one of the passengers on Radio 4’s Today programme. Pen Hadow, an arctic explorer, said that there was no warning and that most passengers thought they were going to die, but he also claimed that the oxygen supply from the face masks didn’t work.

Ryanair claim there was oxygen but that the flow is very light and not easy to detect.

Because of the steep descent many of the passengers suffered damage to their ears – whether this is long term or just temporary is unclear.

In any one year about six of these events take place.

So perhaps next time you fly you’ll pay a little more attention to that tedious pre-flight announcement.

The Lizard makes no claim to be an expert on this matter - if you know more get in touch.

Raffles 2 is up and running

The Lizard get’s word from out East that the Industry Wide Exercise (codenamed Raffles 2) in Singapore is underway.

It’s co-sponsors are The Association of Banks in Singapore (“ABS”) and The Monetary Authority of Singapore (“MAS”). As we reported in an earlier blog, the scenario is based on an outbreak of pandemic flu.

An exercise communication (click here to see it) indicates that a practical drill will take place on 5th September.

Those of a nervous disposition are warned they may see bankers donning specialist protective clothing (after all those large lunches, XXXL versions are apparently in short supply) and customers visiting financial institutions may be forced to have their temperature taken. You have been warned.

Pandemic risk

The Lizard is interested to see that the National Risk Register has just published a report that puts a flu pandemic at the top of the charts, riding high above terrorism and flooding as potential risks that might afflict the UK. They warn 750,000 people could lose their lives.

Number 10 commissioned the study following the launch of the Register in March.

Fear of a pandemic has rather dropped out of the news of late so it’s interesting that the powers that be continue to see it as the major threat.

In recent years Crisis Solutions have done a huge amount of work with Banks and Supermarkets in an effort to help them prepare for a pandemic.

If this is a concern for your organisation and evidently it should be then go to our website and take advantage of our free FluPlanner. Click here

Welsh karaoke

In response to the last blog on political gaffes, Red Dragon – he may be Welsh – says if you really want the good stuff look no further than John Redwood’s famous attempt to sing the Welsh national anthem when Secretary of State for Wales. Go here to see it and have a go at singing along yourself.

"No Comment, but don't quote me" Dan Quayle

The holiday season is upon us, the politicians are away and the country can settle back calm in the knowledge that no one is in charge.

That being the case let’s turn the spotlight on our political masters – particularly on some of the things they say.

Let’s start with the political put down. The master was Winston Churchill who described Clement Atlee as “a sheep in sheep’s clothing,” and “a modest man with so much to be modest about.”

He said of Stafford Cripps the humourless Labour Chancellor, “there but for the grace of God goes God.”

He also had his brushes with women. Lady Astor said to him "Winston, if you were my husband I would flavour your coffee with poison." To which he replied, "Madam, if I were your husband, I should drink it."

But of course what we really love is the gaffe, the moment when the foot becomes firmly lodged in the mouth.

Sadly John Prescott is no longer deputy PM, but he had his moments.
“The green belt is a Labour achievement and we mean to build on it.”

And his boss, Tony Blair, famously said, “I never make predictions. I never have and I never will.”

Let us not forget John Major, Mr Blair’s predecessor, who knew how to confront his detractors. “When your back’s against the wall, all you can do is turn around and fight.”

As Anne Robinson discovered, being rude to the Welsh is a risky business, but sometimes you have to live dangerously, “They’re all the same. They’re short. They’re fat and they are fundamentally corrupt.” Rod Richards, Welsh Office Minister, on Welsh Labour councillors.

But no list such as this would be complete without a couple of Bushisms. Where does one begin? Perhaps, “If we don’t succeed we run the risk of failure.”

Or, "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

But let’s leave the last word to Richard Nixon to sum up what must ultimately be most politicians view of the electorate,

“The voters have spoken – the bastards.”

If you’ve got a favourite political quote – drop the Lizard a line.

A word from our mixologist

The head barman at The Crisis Lounge has come up with a snappy line to promote the bar.

“The Crisis Lounge continues to be great value - providing optimum added-value quick wins in an upcoming going forward way.”

Where does he get these expressions from?

Nick’s Dad

The various blogs on workplace jargon have spawned quite a debate. Nick, one of the regulars in The Crisis Lounge, told his dad about it and dad has responded in magnificent style.

Not only has he itemised some real screamers, but he has done us all a favour by suggesting alternative usage. He works in a press office and when any of the offending words or phrases in the left hand column are used, a fine of 50p is enforced.

• Beacon - leading light
• Sustainable - long term
• Cross-cutting - working together
• Fast-track - move rapidly
• Output – results
• Step change - go up a gear
• Single point of contact - one person to help
• Facilitate - make possible / help / aid / assist
• Evidence based - proof / research shows
• Vision - idea / plan / report
• Scoping - researching / investigating / studying
• Early win - will rapidly benefit / help
• Quick win - will rapidly benefit / help
• Quick hit - will rapidly benefit / help
• Level playing field - give everyone an equal opportunity
• Capacity - ability / size
• Incentivising - spur / encouragement
• Scaled-back - shrink / reduce / cut
• Menu of options - choice
• Tested for soundness - ideas that work
• Income / funding streams - cash
• Revenue streams - cash
• Transparency - clarity
• Welcome - necessary and needed
• Multi-disciplinary - many groups working together
• Meaningful consultation / dialogue - discussing with people
• Empowerment - give people the chance
• Signpost - pointers
• Community engagement - talking to local people
• Improvement levers - ways to change people's lives for the better
• Streamlined - modernise / update
• Risk-based - carefully judged
• Slippage - delays
• Guidelines - plans
• Value-added - giving better value / more for your money

Don’t think of an elephant

The Lizard’s had his nose in a book recently called “Don’t think of an elephant” by George Lakoff. George is an academic and political writer and the title of the book is an exercise he gives his students.

The exercise is: ‘whatever you do don’t think of an elephant!’ Not surprisingly he says it’s impossible to do. When someone says elephant it immediately evoke a frame, a picture. Elephants are large, have floppy ears, big trunks and tusks. Even if you try to negate a frame you still evoke it.

So for example during the Watergate scandal when President Nixon addressed America and said, “I’m not a crook” everybody immediately thought about him in terms of being a crook.

So during a crisis when you are talking to customers, suppliers, the media or any other stakeholders don’t use their frames.

If a supplier calls up and says Acme Industries are clearly run by a bunch of incompetents don’t use the word incompetent and evoke the critical frame. Simply say, “That’s not true – we understand very clearly what we have to do.”

Exercising for Excellence

Interesting article on Continuity Central.

Three surveys published recently show that plan testing is not what it might be.

* A survey of 200 companies with between 250 and 999 employees by Vanson Bourne found that, of the 81 percent of respondents stating that they had a business continuity plan, 50 percent had only partially tested plans and 18 percent had not tested any aspect of their plans.

* A PricewaterhouseCoopers survey found that almost half of disaster recovery plans have not been tested in the last year.

* According to the Chartered Management Institute’s 2008 business continuity survey, 33 percent of organizations with a business continuity plan still do not undertake any form of exercise to test their plan.

The article then goes on to pose various questions to BC professionals as to why this is the case. The answers are interesting and illuminating and you should check them out. Many say it’s too daunting / costly / or just plain difficult to stage a plan test. Read the full article here

The Lizard can immediately come to the rescue with the following advice. Go on to the British Standards website and buy ‘Exercising for Excellence’.

If you have responsibility for planning and delivering exercises to test your organisation's incident management capability, then this book is for you.

Written by Crisis Solutions and published alongside the new BSI standard, BS 25999, Exercising for Excellence is available to buy here: British Standards Bookshop

Low-hanging fruit

First of all the Lizard would like to apologise for the lack of fresh blogs over the last week. He was on his holidays – at his timeshare on the Isle of Wight.

Now safely back at the bar in The Crisis Lounge – and taking a lead from the previous blog - the Lizard has been conducting an in depth and rigorously researched analysis of jargon in the workplace.

Using a tightly controlled group of no less than three of the regulars at the bar the Lizard can report the findings of this important study.

The survey suggests that management gobbledygook and work place jargon are baffling people and getting in the way of clear understanding – the Lizard would go so far to say that phrases such as ‘brain dump’ (how ugly is that?) and ‘blue-sky thinking’ are giving people the ‘right old hump’.

About a third of those questioned – all right his name’s Gerald - said they felt inadequate when they didn’t have a clue what old so-and-so was on about.

So as a public service to all Crisis Lounge personnel here’s the Lizard’s handy, but in no way complete, guide.

Yer what? A guide to workplace jargon
• Blue-sky thinking: Idealistic or visionary ideas
• Get our ducks in a row: Have arrangements efficiently ordered
• Brain dump: To tell everything you know about a particular topic
• Let's circle back: A follow up meeting or ‘I’ll get back to you’
• Escalate: Tell somebody important that something bad is going to happen
• Painpoint: A challenge
• Goat rodeo: A complete disaster
• A herd of cats: Another complete disaster
• Lipstick on a pig: Reworking of ‘Silk purse from a sow’s ear’
• Drilling down: Getting more detail about a particular issue
• The helicopter view: An overview
• Low-hanging fruit: The easiest targets

And in a complete conversation

Bill: "What are you doing, Jack?"

Jack: "I'm ramping up for the Acme Project. After I download this info, I am going to reach out to London and get some intel on the lay of the land. My fear is that London has no real energy for this, so we may need to all get on the same page and get our ducks in a row. Circle back with me after you've determined if we can really add value to this deliverable. If not it could be a complete and utter goat rodeo."

Send your pet hates to lizard@crisis-solutions.com

Word Up

Whenever I drive past a pub with a big plastic tree house in the garden I’m reminded of a line from Alec Guinness’s autobiography - “We stopped at one of those awful pubs for lunch; where every meal on the menu was preceded by the word “jumbo” or “sizzling”.”



Ever noticed how some words really grate? Here’s the Lizard’s top three at the moment:

A lady was doing a reasonable job trying to sell advertising space when she said, “In which sectors do you get the most traction?” Now, when a friend of mine rode a quad bike during a team-building event in Colorado he needed traction to get through the mud. When the bike toppled over and tried to rip his leg off he also needed traction not to mention painkillers and bandages.

The second word cropped up in the same conversation. In the old days you wrote articles and you placed adverts. Maybe you even provided content or copy. Not any more. I was asked to write an infomercial. As it’s a cross between an article and an advert it doesn’t have to be reasoned, unbiased or objective. I can just dress my advert up as an article, and the magazine or website doesn’t have to provide any content of its own. Everyone’s a winner.

But straight in at number one, right at the top of the Lizard’s list is coworkers. Years ago we had colleagues. I understood colleagues. Now in trendy business articles we get coworkers. As it’s obviously uncool to use hyphens these days my brain separates it into two words – cow orkers. It sounds like some terrible agricultural disease.

The Lizard also has some thoughts on jargon in the work place. What’s the most irritating word or phrase? Perhaps we need to take a helicopter view, think out of the box and really drill down to find out what it is.

Communication breakdown

The Lizard is a bit old school when it comes to spelling and grammar. He is of the opinion that the language of Shakespeare should be treated with respect.

At Crisis Solutions some of the Lizard’s colleagues say he’s a bit of a pedant on the subject and argue that, as long as communication flows, a hanging apostrophe is nothing to get upset about.

So it was with undisguised joy that some less than caring members of Crisis Solutions were able to hoist the Lizard on his own petard. Here’s the story.

The Lizard produces videos to enhance our crisis simulation exercises. Recently we were employed to run such a simulation on behalf of a government department.

The scenario revolved around the topical issue of lost documents, a leak of information and the subsequent loss of confidence in the department.

Unfortunately on a video caption the Lizard saw fit to spell Leak – Leek. So in effect a large Welsh vegetable was undermining one of the great departments of state. Something it may take the Lizard a while to live down.

Bugs life

Here at Crisis Solutions fuel distribution, the lack of fuel, the cost of fuel and indeed all things fuel related seem to be occupying our time.

Come to think of it the last time you filled up your car your credit card probably thought it was undergoing some form of crisis or trauma.

Well step forward Andy, the technical supremo at Crisis Solutions, who spotted an article in The Times last week that might just solve our problems.

Now before I go any further I should point out that we are nowhere near 1st April nor are we yet in what my newspaper chums call the silly season, but blimey this is an odd one.

Apparently, and this is The Times talking, scientists in California are genetically modifying bugs, (that’s as technical as the Lizard gets – don’t forget he just eats them) then feeding them agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw and then they do something (and I apologise for the revolting image this conjures up) – they poo petrol. Whether it’s four star, diesel or two stroke the article doesn’t say.

But is does point out that to substitute America’s weekly oil consumption of 143 million barrels, you would need quite a few of these bugs – actually as many as you could jam into a facility that covered about 205 square miles, an area roughly the size of Chicago.

Well as the old saying (nearly) goes, where there’s bugs there’s brass and there are clearly a lot of people trying to make money out of this, trying to up their bottom line I suppose.

But there is something about this that’s really bugging me, when you buy your sleek new BMW or SUV are you really going to be happy filling it full of bug poo?

If you still need to know more about this, and if you do then you probably need help, you can read The Times article here.

Crisis comms

At Crisis Solutions we like to think we operate at the cutting edge of crisis management. To that end the Lizard would like to introduce you to the latest thinking in crisis communications…POETRY!

Here’s Wendy Cope on:

How to deal with the press
She’ll urge you to confide. Resist.
Be careful, courteous and cool.
Never trust a journalist.

‘We’re off the record’, she’ll insist.
If you believe her, you’re a fool.
She’ll urge you to confide. Resist.

Should you tell her who you’ve kissed,
You’ll see it all in print, and you’ll
Never trust a journalist

Again. The words are hers to twist,
And yours the risk of ridicule.
She’ll urge you to confide. Resist.

‘But X is nice,’ the publicist
Will tell you. ‘We were friends at school.’
Never trust a journalist,

Hostile, friendly, sober, pissed,
Male or female - that’s the rule.
When tempted to confide, resist.
Never trust a journalist.

Sun lounger

This may not seem the timeliest of publications, given the UK’s recent weather, but the Chief Medical Officer has just published The Heatwave Plan for England. We may not need it now, but we live in hope. Now where’s that holiday brochure…
Read the plan here

Pumping up discontent

The Lizard is a compassionate soul and would never kick a man when he’s down, which means that when it comes to Premier Brown he is rather out of step with the rest of the electorate – not to mention many Labour MPs. All of whom seem intent on doing just that.

We had the ‘election that never was’, we had the 10 pence tax u-turn, the electorate delivered the kicking that was the Crewe and Nantwich by-election and now the truckers are getting in on the act.

The fuel protests of 2000 were Tony Blair’s first real test, but back then he was still an overwhelmingly popular PM – not something you could say about Gordon – and he effectively saw them off.

The mantra coming out of the government now is that they are listening – so will they listen to the fuel protests? The lorry drivers are demanding an ‘essential users’ reduction on the price of diesel of anything between 20 and 25 pence a litre. Will they get it?

The Lizard is not a betting reptile but he wouldn’t bank on it. Don’t all drivers feel they are essential users? From the mum living in the countryside who has to get to Tesco to the chief executive who has to get to the airport. It might be fun to support the truckers now, but if they won, wouldn’t we all want a piece of the action?

The other problem the government has is the cost of such a reduction - they just don’t have the money to play with anymore. The 10p tax fiasco is said to have cost around £2.7bn and bought them not a single vote at the recent by-election. The government will almost certainly hesitate before dipping into their depleted coffers.

On the horizon we have the 2p tax increase on fuel scheduled for April but deferred till October. Given the huge increases on a barrel of oil and the subsequent price hikes at the pumps, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to predict that this will be quietly buried.

Then there are the VED (Vehicle Excise Duty) increases on older gas guzzling cars. Drivers will start paying more when they renew their tax discs next year.

The changes are likely to affect nearly 70 per cent of Britain's 26 million motorists, who could find themselves paying up to £245 a year more for their tax disc.

There are also plans to hit drivers with a £950 ‘showroom tax’ when they buy a new car.
One Labour MP had a nice line on all this, he called it a ‘poll tax on wheels’.

So will Gordon execute another hasty u-turn and grant the truckers their wishes or will the lorries just roll right over the government?

Canada's foreign minister resigns

Canada's embattled foreign minister, Maxime Bernier, has resigned after leaving classified documents at a private residence. Prime Minister Stephen Harper called it "a serious error."

But what exactly was the serious error? Well, having a girlfriend - Julie Couillard - linked to Hells Angels motorcycle gangs, having a girlfriend who likes to dress in a provocative manner (my picture shows the pair at the minister’s swearing in ceremony), having a girlfriend who is not publicity shy, having a girlfriend who is pretty upset over the minister’s efforts to terminate the relationship and above all having a girlfriend who is about to go on television to spill the beans might have something to do with it.

Now the Lizard has nothing against colourful characters or indeed attractive women. Carla Bruni could hardly be said to be a typical politician’s wife and certainly her past is colourful but she has done nothing but enhance the diminutive Gallic whirlwind that is M. Sarkosi.

Now, we don’t know what documents the minister left lying around and whether Hells Angels are busily poring over foreign office briefings.

But that is hardly the point - newspapers and the public love kiss and tell stories and it’s not Julie’s fault if she’s a little too hot to handle – the minister should have been more careful with classified material and should have had more control over his private life.

Of course, just hours before Bernier resigned the prime minister was saying, "I have no intention to comment on a minister's former girlfriend," Harper went on, "I don't take this subject seriously."

But with Julie about to go on the box the PM was forced to take it all very seriously indeed.

So in the end it seems it was the old story of there being no fury like a woman scorned and the woman in question too much for what is after all a Conservative government.

Bird flu, pandemic flu, tamiflu

A Lounger just recently returned from propping up the bar at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore comes bearing news of Singapore’s financial sector industry-wide exercise (IWE) which will run from Thursday, Aug 28 to Friday, Sep 11, 2008.

It will be run in three sessions and the scenario is an old favourite - pandemic flu.

If you want to know more here are slides used at a recent briefing and a link to the exercise portal:

www.calamityprevention.com/blog/BCM_Briefing_Session_IWE_08.pdf
www.iwe08.com.sg/c/portal/login

Tamiflu cocktails are now on sale at The Crisis Lounge.

Monkey Business

Every week one of the Lizard’s colleagues (his name is Yasir – by the way) collates an Incident Database so we can all keep tabs on the fresh crises and calamities that are besetting the world and keeping us in business.

Now Yasir is a military type and doesn’t use two words when one will do. This is what he had to say:

50 Greenpeace protesters accessed two Unilever plants in London, in protest at the company’s use of Palm Oil, which is claimed to damage the Indonesian Rainforest. The protesters left the site after 9 hours of talks with site managers.

Clear, concise and to the point – the only thing Yasir didn’t mention was that all the protestors were dressed as Orangutans.

They swung into action and made a monkey out of Unilever.

The protests were videoed by Greenpeace who were only too delighted to hand over the footage to the press. So that evening we were treated to a lot of monkey business on the news.

Crises come in many shapes and forms, but if one of the big environmental pressure groups come after you, then you really are in trouble.

The Lizard ran a media course last year. Delegates came form right across Europe from many different companies and organisations.

One of them is the head of press for WWF (no, not the World Wrestling Federation).

During proceedings the Lizard was banging on about how important it is to control press conferences and not let anyone in who might disrupt proceedings.

One way of doing this is to check the journalists’ press credentials. At which point the gentleman from the World Wildlife Fund said well I used to be a journo and I like to keep an up to date press card and here it is.

Another of their tactics is to buy a few shares in a company they want to target thus allowing them to wreak havoc during the AGM.

It’s enough to make you go ape.

Competition Time

The Lizard and his wife were out hobnobbing with the good and the great at the British Embassy ball last night.

All was going well until her Ladyship decided to get stuck into the charity auction - suffice it to say, it’s the Lizard’s bank account that could do with a charity donation right now.

However that’s by the by because it’s competition time and there’s a bottle of champagne on offer to the first Lounger to come up with the right answer to this question.

What country was this British Embassy ball held in? The only clue is that our man is the splendidly named Quinton Quayle.

Answers to information@crisis-solutions.com

Lounging in front of the TV

The Lizard isn’t usually given to watching daytime television, but the opportunity to see our PM cosying up to Fern Britton on ITV’s This Morning was too good to miss. And what a different Gordon we saw – there he was talking about his kids even touching on the fact his son Fraser has cystic fibrosis.

Now for such a private man this seemed unusual, but given the drubbing he’s recently been given by the electorate it seemed his spin-doctors felt a new, touchy-feely Gordon was required.

Well apparently not a bit of it. Nick Robinson, the Beeb’s political editor, has broken the story on his blog (www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson) that this was not how the interview was meant to go at all.

Over to Nick: Far from wanting to discuss his family, in particular his son Fraser's cystic fibrosis, Gordon Brown thought that there was an agreement that he would not be asked such questions. Indeed, reports reach me of furious members of Team Brown complaining that the pre-interview agreement had been broken.

Now at Crisis Solutions, we offer media training and this is an interesting case in point. What could be better than for the PM to go on a fairly light and fluffy TV show to start the uphill struggle of connecting with the public?

His media people would have set up and agreed the areas he wanted to address only to have the presenter ask all the questions he didn’t want to answer.

So how do you handle a situation like that when you are on live TV? The Crisis Solutions media team has some answers.

Actually this reminds the Lizard of a story regarding the former Defence Secretary Sir John Nott, who at the time of the Falkland crisis was interviewed by Robin Day who called him a ‘here today, gone tomorrow politician’.

Sir John took offence, tugged the microphone from his lapel and stormed out. Not something our media team would suggest.

But the story had a happy ending as rather bizarrely when he came to write his memoirs Nott called them ‘Here today gone tomorrow’.

Crisis? What crisis?

The Lounge Lizard, on behalf of Crisis Solutions, has been keeping himself busy lately, putting together a book that will be published shortly by the British Standards Institute.

It’s called Exercising for Excellence and tells you everything you need to know about running successful crisis simulations.

Well that’s what I thought it was about until the BSI said oh! no! you can’t use the word CRISIS – there is no such thing as a crisis anymore there are just INCIDENTS. Spooky huh?

So when The Lizard’s wife rams her ladyship’s car into a controversially located wall, is that an incident or a crisis?

Personally I like the word crisis, the dictionary on my computer describes it like this: a situation or period in which things are very uncertain, difficult, or painful, especially a time when action must be taken to avoid complete disaster or breakdown.

It describes an incident as: something that happens, especially a single event.

Now The Lounge Lizard and his cohorts at Crisis Solutions work in business continuity and crisis readiness and I know which definition describes what we get involved in.

Plus we are called Crisis Solutions so we like the word crisis – Incident Solutions seems a little flaccid. And where are you now, if not in The Crisis Lounge?

But of course we didn’t want to irritate our friends at the BSI as they are kindly publishing our book so in an attempt at not allowing an incident to turn into a crisis we immediately climbed down and removed all trace of the word crisis.

Actually we got away with one - a direct quote from Dr Henry Kissinger who memorably said, “Next week there can't be any crisis. My schedule is already full.”

Anybody got any thoughts on this? Perhaps we need to get our definitions sorted out. What is a crisis? What is an incident and how do they differ?

The Lounge Lizard – cyber investigator

The Lounge Lizard was interested to see that personal bank account details are apparently for sale over the Internet for as little as £5.

So says Symantec, the Internet security firm, who also report that UK bank account details were the most advertised items on black-market forums used to trade stolen information.

Now, The Lizard is neither a criminal nor is he tremendously adept with the laptop but he decided to do a little investigative reporting and tried looking for these elusive bank details on the net – to see how easy they are to find. He didn’t get very far.

At one point things were looking up as someone was offering all the child benefit details the government had lost, and The Lizard thought he could perform a public service - retrieve the information and hand it back to a tearful and grateful government.

He then considered that awkward questions might be asked as to what he was doing with the stuff in the first place at which point The Lounge Lizard’s career as a razor sharp investigative hack came to an abrupt end.

Of course it’s much easier if you just publish your bank account details in your weekly column as the petrol head funster Jeremy Clarkson decided to do.

The Top Gear host revealed his account numbers after rubbishing the furore over the loss of the above mentioned child benefit disks.

Unwisely, he wanted to prove it was all a fuss about nothing.

Next thing he knew he had unexpectedly donated £500 to charity.

“I was wrong and I have been punished” was his unusually mild response.