Sunday 18 August 2013

A note of correction – and apologies to the Royal Bank of Scotland

I made a silly mistake when posting a blog entry recently, and accordingly offer an unreserved apology to all my chums at the Royal Bank of Scotland.

What happened?

Well, I was so taken with the story that the ICO had fined the Bank of Scotland  £75,000 for continually faxing various documents to two wrong numbers that I blogged about it. Nothing wrong with the text. But there was something wrong with the accompanying image – which was of the logo of the Royal Bank of Scotland, rather than the Bank of Scotland.  Oops. My lack of knowledge of the Scottish banking scene shines through. I ought to have known that there was a Bank of Scotland, as well as a Royal Bank of Scotland.  But if I did, in the heat of the moment in searching for an appropriate image, I forgot.  A more appropriate image (the logo of the Bank of Scotland) accompanies that blog posting, now.

My mistake came at a useful time  - if any time can be considered “useful”, that is. I recently had lunch with a chum had experienced the age-old problem of an inappropriate email having being sent to the wrong address. No harm was done, and the incident was quickly contained. The recipient destroyed their copy without forwarding it to anyone else. The sender was just glad that no incriminating photos accompanied the informal “how nice it was to meet you last night” note. My chum was extremely embarrassed about the incident – but we agreed that it did serve as a reminder about how careful we need to be when communicating anything, these days. It’s so easy to hit the “send” button without checking absolutely everything.  Even now I cringe as I remember some of the typos that were not spotted and still exist in documents I’m associated with that are now in the public domain. Fortunately, most of these documents are evidently so boring that few people have noticed the typos. Of if they have, they have (mostly) been too busy to tell me.

I’m glad that, in this case, my chums at RBS got in touch to tell me about my howler, so that I could correct it. It would have been equally nice if someone at the Bank of Scotland had pointed out that I had used someone-else’s logo  in relation to “their” story – but never mind. We all do the best we can. We all make mistakes, too – but hopefully we can cheerfully correct those that are notified to us, and hope that no offence is taken by our lack of diligence. 

One of the first times I can remember the names of institutions getting mixed up was during the wonderful “Children’s Matinee at the Coliseum” scene in the 1979 movie Life of Brian. Devotees of the film will remember the following exchange taking place:

Brian: Are you the Judean People's Front?

Reg: F*** off!

Brian: What?

Reg: Judean People's Front! We're The People's Front of Judea! Judean People's Front, God!

Rogers: Blighters...

Brian: Can I...join your group?

Reg: No, piss off!

Brian: I didn't want to sell this stuff, it's only a job! I hate the Romans as much as anybody!

All in PFJ except Brian: Ssch! Ssch! Ssch! Ssch! Ssch!

Brian: Oh.

Judith: Are you sure?

Brian: Oh, dead sure. I hate the Romans already.

Reg: Listen! If you wanted to join the PFJ, you'd have to have really hate the Romans.

Brian: I do!

Reg: Oh, yeah, how much?

Brian: A lot!

Reg: Right, you're in. Listen, the only people we hate more than the Romans, are the f****** Judean People's Front.

All in PFJ except Brian: Yeah!

Judith: Splitters!

Rogers: And the Judean Popular People's Front!

All in PFJ except Brian: Yeah! Splitters!

Loretta: And the People's Front of Judea!

All in PFJ except Brian: Yeah! Splitters!

Reg: What?

Loretta: The People's Front of Judea. Splitters!

Reg: We are the People's Front of Judea!

Loretta: Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front.

Reg: People's Front! God...

Rogers: Whatever happened to the Popular Front, Reg?

Reg: He's over there.

All in PFJ except Brian: Splitter!



Sources:
http://dataprotector.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/another-unforgivable-data-breach.html
The movie script for Monty Python’s Life of Brian can be found at http://sfy.ru/?script=mp_brian

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