The Weekly Round-Up: 19.06.09

The Round-Up is sure you've had a boss who, quite frankly, was a complete git. We all have.

Maybe you are such a boss, in which case the Round-Up suggests you take a good, hard look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself where it all went wrong.

However, the Round-Up suspects few of you have had a boss so rotten he aimed a hunting rifle at members of staff to motivate them to work harder.

It's not a great motivational technique, is it?

According to research published this week, the gun-wielding manager is not alone: more than half of IT and telecoms managers have become worse at motivating staff since the recession began.

The research claims that one-third have increased their criticism and blaming of others, 37 per cent have hidden themselves away and more than one in five have simply become indifferent.

Meanwhile, 29 per cent are pretending that nothing's happening and 15 per cent have started shouting and raging, according to a survey of more than 1,600 traumatised workers.

The Keep Britain Working campaign, who published the research, also highlighted a few examples of the more outlandish line management techniques in use in the technology sector.

The Round-Up has already mentioned the boss who brought in his hunting rifle and pretended to fire it at staff to make them work harder - but it repeats it because it deserves repeating.

Then there was also the cost-cutting boss who made her staff clean toilets because she'd sacked the cleaners. It's not made clear whether said boss made the workers pay for their own cleaning equipment.

Finally, there was the telecoms boss who started chanting "hit this target, keep your job... hit this target, keep your job", at his panicked sales force.

It's hardly a glittering picture of middle-tier management techniques and tactics.

The oppressed workers, rather unsurprisingly, said they feel less motivated and less productive when they have guns aimed at them or are treated as human toilet brushes.

Maybe this is nothing. Maybe you have a boss so ill-tempered he or she makes Alan Sugar look like a children's TV presenter.

Poor you. But if you have, let the Round-Up know by emailing editorial@silicon.com to share your pain. It's the first step on the road to healing...

Given how prevalent tales of data loss in the public sector have become, perhaps the government shouldn't have chosen a USB stick as the logo for the blueprint for Britain's digital future it released this week.

The rather baldly named Digital Britain report has been talked up for months and promised to send Blighty heading down the information superhighway into a glowing high-tech future, laden with economic riches and broadband pipes guaranteeing more speed then Jenson Button with his foot down.

So what did we get? The Round-Up tore the cellophane off its copy with all the excitement of a kid at Christmas. And finished reading it with all the excitement of a kid at Christmas who found Santa Claus had brought him a crossword book with the answers filled in.

In short, the general response to Digital Britain was a great big 'meh'. The most common complaints: that it didn't go far enough, that it levied additional tariffs on the great taxed British population, and that it was generally a bit rubbish.

Under plans unveiled in the report, ISPs and cable providers are being expected to bring the digital revolution to every last home in the country - which is jolly agreeable news for all the people currently without broadband.

As previously signalled, the government has pledged that nobody on this sceptred isle will go without broadband, with a whopping 2Mbps being the minimum.

The report also revealed that everyone with a fixed line phone connection is going to have to fork out 50p per month to fund the project to lay fibre optic cable up and down mountains and through deep, dark forest.

Needless to say, the talk of a 'telephone tax' provoked all manner of carping from those likely to have to spend an extra 50p per month. The Round-Up wonders what all the fuss is about - surely 50p for 2Mbps broadband is a bit of a bargain. You wouldn't get two trips to the toilets in King's Cross train station for that.

Digital Britain also put the mockers on illegal file-sharers, with tougher sanctions and ISPs having to fork out to monitor and police all their activities.

The music and movie industries are happy, though. And that's the most important part, right?

Also in the report: The BBC looks likely to lose its vice-like grip on the monies raised by the licence fee under the report, with some of the cash (about £130m) likely to go to fund local TV programmes and more broadband connections for underwater villages.

The Tories, unsurprisingly, have slammed the plan. They've probably got a point but they didn't have to be so predictable about it.

Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative Party's shadow secretary of state for culture, media and sport, waved his arms about frantically and called Digital Britain a "colossal disappointment". He also roundly criticised the new fat pipe tax.

Hunt pointed out that Digital Britain announced 12 new consultations and called the report "government of the management consultants, for the management consultants, by the management consultants".

Catchy phrase, eh?

Still, give it a few months and he'll probably be in a position to cut the tax altogether, which the Round-Up is sure he'll do just as publicly.

In the meantime, silicon.com reader Anthony Hunt put it rather succinctly: "'Digital Britain' is a zero not a one..."

Also this week - a big triumph for social media, as Twitter proved it's a conduit for more than just updates on what you ate for breakfast this morning.

Twitter delayed a scheduled downtime of its service to allow Iranian users to keep on posting updates on the political turmoil taking place in their country.

As hundreds of thousands of Iranian citizens took to the streets to dispute the recent elections, the Iranian government shut down traditional communications channels and shut out foreign news teams.

In turn, many protestors took to the microblogging technology to tell the world what was really happening on the streets. The tweets were soon re-posted by thousands of people around the globe raising awareness of what was taking place.

Given the success of Twitter in communicating the protests, the company abandoned plans for an outage that would have coincided with peak time for Iranian tweeting.

There's some confusion over who made the decision, though.

According to some reports, the US State Department made the request to Twitter management to shift the planned downtime to the early hours of the morning, Tehran time.

However, in a blog post, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone insisted it was the company's own call. "It's important to note that the State Department does not have access to our decision-making process," he wrote. Rather frostily.

Still Stone went on to make some conciliatory gestures in the general direction of the State Department.

"Nevertheless, we can both agree that the open exchange of information is a positive force in the world."

Bravo, Biz.

The Round-Up admits there haven't been too many gags in this bit but sometimes there just doesn't need to be...

Finally, in other news this week: Mac Tablet rumours? Do we believe them? Not really but that won't stop the frantic cries of joy from the fanboys.

Wait, what's this? It's hugely unpopular. It will cost billions. And it won't work. All the ingredients for another winning government IT project!.

Glory. Prizes. Fame. Carnal pleasure. All this could be yours*. It could only be the silicon.com Caption Competition. Oh, yes.

* Possibly.