Boris-isms

When I first cut my teeth in IT back in the 80’s, IBM processors were water cooled, took up sports hall sized rooms and had panels of flashing lights like in Billion Dollar Brain. I was working on a development project in Derby as a contract programmer, using PL/I and IMS/DB. The project had a project team which consisted of a team leader, a couple of analysts, a handful of contract programmers, which included me and a guy who I recall was the test engineer and documentation writer. He had a habit of coming out with truly wonderful comments in complete innocence, which were really quite daft. The team leader wrote these down in school exercise books which were shown to anyone with a passing interest, I imagine to demonstrate his superiority over the documentor. This was of course, cruel and unnecessary and did little to generate any respect for the team leader nor any extra effort when the inevitable request came for a bit of unpaid overtime.

This was of course all pre-internet, and I expect the aphorisms have all been lost, unlike the Bush-isms “The trouble with the French is they have no word for entrepreneur”, or the Rumsfeld-isms “We have known knowns etc etc”.

Yesterday I read a wonderful one from Boris Johnson. Boris has been my hero ever since have I got news for you, but his comment “I now know that there are no disasters just opportunities and of course lots of opportunities for fresh disasters”, is not just going to be immortalised on this blog, it is also pinned to my wall over my desk.

It is a very refreshing take on so much of the bilge that flows into my inbox every day. A gentle reminder to think before you act and to try and make the best of everything that comes your way, without overcomplicating.