Says it all really
New tours of the facility have now started which take just one hour, rather than 90 minutes, to help pack even more tourists in.
Volunteers slam plans to turn Bletchley Park into 'geeky Disneyland'
Bletchley Park is planning to replace its volunteer tour guides with actors in a bid to turn the historical attraction into a "geeky Disneyland", The Register has learned. A number of people contacted The Reg after we wrote about the Bletchley Park Trust's decision to sack a pensioner after he showed visitors around the …
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 12:16 GMT alain williams
Re: Says it all really
Yesterday Iain Standen phoned me back after I called to complain about the fracas. He told me that the tours had been standardised and that 90 minutes was too long for visitors.
I said that visitors should be given the choice.
He seemed to know of the discussion on El Reg; I said that he should contact them to give his side of the story.
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 14:32 GMT Martin Gregorie
Re: Says it all really
He told me that the tours had been standardised and that 90 minutes was too long for visitors.
He really is a complete pillock.
I've done the tour twice and on both occasions it felt about right for length. A lot of the most interesting stuff is the result of having time to talk to the guides and for them to be able to follow up interesting questions with extra details that aren't part of the standard talk.
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 16:16 GMT IsJustabloke
Re: Says it all really
Providing the tour isn't compulsory they can make it as short as they like.
I showed myself round and found a member of staff to ask whenever I wanted to know something. They were all without exception knowledgeable and approachable. I also had a long chat with the owner of the Churchill collection.
Seems a shame that this corporate suit is determined to ruin everything.
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 22:07 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: Polish cryptographers!!
To be true, Poland is a country that grows, shrinks, disappears, then reappears, then is forcefully visited by funky Trotsky and his Red Army, then stabilizes, then disappears in a double-sided hostile takeover, then is sold for by FDR to jovial Russians for a presidential election win, then reappears in modified form shifted to the left on the map, then unsovietizes only to be europized later.
It is hard to honour national heroes while doing this kind of electric boogaloo.
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Thursday 30th January 2014 06:26 GMT Clive Harris
Re: Polish cryptographers!! My father worked on it
My father worked on the Polish coding machine. As a young apprentice draughtsman, he was given the job of preparing engineering drawings based on one of the first machines smuggled out of Poland. The work was done in top secret with an armed guard permanently at the door. He had to hand all materials and documents to the guard when he left the room and he was told he would be put up against a wall and shot if he ever mentioned what he saw in that room. Even in the 1990's he was nervous about telling me about it. He described it as looking like a small typewriter with some numbered wheels on it.
Because of this job, and what he had seen in that room, he was forbidden from doing active service in the forces overseas afterwards, due to the risk of capture (although he did his share of air raid duty in London)
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 11:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
I look forward to them telling the story of how the Americans cracked the Enigma code.
Could try the approach taken by the Deutches Museum in Munich (well at least was the case ~20 years ago) in their "History of Computing" section where there was a single panel on Alan Turing describing how he'd contributed to the development of computing while working on some unspecified project during the period 1940-45. Then the exhibition returned to the story of the German invention of computing.
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 17:15 GMT Nigel 11
the story of the German invention of computing.
Which is actually true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse
Cracking Enigma was a huge achievement, but the hardware used was not a general-purpose computer. Turing's other contributions of genius were to the mathematics of computing and computability. He wasn't an engineer.
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 09:38 GMT Admiral Grace Hopper
One hour?
Blimey, that's a bit swift. I've been on the Bletchley Park tour a few times and found it perfectly paced at 90 minutes. Mind you, if they're not taking in the Tunny/Colossus exhibit in the National Museum of Computing then that will save some time - pointlessy, stupidly and inadvisedly, but it will save some time.
The decisions being taken by the Bletchley Park Trust seem bent on ripping apart two collections that really do have synergy - the one time that word does have a place in describing in how a place should be run and management are running away from it.
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 11:07 GMT Dave 126
Re: Time for The Register to weigh in methinks.
A damn good idea. And perhaps a popular public figure with a very large twitter following and an interest in history, gay rights and technology could be recruited to raise awareness of this campaign amongst the general population?
Oh wait, Mr Orlowski has other ideas. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/28/stephen_fry_says_kildall_was_cracked/
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Thursday 30th January 2014 11:51 GMT davemcwish
Re: Time for The Register to weigh in methinks.
Another reason is that he's done an introduction to the 'multimedia visitors guide'.
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/news/v.rhtm/New_for_Summer_2013_Multimedia_Guide-697252.html
I suspect that the ultimate aim is to dispense with the warm bodies and use gadgets instead.
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 12:58 GMT Paul_Murphy
Re: Time for The Register to weigh in methinks.
My Thought:
The Register picks a saturday and published it to it's readership.
The Register designs a NMOC 'flag' for people to print
On said saturday the readership does it's damnest to attend TNMOC, not BPT, with printed flags,
When leaving the TNMOC people leave their flags with a personal note on the back.
There is no profit, aside from a point being made perhaps.
ttfn
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 14:11 GMT wolfetone
Re: Time for The Register to weigh in methinks.
Computer people of the world unite!!!
Joking aside, something has to be done. I was that pissed off with what I read yesterday I paid £50 to TNMOC (and Gift Aid of course) to become a member. Bletchley won't get a single penny of my money ever again until they stop what they are doing.
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 09:53 GMT stu 4
Surely it can be changed ?
As a trust and a registered charity, the power to change this lies with the trustees does it not ?
The list is here:
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/about/BPTrust.rhtm
It would be interesting to hear what some of them have to say about all this (El Reg....)
The CEO should only be implementing their wishes. So, Standen being an arsehole* aside, what he is doing is surely what the trustees have asked him to do.
stu
*how did he get to CEO ? Even his bio on the site seems to suggest he was in the army, then here - totally unqualified for a role like this.
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 11:24 GMT Bumpy Cat
Re: Surely it can be changed ?
I agree that he doesn't seem to have a very good idea of how to run Bletchley Park. However, his bio actually says the complete opposite to what you say - he's ex-Signals, working in intelligence and signals, which is a direct descendant of the wartime work of Bletchley Park. He's also, since he left the Army, worked in battlefield history and tours, so he also apparently has an interest in history and communicating it to others.
That does seem at odds with the Disneyfication of Bletchley, but there's no accounting for one person's ideas on how to do something.
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 11:35 GMT stu 4
Re: Surely it can be changed ?
>I agree that he doesn't seem to have a very good idea of how to run Bletchley Park. However, his bio >actually says the complete opposite to what you say - he's ex-Signals, working in intelligence and >signals, which is a direct descendant of the wartime work of Bletchley Park. He's also, since he left >the Army, worked in battlefield history and tours, so he also apparently has an interest in history and >communicating it to others.
I know what you are saying - but being in the same sector is hardly the most important pre-req for a CEO - it's senior management experience, previous CEO experience, experience on other boards, etc.
His bio says he was an officer in the army, and then a tour guide... not someone I'd have employed to run a company.
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 11:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Surely it can be changed ?
stu 4: I agree. Iain Standen is probably a typical "Rupert", a product of the British Army officer corps where the old school tie are what matters, and the lower ranks are there to be bossed around. As for Signals, they had bugger all to do with wartime Bletchley Park, where much of the key personnel were on secondment from academia and organisations such as the General Post Office.
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 23:52 GMT Plausible Denial
Re: Surely it can be changed ?
"As for Signals, they had bugger all to do with wartime Bletchley Park, where much of the key personnel were on secondment from academia and organisations such as the General Post Office."
Nonsense. The Royal Corps of Signals, as the Army's specialist Signal organisation, was closely involved with Bletchley Park, and especially the intercept stations - the "Y" Service - during WW2.
A quick glance through the published works on the subject would reveal that.
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 09:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
Cloak and dagger at the BBC.
There was some discussion on another (punctuation based) tech news site the other day about how the BBC had mysteriously pulled this story (which had thankfully been mirrored to youtube) only to re-instate it a few days later subtly altered. There was also some suggestion that Bletchley parks board of directors (which reads like a VIP guest list) may have had something to do with this.
Not party to any of the politics, just know El Reg loves a good conspiracy theory.
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 10:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Cloak and dagger at the BBC.
Someone commented yesterday that the "subtle alteration" was to remove a "copyrihg image" from the start of the clip. I assume the process went along the lines of
BPT1: "The BBC are making that clip available on their newsite and its pretty embarrasing for us - what can we do about it?"
BPT2: "Well, see that picture at the start, that's something we own the copyright to so we can asked them to take the clip down on copyrihgt infingement grounds" <rings BBC>
BBC: "Ok, you got us bang to rights guv, well take the clip down" <takes clip down, gets out video editor and removes image, puts clip back up again>
BPT1&2: "and that just makes us look even worse" <facepalm>
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 09:59 GMT ukgnome
Whilst I want Bletchley to keep going
I do understand the cost to keep it open, even with volunteers......But this is wrong, I actually used to work as an actor in a fish museum (year I know right) but the thing that amazed me about that role was summed up in this article, and seemingly I think it applies to any niche historical museum.
"namely a British quirkiness arising from an extensive range of exhibits manned by volunteers who knew their stuff and were happy to share it."
This was the case when I visited Bletchley the first time, I had an hour long conversation about valves and how they work. The chap also gave me an up close tour of the machine room because I had an enthusiasm that he liked. What actor would do that?
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Wednesday 29th January 2014 11:07 GMT fixit_f
Re: Whilst I want Bletchley to keep going
Couldn't agree more - have you been to the Science museum in London recently? It's all "interactive exhibits" and touch screens now and it seems they want to take Bletchley Park down that same path. I've been twice, and the first time I was fortunate enough to spend a good ten minutes chatting with Tony Sale which was just an amazing experience. He told me all about how when he was building the colossus replica he would get tipped off about old analogue telephone exchanges being decommissioned, and he and his mates would turn up there and climb into the skips out the back to scavenge rare GPO parts. Speaking to people like Tony was the whole appeal of the place to me, and there were plenty like me who visited the place from far and wide exactly because they'd heard it was the opposite of most museums - I initially found out about it from a great book called "Bollocks to Alton Towers" which is all about the theme of finding quirky British attractions. If it becomes sanitised, it just becomes another crappy modern museum, albeit one in the middle of bloody nowhere well off the tourist trail with a very limited audience. Welcome though the lottery funding is for much needed restoration of buildings, bringing in this consulti-twunt to make these changes sounds like a recipe for disaster and something really should be done before it's too late and he's alienated the very small pool of knowledgeable people who bring the place to life.
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Thursday 30th January 2014 11:33 GMT davemcwish
Re: Whilst I want Bletchley to keep going
@fixit_f There's also a sequel to that book called "Far From the Sodding Crowd", have got both. Agree with all the comments. The success, or otherwise, of these places is that it's the knowledge of the guides that crucial not some standard script designed to maximize the throughput of guests by minimizing questions for which a detailed answer is required.
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