I imagine that's the reason the change wasn't resisted too strongly. The government could still use the country's xenophobia to deflect the blame onto those dirty Euro-wogs.

Most of this dual measurement in shops (including the change from gallons to litres at the petrol pumps) came about as part of 'closer European ties' back in the 90s, IIRC. There were certain things the government wouldn't budge on, such as changing road signs to miles, and getting rid of the good old British pint glass.

Actually, they're called 'kilometres' unless you want to be associated with your southern neighbours. Depends how much of a snooty Canadian you are, I suppose.

Tough, yes. Needlessly tough, no.

Yup, harshest place in the world.

I loved this guy in Kelly's Heroes.

I'll take Nazis over poor use of apostrophes any day.

They are always assholes.

An 84 inch television is a massive waste of wall space, and of life.

I agree, innovation is the way to go, but not at the expense of the business. The team has a lot of flexibility in the way they work. But there are always some places where they're not going.

I'm sometimes guilty of the latter, but not of the former. A manual change effected by a sysadmin typing into a shell is different from one embodied in a piece of code, and they're actually subject to different processes. Change/release management does (should!) indeed apply to sysadmin activities, but there are these things called 'standard changes' which cover the typically mundane things like user Add/Move/Changes, that you don't want to go to a Change Control Board each time to get the go ahead. However they also cover stuff your sysadmin does in his/her/(but probably his) day to day work. Like pretty much everything they do, in fact. The weakness is generally nobody knows how a sysadmin spends their day, which makes these things difficult to control. But anyway, one or two changes made by a sysadmin isn't what we're talking about here. We're talking about automation, which means complexity, which means unforeseen results. That must be held to a higher standard and policed accordingly.

Most sysadmins are playing with prod systems to some degree - even if they're just gathering stats, it can have an impact, because the system they are querying still needs to spend cycles responding to the query. I have seen situations where prod performance has been degraded significantly because of best intentions to gather meaningful data. They are rare occasions, but they are still very damaging.

Nope. You fail to understand what risk is, and how to characterise it. Stick to your knitting.

Remember this line? "Those are the approaches I've taken, although it will ultimately depend on your organisation's skill mix and personnel availability." If you want to continue changing the parameters of the problem, you can find a flaw in any proposed solution. I'll leave you to move the goalposts on your own.