Talk:Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms

Untitled

Two articles separated by External Links? Which one is better? I suggest a merging job. ZephyrAnycon 7 July 2005 22:53 (UTC)

Ten stories down? Cite, please? -- Karada 10:47, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

[1] says " COBR is a suite of offices within the Cabinet Office building and as such would not give any protection against an attack.", and then goes on to describe PINDAR, which is an underground citadel. Without the presence of a cite, I think it's safe to assume that COBR is not deep underground. -- The Anome 10:46, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

Title

Given that the cited external links refer to COBRA, I propose that we move this back from Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms to Cabinet Office Briefing Room A.

James F. (talk) 22:16, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. Just because those links say Cobra does not mean it is correct (indeed, those articles could be the very cause of the claimed mistake in the addition of an 'a'). One could easily find official references to COBR (for example at the No10 and Cabinet Office sites) and substitute them for the existing links. What needs to be recognised is that there are many official references to both COBR and Cobra. Interestingly, the inclusion of an acronym usually presents the reader with 'COBR' while the inclusion of a name usually presents us with 'Cobra' - suggesting that the acronym has a basis in fact and the term is merely the written representation/transcription of the spoken word. [Also see the discussion on the 21 July attacks page regarding this subject.] 62.252.0.6 22:41, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

The Prime Minister's Official Spokesman refers to Cobra as does direct.gov.uk while UK Resilience (the Civil Contingencies Secretariat) refers to both COBR and Cobra. I think the text should make it clear that both are acceptable.

It has just been announced, in line with the very recent events in Iran concerning the seizure of UK Navy troops COBRA will meet at 4pm, should this be added to the article? (Announced at 1447 on BBC News 24)

This title will always cause a problem. It a semantic point, but an important one that "COBR" cannot "meet" it is a physical suite of buildings. It is "COBRA", the colloquial name of the Civil Contingencies Committee which meets in COBR room A. I think we should seek some form of standardisation of the terminology here and where we are talking about the meetings we should always use COBRA not COBR. Chris 18:02, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

COBRA is the proper term for a certain type of meeting. It is described here by Professor Helen Fenwick from Durham Law School What is COBRA? Here is The Home Office's Response to Terrorist Attacks - Home Affairs Committee Contents. It directly refers to COBRA. It is formalised here: Baldwin Clere (talk) 09:10, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

No it isn't. You might want to read the footnotes to the source you've cited (specifically page 5) which acknowledges that the report is using the terminology incorrectly (and then continues to use it wrongly anyway because of "popular usage"). Wikipedia should not perpetuate mistakes. COBR is a place, not a specific committee; different committees under different chairs can meet in one of the rooms in COBR; Conference Room A is in Kent's Treasury, another part of the Cabinet Office main building, not in COBR. Wiki-Ed (talk) 09:37, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

References

Glasgow Airport

They announced on BBC News 24 that Gordon Brown will, but hasn't yet 18:00 BST 30/6/07 held a COBRA meeting. You will probably want that it soon...? St91 17:00, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Incidents when COBR has been used

Do we really need to list every single (known) occurrence in the last couple of years? I'm sure there's a WP guideline somewhere advising against creating great long chronological lists like that. 81.158.0.187 11:52, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Director of the SAS

There is no such appointment as 'Director of the SAS'. There are Commanding Officers of the various SAS Regiments, and a Director Special Forces (DSF) that also has responsbility for other areas of UKSF responsibility. Darth Doctrinus 18:43, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

The mistake seems to have been eliminated now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.53.53.152 (talk) 07:41, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

There is Director Special Forces who heads all UKSF.Sammartinlai (talk) 09:11, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Seeing inside

If you are in the UK and can access the BBC iPlayer then watch "The Secret World of Whitehall" Part One: The Real Sir Humphrey to see the big steel door of COBRA and inside the room itself. --AlisonW (talk) 00:19, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Civil Contingencies Committee

COBR article goes into far greater details of the meetings, Civil Contingencies Committee would be better suited as a section in COBR. RA0808 ^talk_contribs 04:26, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Oppose they are distinct.Holland85 (talk) 03:31, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Oppose totally distinct and we'd have to list all the other committees and groups that use the facility. This should have been closed a long time ago. Wiki-Ed (talk) 21:25, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Classified?

From what I can find out it is similar to those at NORAD, CDC and other such facilities, mostly so suitably cleared and vetted officials can have access to the same information at predefined locations. These displays show a range of data such as: epidemic status, emergency responder locations and status, worldwide radiation levels, severe weather data and other vital information. They are on at all times but with backlights normally set at low power.

Mistaken?

Currently the article says of COBR:It is popularly, but mistakenly referred to as COBRA, even when the acronym is spelt out by officials.

I dispute the use of the word "mistaken" here, as both "COBRA" and even "Cobra" have entered into common use in British English. All that the source cited to support this sentence says is: COBRA is an acronym of “Cabinet Office Briefing Room A” where the strategy group supposedly meets. COBRA is not an officially recognised term and will therefore not be found in official documents and evidence. The official name for the strategy group is the Civil Contingencies Committee which is supported by a small secretariat and may meet in Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms (COBR). And that doesn't use the word "mistaken", or any synonym for it. However, the source also goes on to say However, given the popular usage of “COBRA”, unless otherwise stated, COBRA will be used as a synonym for all of the Government’s immediate strategic response structure, particularly the Civil Contingencies Committee.

As if that wasn't enough to show it's use isn't "mistaken", the word is defined as a noun in the Oxford University Press powered online dictionary here (COBRA²), with an example of its use in this context. Further more, the Guardian's style guide describes how to use the word as "Cobra" here. And any search of recent news articles covering Storm Dennis will show it is widely used by not only The Guardian, but also by BBC News, Sky News, the Independent, and many others.

I'm not sure what the second reference is supposed to be supporting as the most pertinent sentence in it says: Cobra meetings, or Cobr meetings as they are often also called, are named after Cabinet Office Briefing Room A on Whitehall.

I think we need a drastic reword to make it clear, and to not mislead readers into thinking its use is in any way mistaken. -- DeFacto (talk). 20:49, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

I think you're possibly misunderstanding the sources being used. The reason 'Cobra' is 'mistaken' is because the facility is not called by that name. There is no 'A' in the acronym. There is no Cabinet Room A. This is made up. The cited secondary references would - if you stopped removing the relevant parts - demonstrate that supposedly reliable sources deliberately opt to use the wrong terminology even when they are quoting primary sources that contradict them. One includes an explicit statement from the then Cabinet Secretary - who one might think is somewhat better informed than most - that 'COBR' is an acronym that spells out Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms (plural, no 'a'). The other admits it is using the popular term 'Cobra' instead of the official term 'COBR' despite the fact the author knows it is inaccurate. You can quote lots of examples of lazy journalism, but that doesn't make it any less wrong. If other online sources choose to mislead their readers, that is their choice, but we don't need to do that. Wiki-Ed (talk) 22:22, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

@Wiki-Ed: whatever their etymology, "Cobra/COBRA" are commonly used nouns in British English (did you see the dictionary entry) and so we must not imply such use is "mistaken". Journalists, lazy or not, often coin new words, which then enter the lexicon, and become "real" words. If those versions of the words are in common use in reliable sources, and they are, then we cannot say in Wikipedia's voice that their use is wrong. -- DeFacto (talk). 22:39, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

There may be a better word - by all means suggest one - but the fact it is misleading as to the name and nature of the facility should be mentioned. Not to do so would be misleading, especially when there are sources explaining there are differences between the official and popular spelling. Wiki-Ed (talk) 22:53, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

It is not misleading, it literally means exactly the same thing. The acronym has morphed into a proper noun with an 'a' added to aid pronounceability and make it look like a word. That's all there is to it. Why not add a section on etymology to the article to describe this, rather than pretending it hasn't happened? -- DeFacto (talk). 07:10, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

It literally does not mean the same thing. That is the point. You've quoted a report above that states: "COBRA will be used as a synonym for all of the Government’s immediate strategic response structure, particularly the Civil Contingencies Committee." It's not just the use of the word which (they acknowlege) is wrong, it's what it implies - everything that follows from it in that sentence. This article is about a facility called 'COBR'. The facility has more than one meeting room and hosts more than one committee, usually for non-crisis discussions. These sources imply there is a single room (the fictional 'Briefing Room A'), used by a single Ministerial committee (apparently the 'Civil Contingencies Committee') and used only in times of crisis (i.e. the only times they hear about it). That is misleading. Wiki-Ed (talk) 10:18, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

While there are still some mistakes, this source is at least a little bit more honest and accurate about the naming: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/cobr-cobra Wiki-Ed (talk) 22:30, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

@Wiki-Ed: all that shows is that they tend to use "COBR", but so what? They do not police or control English usage - no-one does. The Guardian prefer "Cobra", and even that new source says: COBR or COBRA is shorthand for the Civil Contingencies Committee that is convened to handle matters of national emergency or major disruption. It could hardly be any clearer really. -- DeFacto (talk). 22:44, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Not sure which bit you're reading. In the section entitled "Why is it sometimes called COBRA?" (note phrasing of question) we have the following: The origins of it being referred to as Cabinet Office Briefing Room A (COBRA) are not clear. It may have been confused with a Treasury briefing room A or because it made the acronym more obvious and memorable. This is not about policing or control of English usage, it is about explaining how a facility is structured and operates. If we imply it is a single room, or a single committee (that's wrong by the way and implies infrequent usage) then we mislead the reader. Wiki-Ed (talk) 22:53, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Add a section to cover how the facility is structured and operates then. But we shouldn't imply that the proper noun "Cobra" has not been coined, or try to pretend that "Cobra committee" isn't rightly used interchangeably with "COBR committee" as a common English phrase. -- DeFacto (talk). 07:19, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

You seem to be a victim of the same misinformation. There is no 'Cobra committee'. There are committees-that-meet-in-COBR, but they deal with different things and have a different composition. Civil emergencies (e.g. flooding, pandemics, terrorism) are within the remit of Civil Contingencies, but the group will vary to suit the event (e.g. it might be chaired by the PM or the Home Secretary). But those are infrequent. Other committees-that-meet-in-COBR discuss strategy or other matters, on a regular basis.

So in response to your proposal, no, it should be the other way around. A new section (or a hatnote or a reference as I suggested) which explains what the colloquailism means - presumably along the lines of the Parliamentary paper's explanation - as distinct from the subject of this article, which is the facility. Wiki-Ed (talk) 10:18, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

@Wiki-Ed: it seems to me that all but a couple of sentences in the current article are about the committees rather than the facility. So perhaps we should rename the article to reflect its content. Either way though, there's no escaping from the fact that the committees are commonly known as COBRA or Cobra Committees, not only in the press, but by the government, parliamentarians and civil servants too. We should not understate that, or misrepresent or disparage it. We should just describe it as is, without applying our personal POV or OR on the evolution of the phrase. -- DeFacto (talk). 21:10, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

In terms of word count it looks more like 50:50, depending upon how many crises are listed in the third paragraph. And to respond to your assertion that civil servants refer to it as 'COBRA' - no they don't - they think it's very silly and used to have a parody logo involving a snake. But putting that aside: it seems me that we're talking about different things. I'm talking about a physical facility with a given name (as per the title of the article); I think you are talking about a process - the UK government's emergency response process - and the committee(s) that support it. I wonder if that should be a separate article - 'UK Government civil emergency response processes (COBRA)' or something along those lines? I can't find anything under obvious title so I guess it would be a new article, extracting elements of this article, focusing more on committees and the events they respond to (and perhaps observations/critique of how they operate), but less on the physical locations they meet in. There's already a disambiguation page. Wiki-Ed (talk) 20:02, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

@Wiki-Ed: yes, that 76-word sentence certainly brought up the word count! I've now split what was there into two sections, one for the facility and one for the committees. I didn't change any of the wording (although I obviously de-bolded it) or referencing, although I did move, what was the last sentence, into the first section - where it is more relevant. Now we can see how it develops, and split it or rename it, if appropriate, later. I also 'summarised' the article, mainly from the old first sentence to be honest, as the new lead, which keeps the bolding, but loses the references. -- DeFacto (talk). 21:09, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Okay that looks fine to me. I've tweaked the final sentence of the introductory text: popularly/mistakenly would require explanation - as per discussion above - and in this new structure that sits better in the 'facility' section. Wiki-Ed (talk) 23:27, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

@Wiki-Ed: and as the cited source in the body explains, they use the popular term as a synonym for the official term - and never suggest it is mistaken, so without any convincing reference supporting the use of that characterisation, it clearly isn't correct to say it's mistaken in the body text either. So I've updated the body text too, so the lead now once again accurately summarises the body. -- DeFacto (talk). 09:43, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Proposed rewording of first paragraph

Given the evidence above, I propose rewording the first paragraph something like this:

The Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms, also known as COBRA, Cobra and COBR, are a group of meeting rooms in the Cabinet Office at 70 Whitehall in London, often used for different committees which co-ordinate the actions of bodies within the Government of the United Kingdom in response to instances of national or regional crisis, or during events abroad with major implications for the UK. In official reports and evidence, the government uses the form "COBR". Other meeting rooms in the Cabinet Office are not part of the COBR facility, including the old Treasury Board Room, which is labelled "Conference Room A", located in Kent's Treasury, a different part of the Cabinet Office building.

Any comments, suggestions or alternatives? -- DeFacto (talk). 21:05, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Alternative: move all naming information to a hatnote/reference and explain how/why certain sources use the wrong term, just to avoid misleading readers and perpetuating the fiction. Wiki-Ed (talk) 22:26, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

@Wiki-Ed: it's now fact, not fiction. The word has entered the lexicon, so is not wrong, it's just an alternative. -- DeFacto (talk). 22:47, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Proposed new paragraph

Use of the term 'COBRA' The term 'COBRA' is often used in the press (insert sources) as shorthand for the UK government's civil emergency response process (insert Parliamentary source). Although the origin is unclear, it may have come about because it makes the acronym more obvious and memorable (insert Institute for Government Source) or, alternatively it may have been confused with other meeting rooms in the Cabinet Office which are not part of the COBR facility, including the old Treasury Board Room, which is labelled "Conference Room A", and located in Kent's Treasury, a different part of the Cabinet Office building. (insert Independent source) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wiki-Ed (talk • contribs) 10:36, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Let's try and be a bit more neutral, attribute the opinions, and accept the reality. How about something like: The [whatever the official term is] committees are commonly known as "COBRA" or "Cobra Committees".(can ref to the OUP dictionary) Although the origin of the term is unclear, the Institute for Government suggest it may have come about because it makes the original "COBR" acronym more obvious and memorable or, alternatively, the Independent suggests, it may have been confused with other meeting rooms in the Cabinet Office which are not part of the COBR facility, including the old Treasury Board Room, which is labelled "Conference Room A", and located in Kent's Treasury, a different part of the Cabinet Office building. -- DeFacto (talk). 21:30, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

References

Highly Dubious Reference

On April 19th 2020, a Twitter reference to a Sky News clip of Iain Duncan Smith describing what COBRA means. This is a violation of WP:TWITTER since the tweet is not being used as a reference for the parties involved (Sky News or Iain Duncan Smith), but instead is being used as a reference for another topic (the meaning of a "COBRA" meeting). Given the main subject of the clip is currently a highly charged political topic ("It is normal for a Prime Minister not to be at COBRA meetings.") this reference should be removed. 2A02:C7F:6C11:EB00:79B4:E2B6:B944:ECA5 (talk) 08:30, 20 April 2020 (UTC)