Posts by Steve Barnes
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Hard News: The Next Act, in reply to David Ritchie,
“He did a straight pitch for a knighthood,” a source said.
I was rather surprised to find Helen Clark pushing for an honour for this guy after the remarkable arrogance shown to Kofi Annan a well respected and much honoured colleague of hers.
Russell had a thing or two to say at the time.
The Clark thing aside I would have thought insulting such a respected international figure should have precluded the man from any form of official honour, this fact alone reflects badly on us as a country and we should feel ashamed that our Prime Minister and former Prime Minister feel that this man deserved any honour whatsoever.
I, for one, shall remember Mr Paul Holmes as that cheeky dead guy. -
What is wrong with this statement?.
He warned schools to brace themselves for what would be the toughest test on the system yet because of the changes to secondary teachers' pay rates as a result of the new secondary teachers collective agreement.
Surely if the agreement is collective all you should have to do is change the value of a pay-scale code? surely?
If not then the system will never work. -
Capture: Someone, Somewhere, In Summertime, in reply to ChrisW,
National Party’s promised Brighter Future
Trouble with National voters is one is born every minute.
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Capture: Someone, Somewhere, In Summertime, in reply to Lilith __,
And doesn’t he look suave in that hat. :-)
He wears a hat?
That explains the shape of his head.
;-) -
Trawling through some old pix of summers past I came upon this innocuous little snap.
On looking closer I discovered this chap who I did not know then but I do know now. Weird eh?
The co-incidence, not the chap. -
Up Front: In Committee, in reply to BenWilson,
:-D Ace
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Here is approximately 30 meters of Hose. (for reasons that will become apparent)
Interesting input as usual from the usual suspects ;-) and completely ignoring my point thus causing a derailment of the topic at hand. Well done. Only on Public Address could we go from marriage equality to tape measure inequality.
For the record and for those of you that can’t remember records, they were mostly black, like Guinness. (see what I did there?) I do, indeed use all kinds of mathematical trickery in both design and construction, why wooden eye?. Here’s one most people miss and is very useful. When you have a coil of something, like wire or a hose OWHY
then figuring out the quantity of material on that coil is as simple as the number of turns X the mean diameter X 3. This will give you a good approximation of its length.
It won’t, on the other hand, give any indication of the moral stance you should take on anyone having a relationship with a hose or length of #8 fencing wire which is, as I am sure we would all agree is a very important insight into the Kiwi psyche. -
I am still amazed by the amount of pride some people take in their ignorance, you may call it bigotry but if you delve a little deeper you will see that I am right, pride in ignorance is a National Disgrace.
Allow me to illustrate.
I have a guy that helps me out with ditch digging, carrying heavy things and entertaining us with his searing insights on Humanity. He is not so good at things like Maths because, as he says… “They tried to teach us that new maths at school so I didn’t learn anything… all that A+B=C shit. What’s all that about eh?”
I did attempt to enlighten him on Pythagoras, as a way of ensuring things were square… “If you measure 3 metres along this edge, 4 along this edge then the diagonal should measure 5 because the Square on the Hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other 2 sides. 3x3=9, 4x4=16, 16+9= 25 and the square root of 25 is?”
The blank look gradually turned to anger “Roots, squares? what the fuck are you on about you fuckin’ geek?”
Oh Joy.
He is a sweet enough guy apart from his exceptional ability to exemplify Conservative attitudes toward anything that… well anything really. He has a cute little dog that he treats like a small child. I must point out that if it were indeed a small child he would be doing hard jail time for his intimacy. Back to the cute dog. I mentioned to him, jokingly, that if he were to continue treating his dog in this way little Billy could grow up to be Gay. His reaction to this piece of misguided humour on my part shocked me to the core…
“If Billy turns out to be Gay I will leave him chained up outside”
What, I wonder, is he actually frightened of?.So. Pride in ignorance is the hurdle we must conquer, otherwise we may find ourselves chained and barking up the wrong tree.
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Thanks Tim, the stink pile gets deeper but I am not going to be the guy who puts his head on the block, that position belongs to those that claim the responsibility for such a wonderful example of government incompetence, or as they call it.... progress.
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Digging into Novopay
After a little research, looking at Wikipedia, I came up with some interesting facts...
The Ministry of Education's payroll used to be run by Datacom, partly owned partly by NZ Post (35%) until that shareholding was sold to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund for $142m in December 2012, less than 6 months after NZ Post incorporated a new payroll scheme designed by Talent 2, the creators of the infamous Novopay system."Datacom lost the contract to Talent 2, the creators of Novopay in a competitive tender in 2007(1). Datacom’s chief executive, Greg Davidson, claims the company had a reputation for the “accurate delivery of pay to teachers" and says “we’re proud of our extended track record of delivering the payroll with minimal fuss and error for the duration of our watch."
NZ Post experienced problems similar to those being faced by the Education Ministry.
One has to ask why a New Zealand owned and operated, proven, system was ditched by this Government in favour of a small Australian owned Public Relations company prone to failure.“Novopay is one of the largest payroll systems in Australasia covering approximately 110,000 people and 15 separate collective agreements. After meeting with the key parties involved over the past week, it is clear the issues it has are complex, that there is no quick fix, and problems will continue for some time,”
Steven JoyceIs the Government RFP process broken?
by Software vendor CEOIn last week's Newsline Juha Saarinen discussed an article from TradeMe's Mike O'Donnell about the RFP process. We were contacted by a number of New Zealand vendors with similar concerns. This commentary outlines in detail some of the problems from the perspective of a CEO of a medium-sized company with a history of dealing with Government. For obvious reasons the author has chosen to remain anonymous.
(1)
Datacom were told the loss of the contract centred on Talent 2 offering “a more proven system”
http://www.listener.co.nz/commentary/the-internaut/leaked-email-novopay-forerunner-laments-having-our-good-record-tarnished/.Tui ad anyone?.
And the last word goes to Greg Davidson at Datacom
eMail to staff at Christmas
