Posts by Rich Lock
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
Would you respect me more if I wasn’t disappointed?
'Fraid so.
This is going to sound very harsh, and I do regret that, but if you vote for a party that then acts in an entirely predictable way that is consistent with their election promises and general vibe, then you don't get to act disappointed and surprised. You take one of Danielle's Harden Up pills and own the consequences.
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to Sacha,
where people think that future prosperity will look the same as it did in the 1950s.
India and China have huge percentages of phd's and engineers, compared to the 'old west'.
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On what basis do people vote? I can personally see three levels of reasoning. Voting for a particular MP that you like and trust. Voting for a party which represents policies you like. Or voting for a party whose ideology you support.
Ideally those factors would align, but that's rarely the case. Are you prepared to accept that the MPs in the party you like are morons, but it's still the better party? Or that the party's current policies are stupid, but the party still represents an ideology you support.
Do people vote for a party? Or do they vote against the incumbent.
I've made it fairly clear that I'll be voting for a yellow dog before I vote Tory, ever. But I'll quite happily withhold my vote for anyone else if they're fuckwits.
With the greatest of respect, I'm always a bit bemused by those who vote Tory, and who then act surprised when they act exactly like they did last time they were in power - privatisation, law and order, public sector cuts, etc
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to Keir Leslie,
Why? Is NZ's problem actually a lack of engineers (or the quality of said engineers)? No. It's incompetence at the management level. We need to start training managers who can actually manage, as opposed to more engineers to be incompetently managed.
The 'we need more engineers' meme is fairly prevelant in a lot of countries, though. It's not by any stretch the first time I've heard this, both here and abroad.
Except that India and China actually did train up a whole bunch of engineers over the last 20-odd years, and look how well that's working out for them...
I don't think good managers can be trained, at least in certain areas. I think leadership is something someone either has, or doesn't have and never will. If you have it, you can sharpen it up with training, etc, but you can never teach it from scratch.
A worker drone down in the trenches wants to know that his or her hardships are worthwhile and pointful, and also that the pain is being equally spread around. If Mr or Ms Manager is fucking off home in their late model European car on the dot of 5.00 every night, having just deposited a whole bunch of new work on your desk which is going to keep you there 'til 7.00 (again), then you're going to get pretty resentful, pretty quickly.
If they don't have your back when the shit hits the fan, especially if the crisis is caused by their vague and sketchy instructions in the first place, then the workers are not going to be happy.
Certainly you can teach them how to manage the money/resource-go-round. But good leaders are few and far between.
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Hard News: Only what we would expect a…, in reply to Sam F,
Garth George's column today so entirely generic and predictable I'm not even going to dignify this sentence with a full stop
SCENE: INT. OVERLOOK HOTEL DINING ROOM - DAY
Garth George sits in front of his typewriter at a table, furiously stabbing at the keys with a weird and disturbing smile on his face. A half-eaten Georgie Pie sits on a plate to one side. The large room is otherwise empty and deserted.
The camera pans slowly round to reveal what is on the sheet in the typewriter, and also on all the other sheets neatly stacked to one side.
"National policies spell only good news. National policies spell only good news. National policies spell only good news. National policies spell only good news. National policies spell only good news. National policies spell only good news. National policies spell only good news."
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I'm having difficulty reconciling your low impression of my mental acuity.
Just a mild tease....I work with a lot of people who seem to expect info to be handed to them on a plate. 'Have you tried googling it' sometimes produces a blank stare.
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Second from the bottom in the 'may also refer to' section.
Wikipedia is usually my first stop for TLA definitions these days.
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The Guardian has a live blogfeed starting from around 7.00 yesterday morning running up to 'now'.
Made my stomache churn reading it first thing this morning. Looks like the chances of an 'orderly transition' are fading fast.
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A thought off the top of my head:
One of the problems people seem to have with selling off state assets is that money which would otherwise go into infrastructure investment and R&D gets siphoned off as shareholder profit. Telecom would be a good example - decades of refusal to invest in network upgrades so that dividends can be kept high.
If large/infrastructure-crucial enterprises in private hands were required by law to pump a certain percentage of their profits back into infrastrcuture/R&D, would that sweeten the pill?
I haven't really thought about this at all, so maybe there are some huge and obvious arguments against it. But if anyones got some good comments, then let's hear them.
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Took me ages to figure it out....I spent a couple of months (yes, months) pondering its meaning.
Took me months to find this out after joining. We need a glossary.