Posts by Russell Brown
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Fair point - this was a cock-up on my part. I meant to say violent offence. I would refer you to the commentary in the recent ruling from the Court of Appeal.
It jumped out to me, but I just didn't have time today to query it. I'll annotate the reference soon.
I'm not disputing the tragedy and horror of him and the situation.. just suggesting that there are thousands of others who fit the same profile. They just didn't go ape-shit crazy, and how is a Probation Officer with hundreds to cover going to select?
Again, the issue of people wanting 100% security without wanting to think hard about what it entails. Not PC drives me nuts on this ...
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Thanks Simon. I knew he was unwell.
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To pick a category of people almost at random, have you ever wondered why so few teachers write on PAS, by any chance?
I actually don't think you're correct there. At various times, we've had a number of people out themselves as teachers. Not under-represented at all, methinks.
If you were talking about spraypainters, I think you'd be right. According to Nielsen, we're also below the market average for Maori, but way above for people with tertiary qualifications. Which is ironic, given my own lack in that department.
From what I can tell, the major block to participating in discussions here is that people feel intimidated by the level of discussion and fear they might be slapped down. Almost invariably, when those people do break cover and make a debut post, it's well worth reading.
But how did we get here anyway? I thought this thread was about me and robbery ;-)
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Did anyone else hear Stephen Franks on The Panel just now?
His key point on Ian Rennie's report on the Corrections/Collins/Matthews debacle appeared to be that senior public servants should always be prepared to lose their jobs for the sake of political marketing. For a lawyer, Franks really doesn't seem to have much time for natural justice.
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It made me think of a line in that JD Salinger story, Teddy about a 10 year old genius who narrates the story, saying something like "my parents have no idea who I am, but they have a very clear idea how they want me to be, and beyond that they have no interest in me at all as a person".
I no longer order the chicken and chips, largely because I am now vegetarian — our children have never tasted meat, though we all eat fish. Giving up meat was the first step on what has become, for the Myersons, a manifesto to eat well. We believe that our children’s future lives will be moulded as forcefully by their eating habits as by their education. We are determined that, along with their four As at A level, they also reach maturity with a desire for fresh food, varied food, healthy food.
Ouch.
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I suppose those that have been around for a while would recognise the inimitable stylings of our very own Russell Brown History does, indeed repeat, speshly when after 9 years of sanity the same old faces creep back into power.
Damn! I was going to link to that tomorrow!
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The transition about to occur one of form. No longer will ideas and initiatives of merit be lost in committee, soon they will be rejected out of hand by an expert consultant.
This has been a thread of near-poetic cynicism ...
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Admin needs an equivalent of the cost-benefit analysis system whereby you can say that 'yes, we could implement systems to ensure this never happens again, but the cost of this would be to ensure our effective delivery in other areas would be unacceptably degraded.
But unfortunately, you will get various media titans demanding an assurance that this will never happen again ...
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Now New Zealand is a Good Thing for a different audience - the WSJ constituency, or these rather strange people in Canada. Reality in New Zealand itself is irrelevant.
Oooh. That's so cynical. And quite probably true.
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Eddie, everything you say is true, and that doesn't mean Public Service Manager is wrong.
Take OIA requests, which are so often time-wasting fishing expeditions by the Opposition party, to be leaked out-of-context to the media, or deployed as momentary gotchas in the House. They cost enormous amounts of time and money. That's not to say the OIA isn't A Very Good Thing, but it isn't used as the MPs who passed it though it would be, and it does encourage butt-covering.
The fear of the discoverable really does chill honest advice in the public sector. A friend in a major public agency was brutally hauled over the coals for an email questioning an assumption about modelling -- not because he was wrong or not doing his job, but because it might prove embarrassing if it got to the media.
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