Posts by slarty
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I wonder if I could randomly point out two little frustrations being poorly communicated. I've tried to frame them using the approach Neville G. gave me one day:
I mention these because they are likely to cause serious strategic damage to our nation in the long term. I don't understand why Labour aren't all over them as they are real hearts and minds stuff - one will impoverish people right smack in the middle of our retirement funding crisis, the other will ensure an underclass.
PPP's aka PFI's. Complete mess in the UK, going to cost billions, money long gone. Issue: they rarely work. At the very best they are an expensive way of borrowing. No net shift in sovereign debt but looks better due to an accounting technicality. Villain: ideological ignorance. Hero: ???
Even the Telegraph agrees.... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9362658/PFI-is-the-boondoggle-to-end-them-all.html
2. Introduction of student testing. Britain have pretty much admitted its introduction in the nineties has been a disaster. I'm sure it's coincidence that the first generation to fully go through this nonsense is the one that rioted.
Issue: national standards will drive our education system into the ground. Villain: baby boomers who think that just because they did tests, kids today should. Hero: teachers who manage to deliver a decent education despite the ideological garbage.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/16/schools-exam-system-not-fit
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Nice work.
Thank you all for the stimulation over the years... for me my lurk-quotient has fluctuated depending on the sensitivity of my day job :p
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Hey, you know how much I love you guys. But can I respectfully suggest a little bit of getting over one-selves might be in order?
FFS, if you don't like it, don't drink it and don't buy the shares. For goodness sake, this is sounding like a bunch of teenagers outraged the first time they notice that the world is a bit unfair. It's a marketing gimmic. A bunch of old white boomers who are nearly dead are going to shell out some cash. That's it. The sky is not going to fall on our heads.
Some guy is even associating #momentsofmanhood with a child being shot in the head in Pakistan. For Christs sake, a bit of perspective please.
And I know everyone's going to get defensive of their position now. So go on, unleash the intellectual vitriol. I'll check back in after a few days.
In the mean time perhaps dwelling on that contemporaneous moment of loveliness across the water would alleviate your angst a bit?
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Must... Not... Cynically... Give... In....
I have long suspected the US education system was designed to maintain an ignorant underclass to fill the gap left by the abolishment of slavery. Could we be doing the same thing?
And are we creating a dual-stream society; those with critical analysis skills and those who become politicians and newspaper editors?
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I did like the Google Ad that appeared under this post for me:
PR & Communications
Latest Public Relations, Corporate Affairs & Comms jobs in NZ. -
Hard News: The frustrating politics of…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
This is not something the US just made up because it somehow suits their internal politics.
Sorry! Didn't spot the irony :)
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Hard News: The frustrating politics of…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
I'm going to say [citation needed] on your proposition
As I'm not in a position to recount the story over a beer, a good start is "Collateral Damage" by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (2007)
p29 is goes to the issues with the unique way the US has interpreted the (UN) Trafficking Protocol, but the whole thing is interesting in how it explores the damage caused by domestic political posturing has on such a serious matter.
I must say Matthew, I think it's a little naive to think that the US even considers whether a matter actually affects them...
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Mmm. Portugal. Richard Brunstorm.
I fear we need a good crisis to start cut through the layers upon layers of fuckwitedness involved.
But the real problem is that a pile of poo would rain down upon us from the United States, along the lines of the "we-don't-like-that-you-decriminialised-prostitution-so-we're-going-to-label-you-as-child-sex-slavers"
After all, look what they've done to Mexico...
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Looks like a Hollywood plot line doesn't it?
I am increasingly coming to the view that the only sustainable business model for the media is that of a worker cooperative... or maybe The Guardian...
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Hard News: If wishing made it so ..., in reply to Stephen Judd,
what latitude public servants who want their target bonus will have.
The clearout of all-but-yes-[wo]men continues. The 'policy' being excreted on the fly reminds me of working for a very well known NZ business-person in the late 90's... the dot-com era. We were setting up a subsidiary in Australia, and I was putting together the financial forecasts.
Every time I went back with a new and more aggressive sales forecast, I was told to make it bigger. Eventually I realised they had a ratio in mind that would enable the business to be sold. So I reverse engineered my spreadsheet to put in a target share price and calculate the required growth rate.
They loved it. Needless to say it was complete fantasy: I thought I was being ironic, they thought I'd validated their mental model.
My point being that as a public servant we sometimes bow to the ludicrous demands in the hope that even the most challenged politician may pause...
Failing that, we do our best to ensure that assumptions are presented and hope that our ever vigilant 4th estate won't just read the media release...
But, as a friend tells me often, the gene pool in WLG is very shallow (by which he means that screwing up your public sector career can seem a very scary prospect....)