Posts by Moz
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Hard News: The unstable Supercity, in reply to John Holley,
my bit along with some of the other CIOs.
Caution, link leads to site run by idiots. "ad-blocker detected, piss off".
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Hard News: The unstable Supercity, in reply to Stephen R,
expecting the final costs to look like the original estimate
Worse, if the supplier commits to that they might actually deliver what you originally asked for rather than what you turn out to need. I've interviewed at one conslutancy that was very clear that if the client demanded a fixed price, fixed term contract they would be given what they originally asked for, at the price and time specified. Then they would be bent over a barrel for the refit.
I've worked for more than a few companies that have in-house software development teams and it's hard to overstate the advantages. Yes, it costs a bomb to get a capable CIO/IT lead/team leader or whatever you want at the top of your pile, but once you have that the costs drop. You might not have the depth of expertise (cough) but you don't have the overheads and profit margins either. $100k salary doubled for overhead... then doubled again hired as a consultant.
One of the major hidden costs is software that more or less works, most of the time. That kills productivity in your wider staff as well as the direct loss of "we can't do that the software doesn't allow it". From simple problems like retail "I can't sell that it's not in the computer" to truly woeful "we don't know how much division X costs because the computer can't produce those numbers in a meaningful way". I've worked in a number of small, in-house teams where one major part of our job was "whatever the company needs, today" rather than the OTS model of "buy what we can get" from someone selling "whatever we think the users of our software might want in a few months when we release it".
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Polity: Key Derangement Syndrome…, in reply to Rob Salmond,
Labour has also taken a strong stand in favour of melanoma patients currently dying while the government dithers. We're stronger advocates than the government for New Zealanders living in Australia
Your phrasing seems designed to encourage selective quoting, and reads unusually to me. "Labour has also taken a strong stand in favour of melanoma patients currently dying". Really? I didn't think that was even on the policy agenda (although it is a good idea, the survival rate is abysmal regardless of how much is spent on treatment).
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http://www.pwd.org.au/documents/pdf/ndis_citizensJuryScorecard.pdf
Australia Citizen's Jury enquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scam run by People With Disabilities Australia. At its best the NDIS could get close to the ACC model, but in practice it seems to have all the paperwork but none of the funding. The report is interesting to read, and the process bears thinking about.
Twelve Australians, including people with disability were randomly selected to serve as non-specialist jurors on this unique citizens’ jury. Representing a microcosm of the Australian public, they were charged with the role of determining to what extent the NDIS is ‘on track’ to achieve its stated vision and aspirations
The conclusions are both positive and negative:
It is evident that many of the participants we heard from are feelin g more included in their communities, and are participating more actively as a result of the NDIS. We heard evidence that participants are feeling more connected to their communities, and engaging in a wider range of activities.
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Hard News: So what now?, in reply to Sacha,
Yet most of those people do not love the prospect of life in a sleepy village with few of their own culture
This, even though my culture is very Christchurch-compatible except in the very brutal sense that Chch is a very small town a long way from anywhere. There are probably more diverse restaurant options in the wee suburb I live in than there are in Chch total, because it's slowly changing from 1950's Greek/Italian (they're dying of old age), to Lebanese (retiring) to Afghani/Bangla/Indian (having kids) to African (arriving) with a dash of Viet/Cambo/Lao from the 1970's and Chinese/Korean from the 1990's. But they all run/use restaurants, and react to the market (our local "Thai" restaurant is run by Lebanese using Chinese cooks. We have Halal Thai because why not).
I'd love to live in Christchurch or even Nelson, but there's just no way to have a company like I work for in Nelson, and in Christchurch it would be hard - we would have to recruit new staff from Sydney or possibly Auckland, and the struggle we have finding staff in Sydney would be much greater because we'd be filtering out anyone not willing to relocate to NZ. Lower wages in NZ isn't an argument when you're trying to bribe someone to move out of Sydney. Hiring local staff is hard when you're looking for specialised skills, you really want to be one of several employers in that field, not the only one.
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Hard News: So what now?, in reply to Zach Bagnall,
Auckland is not going to go from a median multiple of 10 to 3 in my lifetime absent revolution or natural disaster.
Look at Christchurch and tell me a natural disaster will lower house prices. Admittedly in that case followed by a protracted, entirely man-made disaster. To misquote, "he's the man, and he made the disaster".
If you did lose a big chunk of Auckland to a volcano or sea level rise or whatever, I suspect the cost of building new houses would simply be added to the existing land price problems... except for those who owned the destroyed land who would be "individually negotiating with their insurer a settlement that best suits their particular situation".
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I put is more as "rather than suffer a defeat, they shot themselves in the head". They've just said to National "we don't care, do whatever you want", and frankly central government firing the lot of them would be entirely appropriate. They have a job to do and they've chosen not to do it.
You can look at the invidious choices Christchurch City Council has had to make over the last few years as a comparison, and that just makes the whiny toddlers in Auckland look worse. Faced with an actual dictator who was determined to implement National's agenda, they fought basically every step of the way.
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For me, the hassle of changing the flag outweighs any sense that the alternatives are less awful than the current flag.
One obvious solution is voting to change Australia's flag instead. I'm sure the two merchant bankers could sit down together and come up with whatever Malcolm wants. That would solve the "just like Australia" problem.
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can extract better value for the taxpayers' outlay. It has to come from the top where the demand will never be popular.
I wholeheartedly agree with that. We should start at the top, by demanding that the prime minister produce 10% more prime ministering on 10% less money, every year. And ditto for all the other skivers and slackers in parliament. I'm sure that if we cut the parliamentary services budget 10% nothing bad would happen. We could also sell off that extremely valuable site in central Wellington and promote regionalisation at the same time by relocating it to some much cheaper offices in somewhere like Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu.
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Polity: Leaving only footprints, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I thought we had big worms here, too?
How else are you gunna catch Te Ika a Maui?