Posts by jb
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Hard News: We are, at last, navigating…, in reply to Hebe,
The point of testing prior to a new tenancy is to define a benchmark (i.e. the property was not contaminated) to avoid any challenges to findings of contamination post tenancy. (Full disclosure: no involvement in the testing industry)
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Hard News: Grenfell: a signal moment, in reply to Michael Meyers,
"Health and safety gone mad in the UK"
Between 1992 and 2016, workplace fatalities dropped from 1.5 to 0.46 per 100,000 workers. Over 2/3 of UK H&S regulations were adopted from EU law. -
This is how it works in Germany: http://youmustbefromaway.com/2014/08/22/socialised-medice-in-germany/
Dental care's also included for basic stuff, co-payments for flash stuff -
created by at least two distinct interest groups within Apple
I just wish that was a SINGLE interest group within Apple focusing on platform consistency and international usability.
Case in point: Nzer living in Germany. I’d like iOS to replicate OSX in its core settings – language, date format and currency.
To get the week to start on a Monday, I have to select the UK as my region, forcing me to tolerate £ a my default currency.
And try traveling and setting up appointments/conference calls in different time zones. Can of worms and yet it worked perfectly in PalmOS…. -
It surprises me that the Government didn't introduce a solidarity tax after the 2011 earthquake in the same way that Germany did after reunification to finance the longterm infrastructure upgrade. Both events were unforeseen (in their rapidity) and initially unquantifiable in their scope. (The cost of reunification is around €1 trillion to date...)
NZ has a deserved reputation for neighbourly support and it would have been the easiest of sells to a willing electorate.
Germany introduced a 7.5% surcharge on income tax in 1991 for one year and reintroduced it in 1996, reducing it to 5.5% in 1998 nd it's only in recent years that there's been some grumbling (and challenges to the Constitutional Court regarding its legality. -
Hard News: The other kind of phone tapping, in reply to Russell Brown,
That's *exactly* what it stands for....
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Pre-DTMF days. What we were doing back then was decadic dialling – interrupting the direct electrical current of the phone line thereby generating electrical pulses which the exchange decoded as a dialled digit.
DTMF generators worked the same way later on when things got oh-so-modern... -
But with variable pricing, there is no such thing as an “Air New Zealand Business Class fare”
AKLLHR 30 April? $7256 29 April? $5706
The Cathay fare someone mentioned? Varies between $4100 and $8400 within a matter days next week.
All of which might have changed by the time you look them up.
The principle’s wrong, the methodology displays a total disconnect from reality… -
The "Herr Professor Dr Dr" comes down to ascription vs performance-based cultures. (In Germany, you're Dr XYZ at the butcher, at the bank and at the petrol station. In Austria, your *wife* might even be assigned your title)
Had a client from Scandinavia at a German company I worked for who took a look at our organisational chart (sprinkled with Dr This and Dr That) and asked if it was perhaps that of the local hospital and not of his IT service provider... -
Hard News: Te Reo Māori in schools:…, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
My main problem in Germany last year was picking up phrases quickly enough to apparently *sound* like I spoke some German when I ordered things, and then have to explain that I didn't actually when I got a rapid-fire response
Same thing hapened to me until I figured out how to say "My German's not good, but I'd like to try"
(Some guy I know who spend over 30 years in Germany without mastering the language - "I understand it involves EFFORT..." - created his own phonetic vocabulary - Shirley Gong for "Entschuldigung", was one