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Post by mrsonde on Mar 4, 2019 2:09:52 GMT 1
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 4, 2019 2:31:32 GMT 1
This guy wants to send his kids to school! Are you mad?! Just carry on doing what you're doing. I'll come and live with you too, dad.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 5, 2019 18:18:14 GMT 1
The Tulip chair by Marco Manders. Highly durable and colour-fast. It closes up by itself.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 5, 2019 18:32:29 GMT 1
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Post by alancalverd on Mar 6, 2019 1:54:30 GMT 1
I always thought the last one was a good idea. Certainly the man at the top of any public service should be paid the least, so that we get railways, roads, refuse services etc run by enthusiasts rather than parasites. I'd happily direct the Health & Safety Executive, or reform the Common Fisheries Policy, for £10 per hour.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 6, 2019 2:28:29 GMT 1
I always thought the last one was a good idea. Me too. I posted it with the impetus of being dismayed by Isabel Oakeshott's assertion that they should be paid more, six-figure salaries, as they work so hard blah blah blah. I normally agree with almost all she says. The argument that Labour politicians in particular would be reluctant to enter the fray is poppycock, imo. I think any public servant should be paid a more or less minimal rate, then progress (or not) by result and performance. I do not object to most of the additional emoluments that go with such service - apart from the excessive pension provision - they're inevitable, but being well paid should not be one of the attractions of such a career. I should add that corporate pay - a more urgent and important issue - needs a thorough overhaul too.
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Post by alancalverd on Mar 6, 2019 9:28:31 GMT 1
I think any public servant should be paid a more or less minimal rate, then progress (or not) by result and performance. The criteria for promotion in the scientific civil service and the useful professions in the NHS are, essentially, international recognition of expertise and demonstrated effective team leadership. The selection process is gruelling (been there, done it, as a candidate, union officer and management rep.) Admin and Policy, on the other hand, use the Peter Principle or Direct Appointment of Crony. The only "emoluments" I recall were first-class rail travel and a reasonable pension. Corporate pay should surely be entirely at the discretion of shareholders.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 6, 2019 19:14:05 GMT 1
I think any public servant should be paid a more or less minimal rate, then progress (or not) by result and performance. The criteria for promotion in the scientific civil service and the useful professions in the NHS are, essentially, international recognition of expertise and demonstrated effective team leadership. The selection process is gruelling (been there, done it, as a candidate, union officer and management rep.) Admin and Policy, on the other hand, use the Peter Principle or Direct Appointment of Crony. The only "emoluments" I recall were first-class rail travel and a reasonable pension. Corporate pay should surely be entirely at the discretion of shareholders. My response to all that would be that there is no need or warrant for a "scientific civil service" at all. The public already pay out vast fortunes to keep the Scientific Establishment and the profession of "Science" very comfortably in questionable existence - and the Military, Health Service, IT, etc. requirements are already paid for from the public purse. It is not the role of Government to be pursuing or organising "Science", and it's been a disaster that it ever tried. Of course you and people like Ricketts would claim that the selection process, the work, the whole caboodle is "gruelling" and deserving of everyone's admiration, and enforced subsidisation. Phew, thank goodness for the private sector, as we'd all have to work that hard, under those appalling conditions! Sorry - I doubt anyone's buying it. The main "emolument" of working for the public sector is that you don't actually have to work hard at all. Keep your head down and nose clean, turn in something every now and then, and you're made for life. You might not get to the top - there's some genuine competition, if you want it - but you can pretty confidently predict exactly where you'll end up, along with the very nice salary and pension it guarantees you. A lack of stress and pressure is a fairly juicy emolument for the type of person attracted to that sort of life. There's a reason why this picture has a cliched caricature flavour to it.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 6, 2019 19:20:27 GMT 1
As for corporate pay - I'll come back to that, no time right now. I've been chewing that one over for years, it's a very complicated problem. Suffice to say for the moment that shareholders do not have the ability to manage this issue, under our present laws - it's simply too unwieldy. Very very occasionally they're organised enough to step in and do something about it, when the corruption becomes just too stinky to ignore any longer, but for 99.99% of the time it's not a matter that concerns them - or to the extent that it is, not one to create the tremendous fuss it takes to do anything about it.
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Post by alancalverd on Mar 6, 2019 19:38:42 GMT 1
Most scientists working on military projects are not members of the armed forces but civil servants. Fortunately the government doesn't organise the bulk of the work directly - it can hardly organise itself. The military specify problems and desiderata and leave it to MoD civilians to find solutions and argue the cost with the Treasury. Privatisation of the forensic science service has led to increasing numbers of failed investigations and abandoned trials because you can't always make a profit by solving crimes, and profit is the motive of any private company. Should the Air Accident Investigation Branch be run for profit or as a public service? What sort of private company should allocate the radiofrequency spectrum? If all engineering industries and consumers need to work to a standard definition of the metre that can be stated at law, how should the National Physical Laboratory be funded? By the company that stands to make the most profit from a shorter inch?
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 10, 2019 18:13:47 GMT 1
Most scientists working on military projects are not members of the armed forces but civil servants. I'm sure. That's what I said - a disaster. That's how you end up with multi-billion pound aircraft carriers with no planes to carry and no ships to protect them, so they can never be used in war. General, Admiral, Air Marshall - what is it that we need to defend our country? That, that, and that - well, we'll see if the Treasury can come up with at least some of what that will cost. The we'll put the work for the kit you require out to tender to your proposed list of firms capable of producing it, and your team - a very highly paid and professionally trained team, who should if anyone know what you're doing - can sort the wheat from the chaff. Remember to tell them it's a public contract, and if they fail to deliver what they promise there'll be heavy penalties. Why does anyone think MoD civilians should know better than military experts, or the engineers who actually solve these problems? People in suits who on average took a poor second in English Literature or Elizabethan History and have never done anything in life except produce paper in an office in Whitehall? A police job, not a Civil Service one. As for your claim - very hard to prove, I'd have thought. You'd need before and after figures,of course - which don't and can't exist. It stirkes me as a highly dubious claim. A company that screws up investigations because of shoddy work will lose their contract. A government service will tut and say shit happens, suck it up. Amongst others, of course - professional reputation being foremost. Lose that and you can wave goodbye to your profit, and your company. This is why the bottom line is such an efficient taskmaster. Another police function, obviously. Maintaining law and order is the legitimate role of the Government. Law and order. You're desperately reaching, alan, but hats off for the effort. Law and order - regulating the market, the civic space. For the most part, all of this was done and dusted decades or even centuries ago. I'd say the same for most of the claims about how the EU is necessary - yes, a common market is a valuable achievement, and it needs a few pointy heads and pen-pushers in an obscure office somewhere to keep it ticking over, but the heavy lifting was all done long ago, and it wasn;t rocket science even then. Shall we all adopt narrow gauge or broad gauge when we build and connect our rail network? Right, that's decided - you're not allowed to build seven-footers any more. The argument is not that we can do away with government regulations of the market, and that a society does not need some workers in a public sector. It's that it should not be allowed to become an Egypt, Iraq, Syria, or Soviet Union, and if constant vigilance is not assertively applied the system has an inbuilt momentum to metastasise to that self-destructive state.
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Post by alancalverd on Mar 10, 2019 19:27:05 GMT 1
Most scientists working on military projects are not members of the armed forces but civil servants. I'm sure. That's what I said - a disaster. That's how you end up with multi-billion pound aircraft carriers with no planes to carry and no ships to protect them, so they can never be used in war. As Sandi Toksvig pointed out, it's a lot safer than having planes with nowhere to land. In fact, it was a fairly rational decision. Ships take a lot longer to design and commission than planes, and if you have a radical ship design but limited capital, it makes sense to develop your ship and rent planes when you need them. a very highly paid and professionally trained team,
of what? In the MoD they are called civil servants, because the armed forces don't recruit and train accountants and desk engineers. None of the MoD engineers I have worked with had a poor second in English Literature, or even the world's best degree ever in philosophy. They were mostly graduates of universities that most people have heard of. They all wore overalls and labcoats, not khaki. Though it must be admitted that when we got to play with the military, a fairly junior rank in the civil service had quite a comfy military equivalent: breakfast in bed, boots polished, high tea in the officers' mess....one of my bosses discovered that as a recent PhD, he was officially second in command of a small warship, never having sailed anything before. Oh yes they do. bollocks. You don't even need any ships if the Minister is sufficiently bent, desperate and incompetent. Nor even a lawyer - just copy the Ts and Cs from a pizza carton!
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 10, 2019 23:54:57 GMT 1
Sandi Toksvig, eh? You've clinched the argument, sir, with that level of expert opinion. Fighting wars? That's because they know jack shit about fighting wars. Yep, they do, under the present system. Which is why the military have had their butts kicked in every engagement for the past thirty years. That's the average degree in the civil service - a 2:3. Country. Of course. No, they don't. Huh? Yes, ideally, Order. No.Law...and...order.
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Post by alancalverd on Mar 11, 2019 12:43:09 GMT 1
Just to pick up on one aspect: you seem to think that the MoD should be run entirely by trained warriors.
I had a friend who was the civilian purchasing officer for a warship. Everything from potatoes to helicopters was ordered and paid for through her desk, to be delivered wherever the ship was next due to resupply. According to your philosophy, this desk job should be done not by a disabled civilian accountant, but by a qualified navigator, gunner, or captain, thus depriving the navy of a fighting asset.
It costs about £5,000,000 to train a fighter pilot. Would that money be well spent, and the nation made safer, if he was deployed fulltime negotiating maintenance contracts or buying rockets? Fact is that it takes around 20 people to keep a small plane in the air, but only about 3 need to be armed and trained to fight, so why waste time and money putting the other 17 in uniform?
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 15, 2019 8:45:06 GMT 1
Consolation in art.
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