We moved into our current house in 1995. It's now 2012. For those not good at maths it's now 17 years since the previous occupants moved out.
That didn't stop the Department of Work and Pensions sending a letter to our house addressed to the previous occupants this week to advise them about claiming winter fuel payments.
Here's the thing. Firstly, it's summer, so why write now? That seems a bit daft. Secondly, how old is the database they are working off and how few checks do they run? It's not as if the government has an easy-to-access database of where everyone lives in the country, oh wait, yes they do - in fact they have several, council tax details, the electoral roll, the two census forms I've completed since moving here, the land registry.
Sometimes people expound ludicrous theories of government conspiracies, but given that some government departments seem unable to post a letter correctly, I think we're safe. The really scary thing is that government agencies can be so ineffective and useless.
(And, yes, I know, it's impolite to open other people's mail, but when you pick up the post you don't think it's going to be for somone who moved out nearly two decades ago.)
Showing posts with label stupidity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stupidity. Show all posts
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Saturday, June 02, 2012
Location is an important element in advertising
Nothing wrong with this poster. I'm sure any woman would appreciate the chance to shine for summer
Especially the women standing up to pee...
Especially the women standing up to pee...
Monday, August 03, 2009
End times nonsense
Further to the latest post on t-shirt theology (loaded up yesterday), which was all about how annoyed I get by Left Behind books and other rubbish of that ilk, here’s an incomplete list of things I have heard confidently preached and predicted in sermons, or seen presented quite seriously in books, or been earnestly told by well-meaning yet slightly intense people, over the last 20 years or so, relating to the end times:
~ Communism is going to take over the world as the antichrist's empire.
~ The European Union (and before that the EEC) will become the antichrist’s empire.
~ Pope John-Paul II is the antichrist. (And apparently him being dead isn't going to stop this, as he will return as a 'false prophet'.)
~ The Soviet Union is the antichrist’s empire. (That very popular theory disappeared virtually overnight, coincidentally at about the same time as the Soviet Union.)
~ After the rapture all the Jews in the world will immediately realise what a mistake they made and convert to Christianity en masse.
~ The ‘return’ of the Jews to Israel after 1948 is a mark of the end of the age. Which is why it's a good idea to encourage Jews to move to Israel from everywhere else, like Russia, Ethiopia, etc. (Except from America where life is good, obviously.)
~ The British Empire dissolved because Britain opposed the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
~ The Palestinians got what was coming to them because they were living in the land God has 'given' the Jews.
~ Barcodes are the mark of the Beast because they have three lots of six lines (which actually they don’t, as you can see by looking at a bar code).
~ We'll all end up having bar codes tattooed, or inserted as a datachip, onto the back of our hands.
~ The internet is the Beast because ‘W’ is the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet and so www = 666.
~ Russia will get back on its feet and become the antichrist's empire. (Ah, right, so the whole Soviet Union is the antichrist's empire thing was just a misunderstanding. It's still those damn Russkies!)
~ Babylon will be rebuilt as the home of the antichrist.
~ Saddam Hussein is rebuilding Babylon.
~ Saddam Hussein could be the antichrist. (This one has gone a bit quiet of late.)
~ There will be earthquakes and wars and horrible things happening - usually this can be linked into anything terrible that has just happened.
~ The seasons will change. (Ooh, global warming! Global warming!)
~ America will be on the side of good because the American symbol is an Eagle and there's something nice in Revelation about eagles. Therefore America = good. QED. (Interestingly both Germany and the Czech Republic have an eagle as a national symbol. But obviously it's not them.)
~ Bill Gates is the antichrist and Microsoft is the mark of the Beast. (Mac users don't bother commenting...)
So, what similar bollocks have you heard? Leave a comment.Thursday, June 18, 2009
Think 'position'
Recently we've had a new programme at work of putting up 'encouraging posters'. I'm not dissing the posters, before you think 'oh here goes Jon on one of his cynical rants', mainly because I worked on them.
But I'm not responsible for putting them up and whoever is has some odd ideas of what qualifies as premium display space.
So, what would you choose?
a) Blank wall above a lightswitch, or b) side of a filing cabinet where it will be obscured every time someone opens the neighbouring cupboard
a) Blank wall above the photocopier (where a lot of people stand staring at the wall while they wait for the photocopying to finish), or b) side of the coffee machine which can only be seen if you approach the coffee machine from a dead-end corridor
a) Unoccupied pinboard in the staff break room, or b) side of the vending machine
The verdict.
Mostly 'a' - wow you've got some idea of how to display things so people will see them and hopefully read them. Better keep you off the project.
Mostly 'b' - here you go, stick these posters up!
But I'm not responsible for putting them up and whoever is has some odd ideas of what qualifies as premium display space.
So, what would you choose?
a) Blank wall above a lightswitch, or b) side of a filing cabinet where it will be obscured every time someone opens the neighbouring cupboard
a) Blank wall above the photocopier (where a lot of people stand staring at the wall while they wait for the photocopying to finish), or b) side of the coffee machine which can only be seen if you approach the coffee machine from a dead-end corridor
a) Unoccupied pinboard in the staff break room, or b) side of the vending machine
The verdict.
Mostly 'a' - wow you've got some idea of how to display things so people will see them and hopefully read them. Better keep you off the project.
Mostly 'b' - here you go, stick these posters up!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
The Fair Trade Debate
We went to a debate on fair trade last night, which featured an economist called Peter Griffiths, who has worked in the developing world and written a book about it. He was very critical of fair trade as a concept, blaming it for various economic ills and for being “dishonest”.
Now it’s tempting to just dismiss his views on fair trade as those of an arrogant idiot, and certainly that’s the persona he put across, and move on. But the problem with idiots is that they tend to be noisy and promulgate their idiocy aggressively. So, here are some of the basic things Peter Griffiths got wrong last night.
1) He characterised “the fairtrade” as one homogenous movement with one website and one point of view. But it’s a bit more complicated than that.
There is not one business model, not one monolithic outlook, not one dictated point of view. It is a heterodox movement, of many trading and education organisations, in both the developed and the developing world. To attack the concept of fair trade as not relying on statistics, of not presenting facts, of being dishonest in the way it presents itself, on the basis of visiting one website (as Peter Griffiths implied was his basis for his attack) is at best naïve, or at worst willfully ignorant.
2) He was factually inaccurate.
“The first thing the fairtrade says is that it will only deal with co-operatives.” Rubbish. Fair Do’s isn’t a co-operative. As a Director there, I’m a director of a Limited Company. We trade with some co-operatives, charities, other limited companies, small family-run business, sole traders and Traidcraft who are a PLC. When he states nonsense as fact, Peter Griffiths shows he doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he talks about “the fairtrade”.
3) According to Peter Griffiths, “the fairtrade” is primarily agricultural and is a food-oriented issue and that keeps people in poverty, ergo “the fairtrade” is bad for people.
Visit our shop, Peter, and you’ll see that we sell crafts and low-tech produced goods, like soap. The reason many fairly traded goods are agricultural produce is because there are hideously unfair trade barriers and tariffs, which prevent value-added products from being exported to the developed world.
These trade barriers are designed to protect Western jobs and keep the developing world reliant on trading agricultural products. It’s not the fault of “the fairtrade” that the EU, America and various other powerful nations limit what developing world countries can export. As an economist, you should really know that.
4) Also, according to Peter Griffiths, paying fair prices stimulates over-production, which results in lower prices for everyone else, thereby causing a greater social evil. This is one of the main things he accused “the fairtrade” of being dishonest about.
But as another panelist said, the power of fair trade organisations to influence global productivity, pales in comparison to the power of large multinational companies and the Western governments the multinationals use as stooges.
5) On that note, coffee is a price-volatile commodity. So, how does the guaranteed price offered by most fair trade organisations cause price volatility? Stabilising prices should surely have the opposite effect, unless “the fairtrade” is a convenient scapegoat for Western corporate greed.
6) Peter Griffiths described co-operatives as a ‘dirty word’ in the developing world as they are ‘inevitably corrupt’.
“The guy doing the books has never seen thirty quid before in his life, so it goes into his pocket…. If, as a co-operative manager you don’t take the kickback, someone else will.” Those statements didn’t go down at all well with the chap who was at the meeting and who works for a co-operative in the Windward Isles.
Let’s not be so naïve as to say that corruption doesn’t occur in co-operatives, but come on, Peter. Describing everyone who works in a co-operative as a thief-in-waiting is slander. Our own hands aren’t so clean. Not long ago the EU had to shut down for several months while it investigated internal corruption. And many farmers say they value being in a co-operative because of the open-ness, the transparency, the regular audits, and they know what everyone else is getting and whether it’s being fairly distributed.
7) Anecdotes aren’t evidence. Peter Griffiths railed against the dishonesty of “the fairtrade” and the lack of fact-based evidence. But then based his slurs about co-operatives on his own (negative) experiences. He presented no stats to back up his 'facts'. He offered no hard evidence.
8) Saving money is only half the solution. Peter Griffiths trumpeted how he had saved millions of pounds for developing world governments in food programmes and the like. Well done.
But saving is one thing, earning is another. If I go to town and buy a bargain I might have saved £20, but I will still have spent money. Enabling people to spend more efficiently is a good thing, but the bottom line is you are still helping them spend. And the money you save is just figures on one side of a balance sheet.
Trading fairly with people, on the other hand, enables them to earn. They end up with real money, which they can then choose to freely spend on the goods and services they need. Freeing up capital in the developing world to stimulate local economies is the great boon of “the fairtrade”. The savings Peter Griffiths has made won’t ever be spent, because they’re only numbers in a ledger, not real dollars in a pay packet.
9) And finally, Peter Griffiths attacked the whole of the “the fairtrade” as unprofessional and incompetent. Well, if I can return the favour and tar all economists with the same brush, I’d like to say this: economists like Peter Griffiths have had billions of pounds of resources from various institutions to sort out global poverty and decades to do it in.
And so far, they haven’t delivered.
Peter Griffiths may not like fair trade, he may even have valid criticisms to make, but compared to the mess economists have made in Africa, for example, the ‘damage’ caused by “the fairtrade” is negligible.
What fair trade as a method of business has done is bring real change to poor and marginalised communities, provided sanitation, education, security, health and wealth. It has given people benefits today and the hope for a brighter tomorrow. And it has done this, generally, as a grass roots movement, in the face of opposition from powerful institutions and governments. It has succeeded against the odds because it has proven that there is another way to do trade. And, frankly, it has rendered the opinions of economists like Peter Griffiths about “the fairtrade” irrelevant.
A final note.
When I was a kid we lived in a country in West Africa. Economists from various international bodies like the IMF and the World Bank, almost all of whom were white Westerners like Peter Griffiths, advised the government to stop people growing maize and to grow rice instead. Now thirty years later, that country has to import rice and other food to prevent its people starving to death.
When it was obvious that the switch to rice wasn’t working, the economists encouraged the government to promote peanut harvesting instead. And they said the same things to every other West African country. When we returned to the UK, the value of the peanuts which were being harvested was less that the value of the sacks they were being sold in.
Those are anecdotes, not evidence, although you can look it up if you like, to check out whether I’m lying or not. But, those stories indicate, perhaps, why I don’t really rate the opinions of ‘development economists’. The advice of economists destroyed that country and kept it impoverished. So forgive me for trying to find a better way to make life better for people.
Now it’s tempting to just dismiss his views on fair trade as those of an arrogant idiot, and certainly that’s the persona he put across, and move on. But the problem with idiots is that they tend to be noisy and promulgate their idiocy aggressively. So, here are some of the basic things Peter Griffiths got wrong last night.
1) He characterised “the fairtrade” as one homogenous movement with one website and one point of view. But it’s a bit more complicated than that.
There is not one business model, not one monolithic outlook, not one dictated point of view. It is a heterodox movement, of many trading and education organisations, in both the developed and the developing world. To attack the concept of fair trade as not relying on statistics, of not presenting facts, of being dishonest in the way it presents itself, on the basis of visiting one website (as Peter Griffiths implied was his basis for his attack) is at best naïve, or at worst willfully ignorant.
2) He was factually inaccurate.
“The first thing the fairtrade says is that it will only deal with co-operatives.” Rubbish. Fair Do’s isn’t a co-operative. As a Director there, I’m a director of a Limited Company. We trade with some co-operatives, charities, other limited companies, small family-run business, sole traders and Traidcraft who are a PLC. When he states nonsense as fact, Peter Griffiths shows he doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he talks about “the fairtrade”.
3) According to Peter Griffiths, “the fairtrade” is primarily agricultural and is a food-oriented issue and that keeps people in poverty, ergo “the fairtrade” is bad for people.
Visit our shop, Peter, and you’ll see that we sell crafts and low-tech produced goods, like soap. The reason many fairly traded goods are agricultural produce is because there are hideously unfair trade barriers and tariffs, which prevent value-added products from being exported to the developed world.
These trade barriers are designed to protect Western jobs and keep the developing world reliant on trading agricultural products. It’s not the fault of “the fairtrade” that the EU, America and various other powerful nations limit what developing world countries can export. As an economist, you should really know that.
4) Also, according to Peter Griffiths, paying fair prices stimulates over-production, which results in lower prices for everyone else, thereby causing a greater social evil. This is one of the main things he accused “the fairtrade” of being dishonest about.
But as another panelist said, the power of fair trade organisations to influence global productivity, pales in comparison to the power of large multinational companies and the Western governments the multinationals use as stooges.
5) On that note, coffee is a price-volatile commodity. So, how does the guaranteed price offered by most fair trade organisations cause price volatility? Stabilising prices should surely have the opposite effect, unless “the fairtrade” is a convenient scapegoat for Western corporate greed.
6) Peter Griffiths described co-operatives as a ‘dirty word’ in the developing world as they are ‘inevitably corrupt’.
“The guy doing the books has never seen thirty quid before in his life, so it goes into his pocket…. If, as a co-operative manager you don’t take the kickback, someone else will.” Those statements didn’t go down at all well with the chap who was at the meeting and who works for a co-operative in the Windward Isles.
Let’s not be so naïve as to say that corruption doesn’t occur in co-operatives, but come on, Peter. Describing everyone who works in a co-operative as a thief-in-waiting is slander. Our own hands aren’t so clean. Not long ago the EU had to shut down for several months while it investigated internal corruption. And many farmers say they value being in a co-operative because of the open-ness, the transparency, the regular audits, and they know what everyone else is getting and whether it’s being fairly distributed.
7) Anecdotes aren’t evidence. Peter Griffiths railed against the dishonesty of “the fairtrade” and the lack of fact-based evidence. But then based his slurs about co-operatives on his own (negative) experiences. He presented no stats to back up his 'facts'. He offered no hard evidence.
8) Saving money is only half the solution. Peter Griffiths trumpeted how he had saved millions of pounds for developing world governments in food programmes and the like. Well done.
But saving is one thing, earning is another. If I go to town and buy a bargain I might have saved £20, but I will still have spent money. Enabling people to spend more efficiently is a good thing, but the bottom line is you are still helping them spend. And the money you save is just figures on one side of a balance sheet.
Trading fairly with people, on the other hand, enables them to earn. They end up with real money, which they can then choose to freely spend on the goods and services they need. Freeing up capital in the developing world to stimulate local economies is the great boon of “the fairtrade”. The savings Peter Griffiths has made won’t ever be spent, because they’re only numbers in a ledger, not real dollars in a pay packet.
9) And finally, Peter Griffiths attacked the whole of the “the fairtrade” as unprofessional and incompetent. Well, if I can return the favour and tar all economists with the same brush, I’d like to say this: economists like Peter Griffiths have had billions of pounds of resources from various institutions to sort out global poverty and decades to do it in.
And so far, they haven’t delivered.
Peter Griffiths may not like fair trade, he may even have valid criticisms to make, but compared to the mess economists have made in Africa, for example, the ‘damage’ caused by “the fairtrade” is negligible.
What fair trade as a method of business has done is bring real change to poor and marginalised communities, provided sanitation, education, security, health and wealth. It has given people benefits today and the hope for a brighter tomorrow. And it has done this, generally, as a grass roots movement, in the face of opposition from powerful institutions and governments. It has succeeded against the odds because it has proven that there is another way to do trade. And, frankly, it has rendered the opinions of economists like Peter Griffiths about “the fairtrade” irrelevant.
A final note.
When I was a kid we lived in a country in West Africa. Economists from various international bodies like the IMF and the World Bank, almost all of whom were white Westerners like Peter Griffiths, advised the government to stop people growing maize and to grow rice instead. Now thirty years later, that country has to import rice and other food to prevent its people starving to death.
When it was obvious that the switch to rice wasn’t working, the economists encouraged the government to promote peanut harvesting instead. And they said the same things to every other West African country. When we returned to the UK, the value of the peanuts which were being harvested was less that the value of the sacks they were being sold in.
Those are anecdotes, not evidence, although you can look it up if you like, to check out whether I’m lying or not. But, those stories indicate, perhaps, why I don’t really rate the opinions of ‘development economists’. The advice of economists destroyed that country and kept it impoverished. So forgive me for trying to find a better way to make life better for people.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Seriously, do you have nothing better to do?
The background: recently a mobile phone was stolen from my work office. It had been left lying on a desk in the IT room. As it was an 'unassigned phone', it was only a month or so later, when the bill arrived with a couple of hundred quid rung up on it, that anyone noticed...
The response is a planned "clean desk policy". I don't have anything against cleanliness. But I can't help but feeling this is a kneejerk reaction to one person's carelessness. I feel like writing a sarcastic email to our HR guy who sent round the memo which talked about the policy. If I was going to send an email, it would read something like this...
The response is a planned "clean desk policy". I don't have anything against cleanliness. But I can't help but feeling this is a kneejerk reaction to one person's carelessness. I feel like writing a sarcastic email to our HR guy who sent round the memo which talked about the policy. If I was going to send an email, it would read something like this...
Hi N---I read about the clean desk policy in the tidy up day memo. I realise the new policy is a reaction to the theft of a mobile phone from a desk in Garth House, but I'm not sure it's the best way to respond to that situation.
For one thing, clean desk policies mainly apply to paperwork. Now, I'm no expert on these matters, but I am fairly confident in asserting that most would-be thieves are not really going to bother with a sheaf of papers.
Also, I'm interested to know how the clean desk policy is going to be enforced, or even if it's going to be. Are people going to patrol the building after 5pm putting everything off desks into a bin? Will this be a management role? Are our managers so desperate for something to do, they need to check whether my desk is tidy? If so, I will happily occupy their time by passing them some of the work I don't have time to do. On the plus side, if they are going to bin paperwork off untidy desks, I think I've found a fantastic new way of getting rid of work I don't want to do...Will we get black marks if we don't tidy our desks? Will there be a grading system and prizes for the tidiest desk? Realistically, will this policy achieve anything other than making managers look petty-minded and fussy?Just out of interest, if you haven't had anything valuable stolen from your desk, ever, do you still have to conform to the clean desk policy?Don't you think this policy is a severe over-reaction? Why penalise everyone for one person's mistake?As you can probably tell, I think this new policy is silly. I don't know about you, but I prefer to be treated as a grown up at work. If I wanted to be treated like a five year old, I'd go back to school.Thanks for reading my annoyed rant. I'm sure it won't achieve anything, but I'm hopeful it might.
Lots of love and hugs and stuff
Jon
I doubt I'm going to send this email, but as a number of work peeps look at my blog, who knows where my remarks may end up...
(And if they agree with me, maybe those peeps will comment, instead of referencing my blog over lunch)
(And if they agree with me, maybe those peeps will comment, instead of referencing my blog over lunch)
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