Politicians.

[MichelleH]

Old but funny.

[Minimalist]

“The feeling is that they are putting their rules above the safety of the public.”

An agency spokesman said: “We have identified a serious breach of health and safety procedures and they are being investigated. The boat has been stood down for a further eight weeks while we investigate the possibility of repair or replacement. ”

All bureaucrats put their rules above everything.

But 8 weeks to inspect a row boat? THAT seems excessive.

[Digit]

Inflatable actually Min, but your point still stands. Mind you, it's par for the course now-a-days, it's taken this government eleven years to decide that it will probably build new nuclear power stations.
Watch this space!
Another point. Our local Health Service has started a campaign to warn men of the dangers of Prostate cancer, result, my appointment has been put on permanent hold because the doctors have been swamped. Predictable?

Roy.

[War Arrow]

The bit about my post that offends me most is the fact that guy who's supposed to examine the boat has probably never been in any water deeper than his bath, and if the boat is as dangerous as the moron in charge suggests then the men in her were risking their lives to save another and the moron has probably risked nothing in his life greater than a paper cut.
I'd love few minutes with him!

Roy.

Exactly, and at the risk of turning into the Duke of Wellington... I think this country would work a whole lot better if there were laws preventing work in a field or profession being delegated to persons without proper experience in that field or profession. In other words, the guy you're refering to would be forced to get a PROPER JOB, as would business management types running Royal Mail who've never done so much as take an elastic band off a bundle of mail. Most of our problems are down to besuited types who think dots on a computer simulation bear some relevance to the working conditions they purportedly portray (for example, many delivery routes are worked out by what the computer thinks you can deliver in any given time which fails to take into account gates, steps (a big consideration), and average bulk of mail delivered to particular streets or roads (varies greatly from one area to the next)).

Then again, it's probably fair to say that I'm not going to be happy until we've returned to the bronze age and everyone's making wheels. Call me an extremist, but having just wandered through Dulwich (on a typical Saturday) and realised that about 40% of the pedestrians are 35 year old males with shaved heads, little round glasses, shorts and sandals called Toby or Ben (the 35 year old males, not their sandals), invariably in the company of Motorhead volume brats called Oscar, Jacob or Jessica... I really, really, really am beginning to develop an unhealthy nostalgia for the 14th century. Even the 1970s would do me.

P.S. I do go on don't I!

[Digit]

The Post Office! Local sorting office plus new wiz kid = chaos.
This area has two external sources of income, farming and tourism, and during the height of the tourist season the local population triples.
The first summer of the wiz kid's control he has all the van drivers in his office, 'how is it it takes you lot twice as long to deliver mail in the summer than it does in the winter, admiring the view are we?'
I'll leave you to work out the reply WA!

Roy.

[Minimalist]

All management works by the principle that "everything is easy for the man who doesn't have to do it himself."

[john]

The bit about my post that offends me most is the fact that guy who's supposed to examine the boat has probably never been in any water deeper than his bath, and if the boat is as dangerous as the moron in charge suggests then the men in her were risking their lives to save another and the moron has probably risked nothing in his life greater than a paper cut.
I'd love few minutes with him!

Roy.

Exactly, and at the risk of turning into the Duke of Wellington... I think this country would work a whole lot better if there were laws preventing work in a field or profession being delegated to persons without proper experience in that field or profession. In other words, the guy you're refering to would be forced to get a PROPER JOB, as would business management types running Royal Mail who've never done so much as take an elastic band off a bundle of mail. Most of our problems are down to besuited types who think dots on a computer simulation bear some relevance to the working conditions they purportedly portray (for example, many delivery routes are worked out by what the computer thinks you can deliver in any given time which fails to take into account gates, steps (a big consideration), and average bulk of mail delivered to particular streets or roads (varies greatly from one area to the next)).

Then again, it's probably fair to say that I'm not going to be happy until we've returned to the bronze age and everyone's making wheels. Call me an extremist, but having just wandered through Dulwich (on a typical Saturday) and realised that about 40% of the pedestrians are 35 year old males with shaved heads, little round glasses, shorts and sandals called Toby or Ben (the 35 year old males, not their sandals), invariably in the company of Motorhead volume brats called Oscar, Jacob or Jessica... I really, really, really am beginning to develop an unhealthy nostalgia for the 14th century. Even the 1970s would do me.

P.S. I do go on don't I!

War Arrow -

Don't feel alone.

I have more than a healthy nostalgia for the Paleolithic.

Screw the 70's or the 14th Century.

Interesting side note.

Every senior manager in the company I work for

- We build megayachts -

Started off on the floor as a builder,

Lo these many years ago.......

So whether it was on the business end

Of a 10" Wildcat grinding 'glass

Or laminating

Or installing plumbing runs,

Or electrical runs,

Or building and installing the joinerwork

We've all put in the decades of actually

Building boats

Before ever being a boss.

It makes a big difference.


However, that being said,

That paradigm of knowledge and teamwork

Is anathema to any bureaucracy,

Whose paradigm is lack of accountability

Combined with an ever healthier income

Pulled from the pockets of poor bastards like

You and me.


hoka hey

john

[War Arrow]

Every senior manager in the company I work for

- We build megayachts -

Started off on the floor as a builder,

Lo these many years ago.......

So whether it was on the business end

Of a 10" Wildcat grinding 'glass

Or laminating

Or installing plumbing runs,

Or electrical runs,

Or building and installing the joinerwork

We've all put in the decades of actually

Building boats

Before ever being a boss.

It makes a big difference.

John - I went all misty-eyed just reading this.

[Minimalist]

You guys are bringing back memories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle

The Peter Principle is the principle that "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence." While formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1968 book The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise which also introduced the "salutary science of Hierarchiology", "inadvertently founded" by Peter, the principle has real validity. It holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain.

I read this book and evidence of it was everywhere in my organization....one would expect that of the government in the 70's. But as time passed we evolved to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dilbert_Principle

The Dilbert Principle refers to a 1990s satirical observation by Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams stating that companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management (generally middle management), in order to limit the amount of damage they're capable of doing.

The latter is where you find some nebbish from the outside being called in (consulting) to solve problems which he has no knowledge about.

As noted in the write-ups, in fantastically poorly-run organizations, such as the US government, both principles can be in operation at the same time.

[Digit]

During the time of the last socialist government here the country was all but ruled by the trade unions, then that principle was widely used as a means of getting rid of troublesome union activists. They were steadily promoted till they reached that level then they were fired!
The anthem of our Labour party is the Red Flag, and to show what many activists were like it was parodies thus.

The working class
can kiss my arse
I've got the foreman's job at last.

Some were fine people, but many were power mad little Hitlers!

Roy.

[john]

Pre-dilbert

i.e John Lennon

As soon as your born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasents as far as I can see,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
There's room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,
A working class hero is something to be.
A working class hero is something to be.
If you want to be a hero well just follow me,
If you want to be a hero well just follow me.


We all have a choice.

Just as Lennon and Hunter had a choice.

To give the excuse


That we have an excuse


Is no excuse.

Hope I'm not being too complicated here.

Either you live your life

Or you don't.

And in case you didn't know,

I've had my ass handed to me a few times

In following this paradigm.


hoka hey


john

[Ishtar]

John

Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rollin' high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
"We'll meet on edges, soon," said I
Proud 'neath heated brow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
"Rip down all hate," I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Girls' faces formed the forward path
From phony jealousy
To memorizing politics
Of ancient history
Flung down by corpse evangelists
Unthought of, though, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

A self-ordained professor's tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
"Equality," I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not that I'd become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My pathway led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Me too!

[War Arrow]

Oh well... apropos of nothing:

I like the girls who do,
I like the girls who don't,
I like the girls who say they will,
But then they say they won't.
But the girls that I like most of all,
And I think you know I'm right,
Are the girls who say they never will,
But look as though they might.

Sorry all. I've been channelling Max Miller. As usual.

[Digit]

From another forum...

I see the Mothers in the park,
They are ugly chiefly.
Someone must have loved them once
In the dark, briefly.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

I'm not sure why, Roy, but you reminded me of this story from just the other day.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiap ... index.html

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Life can get a little lonely for bachelors in the Australian Outback mining town of Mount Isa. So the mayor has offered up a solution: recruit ugly women.

And several local women said there aren't a lot of gems to be found among Mount Isa's men, either.

"We've got a saying up here that the odds are good, but the goods are odd," 27-year-old Anna Warrick told The Brisbane Times.