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Post by Bertie on Jun 15, 2008 19:54:38 GMT
Well, you're the car aficionado Vv, so I defer to you, but I thought that that was what we called them over here.
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Post by Tone on Jun 15, 2008 20:47:10 GMT
I've got the entire "Prisoner" series on DVD. I'm sorry, 'cos I liked it at the time, but, whilst the overall concept is still good, the episodes themselves seem terribly trite now (and I don't mean just technologically).
As to the ID card thingy, I have a simple solution:
1. Set up the card system. 2. Llet application be voluntary and free. 3. State beforehand (very clearly) that the uptake (i.e. the number of applications) will be taken and used as a referendum on the whole ID card concept.
(And my bet is that the uptake would carry the day and vote cards in!)
Tone
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Post by Tone on Jun 15, 2008 20:50:40 GMT
> mini-mokes with 'surrey-with-the-fringe-on-top' canopies <Were they not extended wheelbase specials of the mini-moke? (A stretch limoke? ) Tone
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 16, 2008 1:04:59 GMT
> mini-mokes with 'surrey-with-the-fringe-on-top' canopies <Were they not extended wheelbase specials of the mini-moke? (A stretch limoke? ) Tone Mini-charabancs?
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Post by Barry on Jun 16, 2008 10:59:02 GMT
My main objection to ID cards isn't about civil liberties, but about the waste of money they would be (something would almost certainly go wrong). I have no problem in principle with them - If I commit a crime, they can bang me up (as, indeed, they should); and a totalitarian state can be implemented perfectly well without the need for cards.
But I've always been a subscriber to the cock-up rather than the conspiracy theory; if you've worked in government for as long as I did, you realise that most of the system is incapable of finding its bottom with both hands, let alone organising a systematic takeover.
Need I mention air-traffic control computers?
My biggest objection to the computerisation of patients' notes in the health service isn't that it's an infringement of personal liberties, but that it's a waste of resources. If you have any contact with the health service at all, you quickly realise that the lack of information about patients isn't because it isn't available in an easy-to-read format, but that doctors don't take the time (or haven't the time) to read patients' notes; how having them on a computer screen (as opposed to on a record card) would solve that, I'm not entirely sure ...
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Post by Tone on Jun 16, 2008 20:45:19 GMT
>But I've always been a subscriber to the cock-up rather than the conspiracy theory<Would anyone agree that, as "administration" has become more complex, and thus needful of more people doing it, there has been a proliferation of almost totally incompetent "lower echelon" people. I'm going through the retirement process at the moment, and that involves dealing with at least five different organizations. With every one I've suffered from cock-ups and have had to strenuously fight my way "up-the-line" to reach someone capable, who then (quite simply) sorted things out. One organization (no names, no pack drill) actually rejected an application because on the two forms involved I, "Had a different first name". I asked what was meant by this statement. Apparently, one form had my full first name and the other only had the (appropriate) initial! (Although both alao had my surname, my date-of-birth, my address, and my National Insurance number.) "Well, it could be someone else with a different name beginning with that letter", I was told (by the lower echelon thicko!) Tone (I blame the schooling! ) Tone
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Post by Pete on Jun 16, 2008 21:05:24 GMT
My main objection to ID cards isn't about civil liberties, but about the waste of money they would be (something would almost certainly go wrong). I have no problem in principle with them - If I commit a crime, they can bang me up (as, indeed, they should); and a totalitarian state can be implemented perfectly well without the need for cards. But I've always been a subscriber to the cock-up rather than the conspiracy theory; if you've worked in government for as long as I did, you realise that most of the system is incapable of finding its bottom with both hands, let alone organising a systematic takeover. Need I mention air-traffic control computers? My biggest objection to the computerisation of patients' notes in the health service isn't that it's an infringement of personal liberties, but that it's a waste of resources. If you have any contact with the health service at all, you quickly realise that the lack of information about patients isn't because it isn't available in an easy-to-read format, but that doctors don't take the time (or haven't the time) to read patients' notes; how having them on a computer screen (as opposed to on a record card) would solve that, I'm not entirely sure ... Of course, they might just lose all the computerised records. Oh no, sorry! I don't mean "lose", I mean put the personal details of 20 million people onto two discs and send them first class to another Government agency, hoping that the discs will not get lost on the way. To think I was once proud to work for the Inland Revenue!
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 17, 2008 0:13:36 GMT
[...] To think I was once proud to work for the Inland Revenue! My neighbour works for what, in Oz, we call the Public Service ( Civil Service in the UK, I believe); he refers to it as the Public Circus and claims that the intelligence levels are inversely proportionate to the workers' positions on the promotional ladder: intelligent lower echelons whilst the upper echelons are staffed by those promoted way beyond their levels of competence (either because they "know someone" or just to get them out of the way).
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Post by Paul Doherty on Jun 17, 2008 0:42:41 GMT
the intelligence levels are inversely proportionate to the workers' positions on the promotional ladder: intelligent lower echelons whilst the upper echelons are staffed by those promoted way beyond their levels of competence The Peter Principle.Tone, It's the nature of systems; any successful organisation will become progressively less competent if left to its own devices. Entropy increases. Organisations focus on what can be measured (salaries, headcount), and neglect what cannot be measured (customer irritation). The so-called "Scientific Management" trend of the last 100 years has exacerbated the problem. But you know this. You work for an organisation.
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 17, 2008 1:11:30 GMT
The Peter Principle
Not to be confused with the other Peter Principle - that which directs "don't let the left hand know what the right hand is doing" (used in this sense by religionists).
My first encounter with the term was in Vatican Finances by Corrado Pallenberg (Peter Owen Ltd, 1971). Pallenberg used the term to describe the Vatican's apparent two-facedness in matters such as banning contraception amongst RC adherents while at the same time owning the major prophylactic (condom) manufactories in the South Americas. (Pallenberg - who claimed to be a good and faithful Catholic - was making observations, not judgments, in light of the partial opening of the accounts books consequent upon Vatican II.)
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Post by Tone on Jun 17, 2008 8:45:47 GMT
>You work for an organisation.<Not quite "for". I work within an organization for my own pleasure and satisfaction. Them paying me to do it just pays for the food and cigarettes. Tone
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Post by Vadim on Jun 17, 2008 8:47:42 GMT
Thanks for this, Paul. A good read to start the day off, adding yet another word phrase to my vocab and allowing me to now go and tell everyone in my >thanks to Tone's post< the organisation I work within, that when, and they do, they moan about the managers not being capable, it's merely "The Peter Principle" in play. ;D
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Post by Twoddle on Jun 17, 2008 9:04:35 GMT
I wonder if there's a version of the Peter Principle that describes my final few years of employment. There I was, doing a job for which I was satisfactorily qualified and experienced, when they started progressively to change the nature of the job. By the time I retired I was in an entirely different post from the one I'd signed up for, and I was bluffing for much of the time, with little knowledge of (and even less interest in) what I was supposed to be doing. Not so much a case of being promoted to my level of incompetence, more one of having my level of incompetence thrust upon me, incrementally!
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Post by Tone on Jun 17, 2008 10:57:04 GMT
Twoddle, >and I was bluffing for much of the time, with little knowledge<And still? Tone
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Post by Vadim on Jun 17, 2008 12:27:25 GMT
I wonder if there's a version of the Peter Principle that describes my final few years of employment. There I was, doing a job for which I was satisfactorily qualified and experienced, when they started progressively to change the nature of the job. By the time I retired I was in an entirely different post from the one I'd signed up for, and I was bluffing for much of the time, with little knowledge of (and even less interest in) what I was supposed to be doing. Not so much a case of being promoted to my level of incompetence, more one of having my level of incompetence thrust upon me, incrementally! Perhap, The Reverse (inverse?) Peter Principle? Or maybe even The Twoddle Principle! I will happily bulk out the scientific paper if you do the proof, Twoddle? ;D
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