What is legal for one country appears to be illegal in another

“March 20 2003

At around 2:00 pm today the first missiles fell on Baghdad, it appears from the news reports that it was an attempt at a surgical strike aimed at killing Saddam Hussein and several leaders of the Iraqi government.

There was an admission from the Australian Foreign Minister, that such an attack would be considered illegal if undertaken by Australia, but nonetheless he supported the action.

The betting has always been that if an opportunity presented itself to remove Saddam Hussein then it should taken rather than involve the country in a war. Equally, given the scenario, it would not come as a great surprise to find that someone is likely to make an attempt at killing one of the leaders of the “coalition of the willing”.

The TV was saturated with coverage which eventually gave way to normal programming when it was realised that no additional attacks would happen and there was thus nothing of importance to report.”

There are reports of other illegal assassinations undertaken by American forces on behalf of the state for example in:
"ASSASSINATION AND DISPLAY IN IRAQ:
THE KILLINGS OF UDAY AND QUSAI HUSSEIN IN INTERNATIONAL LAW" by
Professor Marjorie Cohn Thomas Jefferson School of Law JURIST Contributing Editor at
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forum/forumnew121.php

Another example being:
"Assassination ban 'no shield' for al-Qaida"
By SHAUN WATERMAN UPI Homeland and National Security Editor at: http://www.upi.com/inc/view.php?StoryID=20050324-075226-2917r

What is the world coming to when states that we normally admire can not only get away with violating the law but when no one takes any notice?

It's THAT time again . . .

I am delighted to be in a position to wish everyone a Happy New Year. I hope and trust that 2006 will be a healthy and happy year for everyone who has been keeping an eye on these pages.

I have to apologise to those of my readers who have been missing my pages in recent times however I have been in a position where I have returned to work full time and I do mean full time.

I have been involved in contract management recently - as subject that I have had very little previous experience with and which has required a very vertical learning curve. The trauma is not yet over as I will actually have to go back to work in between Christmas and the new year break to finalise matters and so am spending what little time I have available to wish everyone a healthy and happy new year.

I hope that in the new year I will have a little more time available to write in this blog and to comment on the events of the day.

For all those who have followed my missives in the last year or so I say thank you and hope that you will be available to follow my commentary in the next year.

While on the subject of communications . . .

I wonder how many people are currently cursing the fact that they have email at work?

Are you receiving so many emails from so many people that you find it hard to cope?

If you are there is a solution, but unfortunately as with most good ideas it requires some effort to realise its benefits.

Ask yourself and your work colleagues the following question:

Is there any time when I am sending or receiving an email at work when I do not want someone else to DO something or I am being asked by someone to DO something?

The answer is of course yes! When you want someone to have access to information then you send them an email with the "FYI" header. In this way the person KNOWS for a certainty that the information in the email which is attached is just that, a piece of information which they can read at their leisure.

What I suspect most people will find is that all the rest of the emails which clutter up our in trays are actually about things that people want is to DO something about.

They may want us to attend a meeting, prepare a report, obtain some information, actually DO something in other words. What is generally unclear in an email is how urgent the matter is and what priority or importance the other person is attaching to the request. What is worse when we send out a note to someone wanting them to do something for us, we also do not put out priority on this request nor necessarily a time frame within which we want a response or the action to be completed and of course we can easily forget that we asked someone to do something because we usually do not place the email into some reminder box.

All this could change if people realised that they can and indeed SHOULD send no more emails to people at work but use the TO DO functionality of either Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes or whatever corporate tool suite they are using for communications.

By doing so - the following can be achieved:

1. there is a reduction in email
2. the is an increase in targeted instructions to others about things they need to do for you
3. there is a priority allocated to the request
4. there is a due date allocated to the request
5. there is means by which the person on the receiving end can come back and tell you whether or not they can comply with your request
6. there is an audit trail that enables you to follow up your requests so that you do not lose sight of the work you are undertaking and asking others to undertake for you.
7. there is a greater ability for people in the work place to manage their work instead of their work managing them

Try this solution among some work colleagues who are willing to go along with you and then show others the benefits that can be obtained. You may well be starting a new revolution in the work place.

UP and DOWN the ORGANISATION

Once upon a time a man by the name of Tom Plaizier developed a game called 'Up and Down the Organisation'.

He managed in just one quick game to demonstrate that if you have an organisational hierarchy in which communications are restricted to just up and down the organisation and are so formal that people are required to only communicate in writing that the rigour effectively blocks communication to such an extent that no work can be done.

These days, I am afraid that I see something slightly different emerging in the work place. With the advent of e-mail most people can send things to virtually anyone both inside and outside an organisation quickly and efficiently.

However, it is the very ease and speed of the exchange that should provide us with some tingling sense of warning.

It is far too easy these days to think nothing of putting fingers to the keyboard and creating a document which is then sent to someone else and MAY in fact be a corporate record. If it is then what most people forget is that the record is kept (or at least should be) on a corporate file. In other words those scatterbrained ideas, comments etc. suddenly appear on a virtually public document and are stored for years if not decades and hence available to anyone.

Pushing the wrong button on a key board has been the downfall of many a person recently. The funny note you wanted to send to your friend suddenly ends up with the wrong person - simply because you got the wrong email address and pressed the send button before you could stop yourself.

Those sardonic remarks that you would make in a confidential whisper in a bar or when passing someone in the corridor end up being not only broadcast to all and sundry but may well be something that is then kept on a file for years for everyone to see, especially auditors and others who you may NOT want to see such things!

In the 'old days' there were standards of communication among people and there were things called 'style sheets' that enabled people to see what was proper form and terms of addressing people. These days all that has gone out the window for the sake of efficiency and effectiveness and all we have left are often ill considered words on some electronic format that may or may not last through time.

My advice to the modern bureaucrat?

THINK before you commit yourself to an email and ask whether or not you would want to make the information public so that it can be seen by anyone. If not re-write it into something you are happy to be made public before you send it!

Mexico City is drinking itself into the ground

In the BBC News there is the following:

Mention a sinking city and it is a fair bet that Venice is the place which comes to mind, yet parts of the centre of Mexico City are sinking at an even faster rate than that of the fabled Italian lagoon city.

Pete's Points:

Apparently the fact that there are now over 20 million people living in this city is partly what is responsible for this phenomenon.

Australians need not worry, unlike Mexico city it is unlikely that Australia will also sink into the abyss.

Mexico city is built on a lake bed. As the people in the city grow in number they are drinking the aquifer that is underneath them dry and this of course causes subsidence.

For the first time in history it is possible to say that a group of people are literally drinking themselves into the ground and this time with water!

What's Old is New Again

Guardian Unlimited Money | Special_reports | Pension age could rise to 68: "The state retirement age could rise to 68 by 2050 under proposals outlined by the Pensions Commission today.

Delivering his long-awaited report on the reform of the UK pensions system, Lord Turner said the UK faced a choice: pensioners will get poorer, 'or we should expect a relentlessly means tested system; or public expenditure on pensions must rise as a percentage of national income; or the state pension age must rise'."

Pete's Points:

When I was younger we were told that the world was there for our taking, future opportunities unlimited and just waiting for us to take advantage of them. We were also told that with the development of technology we would be able to have a greater amount of free time and would be able to work less to produce more as labour saving devices took the stress out of the work place.

Hands up those who KNOW now that we were sold a pup?

Workers are Unhappy with their jobs

From Management Issues
Australia may be renowned for its quality of life, but the quality of its managers just doesn't stack up. More than half of Australians are unhappy with their jobs, new research has found, with poor management the overwhelming reason for their discontent.

The dire state of management in Australian organisations is revealed in the annual SEEK Survey of Employee Satisfaction and Motivation in Australia – a title that is something of misnomer given the shortage of satisfaction in Australia's workplaces. More than half (56 per cent) of those surveyed said they were unhappy with their jobs, a rise of 11 percentage points over last year.

Yet as Matthew Rockman, Executive Director of SEEK pointed out, the figures come at a time when Australia's unemployment rate has hit a twenty eight year low, meaning that employees are now faced with more choice than ever before.

"With unemployment being so low, Australian companies are sitting on a potential powder-keg, unless management begins to address staff issues, to keep morale high and employees satisfied with their roles," he said.

All of this comes at the same time as people in Australia are listening to the final debate on the IR legislation.

Is this information right?

If it is then why is there such a huge debate about workers' rights being in peril as a result of the IR legislation? Workers, according to this information have the upper hand. They are able to walk in and out of jobs at will and can make or break companies by whether or not they choose to work or not.

More to the point what is the view of the people who are working in jobs on which they rely to be in a position to pay off their mortgages and to keep their families from the bread line?

The criticism of bosses in Australia is not new. In 2003 the following was said:

The UK's much-criticised managers might be releaved to find out that they are not the only ones in the firing line.

A survey by organisational development specialist Human Synergistics has found that a whopping 87 per cent of Australian companies have management cultures wracked by "blame, mindless conformity and indecision", while their managers lack basic skills such as setting goals, using rewards, giving feedback, and conducting fair appraisals.

". . .executive behaviour bred a culture that encouraged people to treat rules as more important than ideas, switch priorities to please others, avoid taking any blame for problems, follow orders even when they were wrong, defer decisions to people higher up the food chain and not rock the boat."

"It's Simply Not Cricket"

The media is making a great fuss about the PM attending the PM's Eleven Cricket match on Friday, the same day when a convicted drug trafficker is being executed in Singapore.

Whatever your views on cricket and whatever your views on the death penalty, I don't think it's cricket to castigate someone for showing up at a cricket match especially when he is the host.

"It's Not Cricket"

What about all the fuss that has been happening in the media about John Howard attending the Prime Minister's Eleven cricket match on the same day that a convicted drug trafficker is being executed in Singapore.

Most of the media seem to be focused on the fact that this would not be appropriate.

As the PM is the host of the PM's Eleven it would seem to me to be even more inappropriate if he cancelled the occasion.

Whether you agree on the death penalty or not, whether you support the fact that a death sentence is mandatory in Singapore for certain crimes, it's almost criminal to take the PM to task about this, it's certainly not cricket!

"Salmon Day"

Yesterday I had a 'Salmon Day' at work, defined as follows:

The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die.

Just imagine coming into work early so you can get some work done and then finding the computer system being 'down'. Why? Because so many people are moving from one 'cube farm' to another that the system simply cannot handle the traffic that is generated.

[What's a 'cube farm', you ask? A 'cube farm' is an office space filled with cubicles or work stations.]

I suppose that when I tried for the fifth time to reboot and log back on again, only to be thrown out I may have let out a small scream of frustration. This has no doubt caused at least some people to think of me as a STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.

However if YOU were at work all day but could get nothing done while people kept calling you and demanding things what would YOU have done?

For all of those who have now indicated that they would have gone out and had a coffee or a beer I express my gratitude. Your views are called "justification" [grin]

Wasting Time is Wasting Money!

Found at Management Issues.co

British workers waste nearly a month each year struggling to keep up with demands placed on them for which they have not been given proper guidance, a study has suggested.

The study by training body City & Guilds found nearly one in five office workers had difficulty coping with the simple tasks asked of them.

A further third felt frustrated when unable to handle the daily demands of the office.

Today's office worker was simply expected to keep up with new technology, with one in three complaining they had not received any training from their employer to help them manage their administration."

Author: Nic Paton

Pete's Points:

If you do NOT identify with this story then you are amazingly lucky!

If you DO identify with the story then for goodness sake tell your boss.

If he or she is still not convinced, put your tale into simple dollars and cents. That is to say a minimum of 1/12 of your salary is already wasted and on top of that there are the potential costs related to breaches of the occupational health and safety requirements if you fall over ill because of stress in the work place.

The CHEAPER alternative is either to match your skills with the job or to provide adequate training before people ask you to do work and then some coaching and mentoring when you first start.

I simply cannot believe what I am reading these days

found at . . .

WAYCROSS, GA—A routine laying-on of hands ended in a fatal cardiac embolism for a worshiper at the One, True, Glorious, Excruciated, And Risen Christ Traveling Gospel Church Sunday. "Losing a fellow Christian is always the hardest part of this job," attending faith healer Harlon Pearcey said. "I invoked the name of the Holy Trinity to drive the sickness out from the poor sinner's heart, but sadly, a blockage in the sinner's pulmonary artery stopped God's love, and much blood, from getting through." The American Faith-Healing Association issued a statement saying that Pearcey followed trinity-invocation and snake-handling guidelines during the procedure.

Pete's Points:

If ever there was a week of weirdness this must be it!

I mean "trinity-invocation and snake-handling guidelines" - you have to be kidding!

Another "Conservative" approach?

found in Ananova . . .

Russia offers football thugs to France

A Russian politician has offered to send the country's violent football thugs to France to sort out the rioters.

Far right politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky says he already has hundreds of volunteers many with special forces training.

In a telegram sent to France, Zhirinovsky, who is also Deputy Speaker of the Duma, said: "We are ready with volunteer units of football fans and activists who have served in military combat hot spots.

"I am convinced that our initiative would restore total order and calm the rioting within 48 hours."

Pete's Points:

I apologise dear readers, I think I understated the problem of the world going to hell in a hand basket. It's going NUTS!

If this story is true - then we really need to start being afraid!

Then there is this article. Is it just me or does anyone else think this is beyond decadence?

The world's most expensive mobile phone

The most expensive mobile phone in the world - costing more than £500,000 - is being made in Austria.

The phone, designed by luxury accessories maker Peter Aloisson, has sections of pure gold as well as 2,950 blue diamonds embedded into the cover.

Aloisson has for the past few years been taking existing phones and customising them with jewels and precious metals.

"I knew that mobile phones would become part of daily life, and as with all things that are part of daily life, such as watches or tie pins, there should be luxury versions of them," he told CNN.

Aloisson currently produces about three phones per year, depending on orders from his celebrity and wealthy clients, mostly retailing for about £20,000.

On the same theme . . .

By Alan Elsner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Conservative Christian televangelist Pat Robertson told citizens of a Pennsylvania town that they had rejected God by voting their school board out of office for supporting "intelligent design" and warned them on Thursday not to be surprised if disaster struck. . . . .

Last summer, he hit the headlines by calling for the assassination of leftist Venezuelan Present Hugo Chavez, one of President George W. Bush's most vocal international critics.

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city," Robertson said

Pete's Points:

Just when we are looking at our religious leaders for something sensible in this world of non sense, this comes along.

This is not a conservative view. It is a licence to print money.

If you are paying to see this stuff on TV I would urge you to see someone about financial counselling - you need help!

Shocking! So what are we going to DO about it?

Amelia Hill and Gaby Hinsliff
Sunday November 13, 2005
The Observer

A culture of violence in Britain is to blame for an epidemic of school bullying that is devastating the lives of millions of children, according to a devastating attack by one of the country's leading experts on young people.

In his first major interview as the new Children's Commissioner for England, Al Aynsley-Green said nearly every child was affected by the problem: 'I have no doubt that children are being brought up in a society where violence is the norm in many ways. I include in this the violence on television, in the workplace and in the home.

But, as Aynsley-Green points out, behaviour that is not curbed in childhood is likely to be replicated in later life, a claim supported by a TUC report last week showing that two million people were bullied at work in the past six months, mostly by managers and supervisors.

Pete's Points:

I don't know whether it's just me but as I said in my last post, the world is going to hell in a hand basket. Maybe it's just something that is peculiar to the people in the developed and western world but I doubt it.

More on Bird Flu and the World

OK I admit it when I saw this from the BBC I started thinking about all the things that could kill us:

"Eighth bird flu outbreak in China

China has conducted mass culls of birds in a bid to stem the virus China has confirmed a fresh outbreak of the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu - the country's eighth within a month."

When we were in the midst of our paranoia during the cold war, we heard the media talk about the "Yellow Peril" when referring to a projected invasion of Australia from the north. Once again we are being provided with more to worry about although this time the form of the 'Yellow Peril" is a little more deadly.

If the birds don't kill you then terrorists will. If it's not terrorists then it's riots by disaffected people. If they don't get you then a car accident will. And if you are still living then there are heaps of other diseases and potential accidents out there just waiting for YOU.

No wonder the religious freaks of the world are telling us that the end of days is nigh!

And what do we do?

We keep going to work, we keep slaving away and we keep getting anxiety attacks about whether or not we will be fired now that the new legislation on IR is being passed in our parliament.

What's it all for? Why are we 'saving for a rainy day'

Hellooo - The drought has broken - we are all DOOMED!

The world is going to the dogs in a hand basket!

I for one am going out for my walk in the sunshine and let someone else get stressed.

Salut!

Even in Europe people know about the Brumbies!

Regardless of where you travel if you take a sticker with you then you too can advertise. 

Idyllic!

Whenever I want to relax my mind wanders to places I have seen that conjure up a moment of total relaxation and a picture of an idyllic location.

This is one such location seen on my recent wanderings.

For those with a troubled spirit in these times of stress and worry - take a copy and relax! 

Summer is coming

I was reflecting on my recent trip overseas and came across this shot of a restaurant in Peschiera on Lake Garda in Italy.

I wonder whether the restaurant owners in Canberra will take note and consider doing something similar on Lake Tuggeranong or one of the other water ways in this city?

Dining 'al fresco' would get a different meaning. 

A timeless restaurant

I have been going back regularly to Hungary since 1979 and am constantly amazed that this place is still there.

The name of the restaurant is "Százéves" which when translated means "Hundred Years". The food is (apparently) still good.

The prices, unlike the name, have NOT withstood the test of time. They are now on par with some of the more expensive restaurants in the world.

I have to say that I am glad that I was able to sample the fare when I could actually afford it!

When you look at the picture you will also note how narrow the path near the entrance. The roads have been changed to make way for new investments and for new shopping arcades and all that is left of the old is like this an almost hidden doorway.

For those going to Hungary on their next trip I would sincerely suggest that they try and find some restaurants in local suburbs OUT of the main tourist areas like Váci Utca.

Ask a local where he or she eats and chances are that you will get at least as good a meal (possibly better) at a more reasonable price.

Oh, and by the way if you do NOT speak Hungarian (why some people find this language difficult is beyond me) many of the younger people these days are multilingual and speak some English. 

Coimbra Library

When you visit Portugal you could do worse than to pay a visit to Coimbra, one of the first university towns in Europe. As you can see from the picture which is attached - the library is exquisite and literally filled with antique books from floor to ceiling.

The real question is - would you prefer to work in this sort of atmosphere or at your student desk in front of a computer screen? 

Ever had one of THOSE days?

When I first saw this figure in Pompeii I automatically thought it would present me with an opportunity at some point to run a caption competition.

Anyone with suggestions?

Some examples to get you thinking!

"I was just sitting here minding my own business . . ."

"Geez, I said I wanted peace and quiet but this is ridiculous!"

"My mother always told me I would end up making a public display of myself."

Something that was sent to me

I simply love some of the things that have been sent to me over time. I wonder if this was intended as a form of criticism? 

Hungary unveils human vaccine against Avian Flu - More on this breaking story

Indiadaily.com - Hungary unveils human vaccine against Avian Flu: "Hungary unveils human vaccine against Avian Flu
Purna Sen
Oct. 21, 2005

It may be an early breakthrough again coming bird flu catastrophe.

Hungary's vaccine against the H5N1 strain of avian flu is effective for humans, Hungarian Health Commissioner Mihaly Kokeny said Oct. 21. Hungary initially will manufacture 3.5 million doses of the vaccine to supply the Hungarian population, later producing more for export. Hungarian Health Minister Jeno Racz said the vaccine can be altered within eight weeks if the virus were to mutate, and the rights to the vaccine are shared by the Hungarian government and vaccine company Omnivest Kft. Omnivest can currently produce up to 500,000 doses a week."

Hungary Invents New Bird Flu Vaccine

All Headline News - Hungary Invents New Bird Flue Vaccine - October 23, 2005: "Hungary Invents New Bird Flue Vaccine

October 22, 2005 11:59 p.m. EST

Niladri Sekhar Nath - All Headline News Foreign Correspondent

Budapest, Hungary (AHN) – A Hungarian vaccine against the deadly bird strain of bird flue proves to be effective, reports Reuters.

Hungary’s health minister Jeno Racz says that the final results from tests have shown its effectiveness.

“Now it’s definitely proved that the vaccine is 100 percent effective on humans,” Reuters quoted Racz as saying."

Pete's Points:

Has anyone checked this out? It's a bit of a worry when they can't even spell FLU!

If it's true then why is everyone buying TAMIFLU which is helpful but NOT a cure against this form of flu?

OptusNet News

OptusNet News: "Blood test could detect rare cancer
6:04 PM October 21

A rare form of cancer could soon be detected with a simple blood test, after a key discovery by Western Australian researchers.

Cutaneous T-cell lymphomas are an extremely aggressive form of cancer and difficult to diagnose.

Scientists have identified a gene, usually found in the skin, which exists in the cancerous blood cells at extremely high levels.

That means such tumours could be detected much earlier and eventually a cure could be developed.

Professor Lawrence Abraham says while in the short-term the discovery will lead to earlier diagnosis, it is hoped a cure will follow.

'If we can understand what the gene product does and we can design drugs that moderate or stop that activity, then we may have a cure for this particular tumour,' he said.

Professor Abraham says the next step is identifying what the gene actually does.

'Because these T-cell lymphomas are so hard to treat and so hard to diagnose, our discovery impacts on both of those,' he said.

'The most immediate benefit is going to be diagnosis.'
Source: ABC"

If pigs had wings . . .

Jo Revill and Anushka Asthana
Sunday October 23, 2005
The Observer

China will shut its borders if there is a single case of human-to-human transmission of bird flu in the country, its deputy health minister has said.

Pete's Points:

I am a believer in the the ability of governments to do virtually anything provided the motivation is high enough however THIS is ridiculous!

Is there anyone out there who could actually believe that in the event of a bird flu panic, "closing the border" would be effective?

Making money on the side

How to make home a powerhouse

Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday October 23, 2005
The Observer

Monthly bills for hot water, central heating and lighting no longer trouble Geoff Welton and his wife Judith since they installed a wind generator on their smallholding.

In fact, they have been making money. 'We have generated more than 7,000 kilowatt hours of power, but used only 2,500 hours - even though we have electric central heating and electric cookers,' says Mr Welton. 'We have sold the rest to the power company.'

Pete's Points:

I am of the view that if various government levels decided to purchase and deploy power generation of this kind for their own operations then the cost of the equipment would tend to fall and thus most of us could start to afford it for our own homes then, as a country we could perhaps reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and create the sustainable environment that we all want to live in. If we cannot use our abundant sunshine, wind and tidal power in this country then who can?

An interesting discussion about IT

The Management Issues site states:

By 2011 at least three-quarters of IT organisations will have changed their role, one in 10 will cease to exist and a similar proportion will be reduced to commodity status, industry experts have predicted.

According to IT analysts Gartner, the maturing of traditional technology applications, the growing role of outsourcing and the greater penetration of technology into all aspects of business will all drive radical change in the IT sector.

"A new organisation type is emerging - one that will take the lead on information and process," said John Mahoney, chief of research for IT Services & Management at Gartner.

"While it will grow from an IT base, the primary focus of the new organisation will be business transformation and strategic assets of information and process. When mature, it may no longer be identified as an IT organisation."

As technology becomes more pervasive and more critical to the routine operations and strategic goals of most business, its contribution will come under greater scrutiny, whether it produces good results or bad. Businesses that master technology will recognise that success, but those that fail will blame technology accordingly.

By 2011, IT contribution will be cited in the top three success factors by at least half of the top performing businesses

As a result, Gartner analysts predict that by 2011, IT contribution will be cited in the top three success factors by at least half of the top performing businesses, while IT barriers will be cited in the top three failure factors by at least half of the lowest performers.

This trend will have a major influence on the role and organisation of IT and on IT leaders.

Gartner predicts that IT organisations in 2011 will have 20 per cent less people, 40 per cent less in-house technology roles and double the number of information, process and business roles compared to 2005.

This change will go hand-in-hand with the changing nature of IT leadership which will see the strategic leadership role will split into business technology and business network leaders.

IT could also be embedded in business as a pervasive commodity that is managed by business executives as part of their regular roles, Gartner argues. In this case, IT would typically be sourced as part of a broader business process.

"There remains controversy about the extent to which IT can, should or will take and be trusted with leadership of business processes and information," John Mahoney said.

"In some cases, those roles will arise from outside the IT organisation and the entity will then be obliged to absorb many of the strategic and architectural roles formerly played by the IT organisation."

However, the evolution is not all in one direction. Some businesses are even starting to disband their IT organisations and to embed IT throughout the business. This approach could cause a disruptive backlash among some business leaders who may resist the rise of process and information architectures.

What IT delivers in the future will also be tangibly different than what was delivered in the past. Simply improving the productivity of administrative processes will remain important and necessary, but will no longer be sufficient on its own.

"In order to energise IT management to deal with the new challenges to deliver rapid results, it needs a vision that says, 'We are going to be delivering a different type of information technology in the future which is about supporting the decision makers in the organisation with non-routine, cognitive work," said Andy Kyte, Gartner's research vice president.

"IT professionals that remain fixated on the data and transaction paradigm will be relegated to a minor role in business support."

The IT industry is no longer arranged into specific categories, he added, and is being redefined to a level that has not been seen before.

"Whatever the outcome, IT executives must identify and monitor the key external trends that will affect business technology in their enterprises," John Mahoney said.

Andy Kyte, meanwhile, said that tomorrow's IT managers need to focus on three basic objectives: Eliminate, Consolidate and Focus.

"Deliver rapid results by eliminating clutter," he said.

"Consolidate and simplify your infrastructure and applications, and focus on the one project that can make a real difference to the business. That will make business leaders sit up, take notice and understand that IT really is delivering value."

Pete's Points:

Phew! That is quite a mouthful!

Let's look at some of the predictions:

"20% less people and 40% less in house technology." A nice idea especially when most of the people in the current work force are heading towards retirement and when the whole notion of outsourcing services is one that is on the up and up these days.

However SOMEONE will have to develop the systems that are being used and SOMEONE will have to maintain them. Regardless of where this will be people will need to be employed to make it all happen.

What is even more interesting to speculate about is whether the current outsourcing trends will remain viable? For example how many of us have had the joyous experience of dialing in to a service centre and having to spend at least ten minutes of our time pushing phone keys to connect with that part of the service we are looking for? How many of us have then had the next level of frustration in connecting with a disembodied voice that tells us that the centre is busy and our problem will be added to a queue and that it will be attended to at the earliest opportunity - oh and by the way the current delay is X-y minutes.

How many of us have then finally waited for the set time and reach someone who is not actually in the country, but somewhere else in the world, can not understand what it is that we are asking for or gives us an answer which is NOT helpful or says they have no idea and will have to ask someone and then BEFORE we can say DO NOT PUT ME ON HOLD we hear music that is supposed to be soothing and settle in for another long wait?

The reality for me is that whenever organisations grow too large they may well become economically more viable but their service delivery and customer service go to pot. At this time some other organisation comes along that offers us high tech with high touch and manages to win our custom.

If Gartner is right then the organisations may well benefit but as consumers will we?

Anyone for early retirement?

Early retirement can actually shorten one's life, according to new research published in the British Medical Journal.

A 26-year study of more than 3,500 former employees of Shell in Texas has found that men and women who retired at 55 were nearly twice as likely to die within the following 10 years as those who retired at 60 or 65.

The research by Shan Tsai of Shell Health Services in Houston, explodes the myth that early retirement leads to a longer life expectancy.

"Although some workers retired at 55 because of failing health, these results clearly show that early retirement is not associated with increased survival," Tsai said in the study.

"On the contrary, mortality improved with increasing age at retirement for people from both high and low socio-economic groups."

Pete's Points:

If I was going to consider early retirement this would give me pause.

Or would it?

When you have been offered the 'joy' of either retiring and perhaps living for a further few years without work so that you can enjoy what time you have left when you have been diagnosed with a terminal disease would you seriously opt for work so that you can go out working in the trenches? Would you opt to enjoy what time you have left?

What would YOU do?

PS I REALLY want to hear from those among you who have either retired young or are about to do so!

Comments on BBC report from Pakistan

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Musharraf says aid 'inadequate': "Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf says the amount of foreign reconstruction aid pledged after the South Asia quake is 'totally inadequate'.

Gen Musharraf told the BBC that about $620m had been promised but that Pakistan needed about $5bn to rebuild devastated areas.

An estimated three million people in Pakistan lack adequate shelter."

Pete's Points:

What fascinates me about this story is how people seem to react to disasters. When the Tsunami disaster first struck everyone went out of their way to provide assistance and governments as well as individuals seemed to compete with each other for being the best 'givers'. The media issued story after story which seemed to want to shame people, organisations and countries into giving more and more.

This time I am seeing less of this form of endeavour. Rather I see the need being portrayed on our media but this time the portrayal is NOT accompanied by the same level of aggressive demand that was present at the last disaster.

Why is this so?

1. Has the increasing cost of fuel inhibited giving because we need more money just to pay our bills?
2. Have we simply given our 'share' for the financial year?
3. Do we care less about people in Kashmir than we do about our near neighbours in Indonesia?
4. Does the advertising by the Howard government in respect of both the IR and Anti Terrorist legislation make us so fearful for our own future that we want to hoard?

I don't know the answer but I do see the difference. I would welcome comments from others with their views.

Whatever next?

"China has asked the federal government if it can conduct uranium exploration and mining operations in Australia.

Confidential diplomatic cables obtained by The Age newspaper show the Chinese told Australian officials of their interest in uranium mining and exploration in Australia at a meeting in Beijing in February, Fairfax newspapers said.

The deputy director-general of China's National Development and Reform Commission, Wang Jun, had asked Australian officials: "Would Australia permit Chinese involvement?"

The director-general of the Australian Nuclear Safeguards Office, John Carlson, told Mr Wang there would be no restrictions at the federal level, but warned that state and territory governments - responsible for licensing mining and exploration - opposed further uranium mining and exploration." see http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=61801 for the full article

Pete's Points:

Say NO! Uranium is better buried in the ground and unrefined so that it cannot be turned either into nuclear weapons or into potential death traps in the way that the accident at Chernobyl signifies.

Two years down and time to move on

Two years down and time to move on: "Most workers in Britain stay in one job for less than two and-a-half years, with the average bill to employers of unwanted departures now hitting 600,000 a year.

According to a study by consultancy Reed Consulting, more than a third of employees now leave within their first year of employment and more than three quarters leave within three years.

The research highlights the growing phenomena of 'job shopping', where employees move frequently between roles and organisations before committing themselves long-term, it added.

The cost of this to business is greater than anticipated, even when excluding intangible costs such as loss of expertise, business relationships and the impact on morale, said Reed.

There are also significant differences between what employers believe are the key causes of turnover and the actual reasons that employees leave, it added.

Employers largely failed to take into account the importance of providing opportunities for development, focusing instead on salary and benefits, which they often believed to be the largest cause of attrition.

In fact development opportunities were rated more important than any other factor by employees when it came to what made them decide to change jobs.

The top three causes of attrition as identified by employees were lack of opportunities for personal and career development, issues with the working environment and, only then, salary and benefits.

Intriguingly, these factors were consistent across all industry sectors, although the average tenure rates varied, said Reed.

Employees from the utilities sector stayed with their organisation the shortest amount of time (on average one year ten months), while manufacturers had the highest tenure, at three years three months.

The size of an organisation also significantly affected job tenure.

Employees in organisations with more than 5,000 employees stayed on average 11 months longer than employees in the smallest organisations (fewer than 50 employees).

Laura Frith, managing director of Reed Consulting, said: 'With more than three quarters of employees leaving an organisation within three years and escalating costs associated with attrition, employee retention is one of the key issues for our profession to address.'

Author: Nic Paton"

Pete's Points:

I wonder how closely these findings in Britain accord with what is happening in Australia? In the Australian Public Service organisations have gone from a single wage and conditions structure across all Commonwealth Public Service departments and agencies to largely different arrangements based on either agency wide agreements or individual agreements. What this seems to have accomplished is to have different rates of pay, conditions of work for relatively the same level of classification and for very similar work types across agencies. What this has also managed to achieve is to increase the extent to which people move from agency to agency and position to position seeking to maximise their own well being with better conditions and/or rates of pay. Hardly surprising you note? True. But at what cost to the tax payer? Why should two different people both in receipt of income from the Australian Taxpayer, undertaking virtually the same kind of work get different conditions and different pay? What has it meant for the movement of expertise from one sector to another and what has it meant in recruitment and training costs for each agency and for the government and hence taxpayers as a whole. To what extent is this likely to be the forerunner of similar questions and situations under the new IR legislation that is proposed by the Commonwealth government?

I guess we will only know the answers when we have to pay for them.

Good Communications

Good Communications that Block Learning by Chris Argyris originally published in 1994, predicted the following:

“Twenty-First-Century corporations will find it hard to survive, let alone flourish, unless they get better work from their employees. This does not necessarily mean harder work or more work. What it does necessarily mean is employees, who've learned to take active responsibility for their own behaviour, develop and share first-rate information about their jobs, and make good use of genuine empowerment to shape lasting solutions to fundamental problems.”

Eleven years later, how is this panning out?

I have not seen a willingness by people to share information which could result in ‘lasting solutions to fundamental problems’. Indeed I have not seen information and knowledge sharing at all unless individuals are paid handsomely first for their contribution. Information and knowledge is something that is currently obtainable at a premium price and human nature being what it is, people will not give this away unless there is a degree of personal gain.

I have seen the advent of opportunistic exploitation of intellectual property with the development of companies whose entire business consists of ‘buying’ patents and then ‘leasing’ them to others. Cost cutting, with a view to maximising profits for investors and increasing exploitation of all forms of resources and increasing evidence of the consequences of policies of short term gains being favoured over longer term solutions.

I see people who are forced by the official destruction of collective bargaining opportunities through legislation or the lack of legislation to agree to terms and conditions of employment that are heading us back to an era that is redolent of the worst excesses of the early industrial revolution.

In recent years I have also seen the following:

1. a greater number of household in which both adults are required by economic circumstances to engage in the work force with consequences for the welfare and development of children;


2. an increase in the number of people who are classified as the ‘working poor’ where individuals work all day and are still classified as being in poverty;


3. a widening of the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’;


4. an increase in the price of basic goods that are essential for the maintenance of life;


5. an increase in the capability and willingness of organisations to make use of the cheap and plentiful labour forces that exist in China, India, South East Asia and the former East European countries;


6. an increase in the use of ‘risk management’ techniques in and by management rather than a more expensive form of regular maintenance, a policy with enormous consequences and costs when the risk is realised;

Argyris also suggested that:

“The new, but now familiar techniques of corporate communication-focus groups, surveys, management by- walking-around-can block organizational learning even as they help solve certain kinds of problems. These techniques do help gather simple, single-loop information. But they also promote defensive reasoning by encouraging employees to believe that their proper role is to criticize management while the proper role of management is to take action and fix whatever is wrong. Worse yet, they discourage double-loop learning, which is the process of asking questions not only about objective facts but also about the reasons and motives behind those facts. Double-loop learning encourages people to examine their own behaviour, take personal responsibility for their own action and inaction, and surface the kind of potentially threatening or embarrassing information that can produce real change.”

Have we seen changes in the methods of communication? Indeed we have. More and more use is being made of emails and less and less use is made of paper. Where organisations do not keep an accurate record of the communications in appropriate records management repositories the evidence of corporate or individual behaviour is as transient or non existent as the records which could provide some forms of accountability. The situation described by Argyris in 1994 may have changed in that communications have been ‘enhanced’ by electronic means, but the techniques which lead to single loop communications are still around and widely in use. Thus they are still counterproductive.

Will it change in the next ten years?

Let’s just hope that we are alive and there is a work force to participate in so that we can find out.

A Starter Kit for Business Ethics

A Starter Kit for Business Ethics: "A Starter Kit for Business Ethics

Corporate cheating won't be stopped by regulation or legislation. That's why whistle-blowing is everybody's job."

Pete's Points:

Ms Zuboff has a lot of interesting points to make about the difficulties of the individual trying to prevail against the might of large corporations. She notes and advises about collective action and of course exposing irregularities to the sunlight of discussion and public exposure.

One reality that has always been present in our world however is the measure of the risk to the individual and his or her family arising from such action.

In a few years time, we are told, there will be underemployment as baby boomers reach their old age and leave the work force. At present however there is no underemployment that appears to be visible. Thus the risk is high, equally there are people in other parts of the world where there is also a high level of unemployment and where costs are far lower than in more developed countries. With the advent of modern technology and a developing tradition of outsourcing the risks are higher then ever. On the other hand simply conniving with unethical practices is also likely to lead to a bad outcome.

This is really the moral dilemma of our time.

Favourite Links of interest to Social Workers

• WEB SITES OF INTEREST TO SWs
• International Social Work Discussions YOU can take part in
• Irish Social Work Association
• Canadian Association of Social Workers
• British Association of Social Workers
  
• National Association of Social Workers (USA)
• European Social Welfare Information Network
• Research Web
• Joseph Rowntree Foundation On Line
• Social Science Information Gateway

ISPs and Customer Service

People tell me all the time that the world is a small place. I know from experience that this is so as I am able to travel from one side of the world to another in the space of under 24 hours. However I find that it is also possible to spend around the same time waiting for a response from an ISP to a formal request for assistance and a considerable portion of that time waiting to actually speak to a REAL person - even if it is in a call centre somewhere in the world - with most of my time being told that my call is in a queue and that I will be answered as soon as possible or that my call is important to them and they will answer as soon as possible or my call is important to them and since they are busy could I please avail myself of their canned music while I wait. Recently however I also received a message to the effect that there were so many people complaining that they could not handle the calls and that as a result I would have to call back later. 24 hours later I called back to get the same message.

THIS is a service we are paying for?

I can tell you that when I finally managed to get on to someone after being told that the call was being monitored for 'quality control" I am afraid I apologised to the person coming on line and for the benefit of the recording I told the agency what I thought of their service and their recorded messages.

Geez, we actually have to pay for the privilege of being insulted these days!

Does Anyone Really Fall for This sign?

Where on earth can you find a sign like this and what does it MEAN?

Send your answers as a response to this BLOG and in due course we will select the most ambitious answer, the most ridiculous answer and even the correct answer.

I am BACK!

For those of you who have missed my seemingly daily musings on the Internet all I can say is "too bad, so sad" all of us have to take a holiday sometime and mine just take a little longer so that I can linger and savour the fact that I do NOT have to touch a key board for some time.

I have not as yet had the opportunity to catch up on the news except of course to report to you all that I had a really BAD time in France - especially at the lovely spot called Castillon le Battaile. Why this name? Well it is the place where the English suffered their final defeat in the 100 years war at the hands of the French. So when flying an Australian flag outside the camper van all people could do was to look at the portion that contained the union jack and laugh! That was the French.

The English visitors (and insultingly some of the Welsh!) would saunter over, grin a cheeky grin and tell us that the Australians were getting slaughtered in the cricket.

Not feeling very well disposed to these braggarts I am afraid that I suggested to them with a considerable degree of conviction in my voice and tone that the owner of the series had been having a really bad return on investment following 17 YEARS of defeat of the English by the Australians and so had decided to create some interest and regain some profitability by having the lads throw the match (for a bonus of course) so that he could make some more money!

None of this is true of course but at least those of the English fans who could see that I was flying an Australian and not a New Zealand flag got what they deserved! I mean fancy getting all hot and bothered about ONE win in 18 years AND at the spot where they lost the final battle of the 100 years war!

For those who have been wondering . . .

We are currently on tour in Italy. To date we have been in Florence for the last few days and have been having a mixed bag of weather. I wish that we could send the rain we have been having here back home so that you could all benefit from the water supply that simply falls regularly from the sky over here.

Italy is hot and sticky especially after rain however with the right gear on you can still have a great time.

I have not had the opportunity to look at the news recently and so have been unable to comment on things. However the American news papers have been having a field day with the Bali trials and complaining that the Australians are racist simply because they do not think much of the Indonesian legal system.

My only comment on this case of alleged smuggling is that the Aussie girl now convicted of smuggling dope has to be a real idiot if she is guilty since the cost of mary jane in Bali is around five times cheaper than she could have bought the stuff in Australia. So unless she is a complete idiot it is hard to accept that she would smuggle things into a country which sells it cheaper than she could buy it in Australia.

Why is there silence on this site?

There is silence on this site because you have not followed the advice provided earlier and started to look instead at Pete's Travel Pages.

Had you done so you would be finding out that we are on the road at present and sending messages to people via that site.

Let me say that we have a few more travel facts that people should know:

Petrol cost in England at present can range from 81.9 pence to 89.0 pence and with the exchange rate with Australia being something like 40 pence to the dollar this means that petrol is OVER $2 per litre at the cheapest rate. Think about that when you complain about the cost of fuel at home.

Food is also something to think about. An 8 oz steak (that's half a pound or a quarter of a kilo is around £9-12 in a pub with some chips and a salad. Convert this into dollars and you can see immediately that you can dine out in style for around half the price in Australia at some of our better establishments.

Entry into homes and museums and the like is on average something like £6 - 13 per person - so never again complain about the entry rates to things in Australia.

These and other exciting bits of news will become available in greater detail on the other BLOG site.

Do tune in for the latest from Germany, Austria, France, Hungary, Slovenia and Italy as the journey progresses.

SPAM

According to an article in New Scientist my computer and I are normal.

"MORE than two-thirds of all email traffic is spam."

In my case I am finding that more and more of my emails are spam and this is in spite of the fact that I have a set of multiple filters that reduce the amount I actually have to see and deal with on a daily basis.

The problem that I have may well be shared by many others - this is that my service provider does not filter spam at the server side of the service. It means that I have to waste bandwidth downloading stuff that my filters then eliminate on receipt.

The article in New Scientist also goes on to say that by networking users could make a bigger dent in the Spam that invades all of our lives by combining information and networking to restrict access.

I am cautiously optimistic about a suggestion like this. On the one hand it offers a potential solution on the other it offers hackers who want to propagate something more noxious than spam an opportunity to link to a network and so propagate viruses.

I wonder what you think?

Have a look at the article in New Scientist and make up your own mind.

Why humans grow old grungily

This article is one of the more interesting I have read in while. As someone who is not getting any younger I am delighted to learn that it may be possible to increase my age limits. After all, who wants to die? For that matter who wants to be 'grungy'?

I certainly recommend that people have a look at this article in New Scientist

Here is a taste of some of the contents:

"The story begins in 1993 when Cynthia Kenyon of the University of California, San Francisco, discovered that some strains of C. elegans with mutations in a gene called daf-2 lived more than twice as long as normal. This appeared to show that ageing was controlled by genes, contradicting the widespread view that it was largely the result of wear and tear inflicted by free radicals. Not surprisingly the results caused a stir. Many researchers were puzzled about how genes for ageing could evolve through natural selection."

Revolt in the near east

I find it fascinating to read about the people's revolts in Uzbekistan and in other locations which have allied themselves with the Americans. My fascination stems from the fact that the USA was the country that invented the notion of dominoes falling one after the other and referred of course to the theory that the occupation of one country by communists would inevitably lead to the fall of other countries nearby to the same ideology.

Well it seems that the American presence in a country not to mention the American invasion of another country is leading to revolts by the people there against the regimes with whom the Americans are allied.

One by one countries in the American alliance are pulling their troops out of Iraq and no doubt from anywhere else the Americans have sought to establish an influence. One by one the countries which surround these lands are also seeking their independence from the regimes which have a stranglehold of power.

The question remains where will they end up? In an alliance against the Americans or somehow part of their leader's wishful thinking about a Pax Americana.

Let's hope that the world is NOT swallowed up by the American dream.

I cannot conceptualize a world more terrible than one which is infected by kids who wear their baseball caps backwards, baggy pants with tears in them, singing rap music and swigging on Coke or Pepsi while munching on a Burger King creation or the joys of a Dunkin Donut.

Let's have some NON American culture start to permeate the world and let's leave the Golden Arches and their like to the Americans. They really DO believe their own propaganda that they have the best of everything in the world. Let's hope that they stop exporting this to the rest of us.

Books and availability

One of the nice things about the Internet is the ability of this medium to bring to your home information which is generally unavailable without considerable effort and expense from other sources.

There is for example a fabulous site called ARCHIVE.ORG

This site appears to be part of the dream of Brewster Kahle to bring information to the masses.

Have a look and marvel!

300 million dollar cocaine seizure

Well, that's the headline! I wonder if anyone has actually gone to ask the farmers in Columbia what they think of this assessment of the price of the goods that they grow?

I suspect that between the street price of this narcotic substance, which is what is being quoted by the authorities, there are multiple opportunities for someone to make a dollar or two.

If the true value of the goods was considered, ie what the farmers were being paid to grow the coca plants was actually the subject of the report then someone would actually ask the question why not pay the farmers DOUBLE what they are currently getting NOT to grow the crop?

Sure this would put a lot of people out of business and not all them crooks. After all we have an entire legitimate industry that is supported by the drug trade. There are police personnel, judges, court systems, prison systems, medical facilities and the list goes on.

Could it be that one of the reasons that the "war on drugs" has been such a failure for so long is that it is simply too profitable for everyone involved whether at the legal or the illegal sides of this issue to give it up?

Let's support the farmers to grow crops that are equally or more profitable and all of a sudden the opportunity to buy the raw product could disappear.

A suggestion for intending travellers.

In the recent allegations and revelations about baggage handlers at Sydney Airport and the placement of contraband in luggage I suppose that it is up to the individual traveller to create the necessary evidence to prove at some later time - should this be necessary, that he or she did NOT have contraband in luggage.

Using a digital camera, why not photograph the luggage open showing its contents just before the luggage is given up to the airport staff and then another shot of the traveller sealing the luggage for the cameras with a set of plastic tags which if broken between the time that the traveller gives up the luggage and receives it at the other end of the journey will demonstrate to one and all that whatever contents were added to the luggage was added after the bags left the control of the traveller.

A bit much you think? Too much delay at the points of departure?

Perhaps - but then again what is YOUR life worth?

Burn off or another scary fire?

In the last few days there has been a pall of smoke which has hung over the southern side of Canberra due no doubt to protective burn offs undertaken under the auspices of the local authorities. The smoke haze was so bad the other day that while taking my morning constitutional all of my clothes were impregnated with the wood fire smoke and needed to be washed thoroughly to get rid of the impregnated smoke particles.

Now if that was happening to my clothes then I wonder what was happening to my lungs and furthermore I wonder what was happening to the ability to breathe for all of those people who have conditions like asthma?

Why is there never a warning from the authorities when these major burn offs occur? Why can people not be advised in advance that there is a danger of smoke haze so that people with respiratory illnesses can take precautions?

These and many other questions need to be asked of the Chief Minister and the group of people who are responsible for the governance of the ACT.

Many people were no doubt traumatised by the events of the bushfires several years ago when people were killed and hundreds of homes destroyed. For someone in this situation to see a huge cloud of smoke on the horizon or a complete smoke haze blocking the sun as they left work in the afternoon the events of that time would have come back in a rush and caused anxiety if not a renewed sense of terror until their other senses could evaluate the threat and come to the conclusion that it was not a major fire but just a necessary preventative burn off.

Let's not add insult to injury in future. If there is to be a major burn off around our community let's hear about it on the news and let's have warnings to those people who may be negatively affected.

Temporary Marriages in Iran

How many people saw the program on SBS which dealt with Mohammed (a recovering Drug addict with HIV) and his search for a spouse using a matchmaker on SBS?

I have never before seen a show which highlights some of the more amazing aspects of the Islamic culture in Iran.

After some tortuous convolutions Mohammed meets a woman who has been married before, does NOT have HIV and who agrees that she would like to share her life with him. Since it is forbidden in Iran according to Islamic law for a man and a woman to have a relationship outside of marriage there is a LAW which permits them to marry for any length of time - specified in advance - which can be as brief as a moment or up to 99 years. The contract of marriage is accompanied by a 'dowry' which the male has to stipulate and pay if the marriage does not last for the duration of the agreed term.

Think about it folks.

You meet someone you like and he/she fancies you as well and while it is forbidden to get it on outside of the marriage - it really does not matter in Iran. You go to a religious lawyer, pay your fee, agree on a token dowry and then sign up for a time limited marriage which can be for as long as you both agree it should be.

It really depends in Iran (it seems) how long you think the relationship should last (or is likely to last). For a brief fling a marriage of say one day (and night) might suffice or an even lesser time if you think that this is too long.

It is no longer a question of anything apart from whether you think what you will gain from the relationship is worth the fee for the marriage celebrant and token dowry.

Who knew that having a relationship was so easy under Islamic law? Certainly seems to beat what is available in Australia. Here we have to promise a lifetime of commitment and then the penalties for any breach of contract are severe. How much more civilised to have a relationship which is limited to what the two people involved really think they can bear.

What is even more interesting is the commonality between the USA and Iran. Of course the two cultures do approach the issue from different ends. The Americans have the "quickie divorce" - Las Vegas style while the Iranians have the "quickie marriage" Teheran style

Then again - maybe there is a catch which no one mentioned during the program. Would anyone care to clarify?

Just a brief question about Iraq

Has anyone really LOOKED at what they see on the streets of Iraq? Each time I see the pictures transmitted by any of the TV services, I see bunches of people running around the streets armed with AK47 assault rifles, pistols and either firing them wildly into the air or brandishing them around the place in an intimidating manner.

Has anyone thought of disarming these lunatics who go around with all of these guns?

It is hardly likely that the Americans will do it, after all they have a gun culture which is unique to themselves. It is the RIGHT of every American to bear arms according to their constitution. Everyone is thus entitled to purchase and to use all sorts of military weapons in a domestic situation.

Personally I think this leads to madness. Iraq is proof of what CAN happen if you permit any and every person to own a weapon.

It is a nonsense for the Americans to want to restore security much less law and order to the streets of Iraq unless they realise that getting the weapons off the street should be their first call.

Since this is contrary to their own notions about what is right, why do they complain when their people get killed?

In the law of the jungle the mightiest animal is the winner. This is not the case in the urban jungle. The Americans have only to look at their own experience in their revolutionary war of independence. They too were out gunned and out manned by superior British soldiers and yet using guerrilla tactics and living off the land they beat a superior force into submission and carved out a continent for themselves.

What's new about what is happening in Iraq today? Nothing. Only this time the Americans appear to be on the losing side.

When will they learn that their mightiest weapon is their power of trade. In the past they have beaten countries into submission by invading them with their products.

The Chinese and the Japanese have learned this lesson well, while the Americans have developed their armaments the Chinese, Japanese and the Indians have and/or are developing the real power base of the future, manufacturing and service delivery capability.

When will the Arabs learn that they could achieve so much more with trade than they can with arms?

The last flowering of Arab civilisation was based on trade and tolerance. It is obvious to me that this has been lost sight of.

Older workers

Why is it a good idea to hire an older worker?

There are those who are of the view that hiring an older worker is simply hiring trouble. 'You can't teach an old dog new tricks', is generally the view of the younger generation. The reality is that many old dogs are actually able to adapt to new situations more quickly than younger ones because they have a larger repertoire of potential solutions to choose from and a greater life experience that enables them to see answers simply because they literally have 'been there and done that'.

Smarter older workers have also been around for long enough to have learnt that things get done by people like themselves. When they were younger and working at the lowest levels within an organisation learning the ropes and making contacts all with a great desire to move up the corporate ladder of success, they not only paid their dues by learning, but also by making contacts with all of the others who like themselves were the people on whom the then generation of managers depended to get the work out. Thus they are not only not strangers to hard work, they know the tricks of doing it smarter not harder and long ago learned to adapt to changes in methodology, changes in organisational structure and changes in management style and philosophy simply because in the last twenty to thirty years they have managed to experience it first hand numerous times.

Then there are their contacts.

Unless the person has been a monk sworn to silence and been isolated in a cave as a recluse, there is high likelihood that he/she has developed a network of people around various organisations who were helpful during their earlier working life. Smart people actually made a lifestyle choice about cultivating people who could be useful to them with their work. The more senior and highly placed a person becomes, generally, the more attention they pay to people who are young and still in their developmental days because it is these people who will assist them to get the work done and it is from among these people that some will reach a senior management role within a ten year spread and it is thus these people who will be able to continue to assist with getting work done when they reach the top.

By adopting a sensible characteristic of mentoring people at the lower levels within an organisation and by retaining contact with those people who are rising or have risen to the top echelons of management - the sensible older worker has a network of contacts that is second to none and is all the more valuable as a result.

Things that would normally take forever to do can be done faster and better by the older worker who uses prior experience and an expansive network of others to get the job done.

The sensible workers also keep on maintaining their contacts across organisations and indeed spend a lot of their time within the work place seeming to do nothing but 'chat' with people. These contact maintaining chats pay off for the employer however because there is nothing better than having a well connected person being appointed to get an urgent and important job done. There is no experimentation, there is very little learning curve required. The older worker either knows how to get the job done or knows someone who knows and from them gets the information and applies it in practice.

Since older workers are also tired of working full time and would like to capitalise on the promises made to them earlier in their life that if only they work hard NOW they will be able to enjoy their retirement it is hardly surprising that if they are offered reasonably well remunerated part time work they will take to it like ducks to water and actually work harder and with greater application than a younger worker who has so many other things on his or her mind.

If you do not believe me when I tell you that it pays to hire and older worker - fine! Try one and see. If all else fails hire me on the basis of put up or shut up and provided the level of remuneration is right and the work is interesting I will prove that this thesis is correct.

The Budget

Treasurer Costello has delivered yet another budget for Australia. As usual there is some good news and some bad news.

"If you are able-bodied and you are of working age, which is 15 to 65, then you are expected to look for work if you are capable of it," Mr Costello said."

For those of us who were promised the lure of early retirement, the opportunity to work harder and more productively for a shorter period and then a well earned rest while we were still young enough to enjoy what remained of our lives this comes as a blow.

Now I suppose we will have to feel unpatriotic if all we want to do is to enjoy our lives rather than continue to keep slaving away so that we can help the companies that employ us continue to make the earth-shattering profits that they have been making in the last few years.

What is a tooth worth?

No this is not a Monty Python question.

I was reading the other day about the chemical composition of the human body and quite frankly I am ashamed to admit it, but after careful consideration I realise that in my entirety, I am worth only a few cents worth of chemicals. (no wonder that life is so cheap in various countries of the world)

It was in this vein that I began to reassess things like visits to the dentist.

If you have been to the dentist of late you will have experienced a considerable twinge in your hip pocket nerve when the bill is presented. If my whole body is only worth a few cents of chemicals, then how come that the filling of one tooth with an amalgam filling costs so much?

I have come to suspect that the answer lies not in the actual worth of the items that are being repaired or indeed the cost of the items used to undertake the repair. Nor does the answer seem to lie in the value of the dentist's skill and competence. After all you can go to many other countries in the world where they have equally skilled dentists and get your cavity filled for a lower cost.

So what is the answer?

I suspect it lies in the cost of the latest purchase or acquisition which the dentist faces, be this a boat, a new swimming pool or perhaps a larger house. I am paying for a life style! I am helping to support all of those people who provide the services which the dentist uses to acquire that lifestyle. In short a visit to the dentist is really nothing to do with the value of the service I am getting it has everything to do with supporting the rest of society to live in the style to which it has become accustomed.

This evaluation has completely restored my faith in my own worth. Dead I may only be worth a few cents for my physical composition. Alive however I am worth a great deal to the people who can and do make a living off my corpus.

The Australian Association Of Social Workers - Yet again

TWO PROPOSED CHANGES TO THE AASW CONSTITUTION Clauses 175 (c) & (d)

In June 2003, the Committee of Management of the Western Australian Branch of the AASW resigned due, amongst other things, to their concern about the imminent insolvency of the AASW and the loss of self-generated State funds and savings from capitation fees to the national coffers.

The WA membership was surveyed and out of this arose the urgent issue of Branches being able to raise their own funds (from CPE events, Branch conferences etc.) and retain these funds as well as Branch capitation fees.

In June 2004 at the face to face Board Meeting in Canberra, the realisation of the AASW’s financial situation was clear and the only way for the Association to continue a level of financial feasibility was to use all the Branch surpluses. Every Branch “lost” their savings/surpluses and this was necessary to keep the AASW afloat. For many Branches and COM’s this came as a large shock and there has been ongoing debate about what should have been done, could have been done etc.. For some members who do identify with their Branch and attend regular CPE events or social gatherings, they have gone without a local service. Those members who volunteer their time, professionalism and energy to their local Branches have been disheartened by the financial outcome.

At the Board meeting of the AASW in November 2004, it was moved that two additional clauses be included in the Constitution of the AASW (following legal review):

Clause 175 (c) to read:
“The Branch has the power on behalf of the Association to raise or earn money and disburse the money so raised plus monies from membership fees received.”

Clause 175 (d) to read:
“With the agreement of the Board, Branch Committees of Management have the authority within their jurisdiction to undertake activities on behalf of the Association.”

The Board also voted that:
“A Special General Meeting be called by 30 April 2005 for the membership to vote.”

By adding these two clauses to the Constitution, Branches will have greater autonomy not only to be self-generating but also to utilise these funds in ways that will benefit their members.

All members will soon be receiving a Briefing Paper with further details of these two recommended specific constitutional changes. There is also a National Constitutional Committee working on producing a document recommending other changes (in time for the National AGM in November 2005) to ensure a robust constitution for the association to support the future of the AASW.

Remember to VOTE either in PERSON or by PROXY for the Special General Meeting in April 2005, which is to be held in Canberra.

Pete's Points

Well folks, its MAY 2005 and so far no meeting of the Association has been called by its President in spite of the statement in their March newsletter advertising this and a Board decision.

If the Directors of the AASW Ltd wish to continue in office for much longer they should remember that they are a limited company established under the Corporations Law in the ACT and should act accordingly. I am not sure whether corporate watchdogs would be amused at a company deciding and advertising an intention to hold an Special General Meeting and then simply not doing so thereby denying their shareholders (in this case members) the opportunity to hold the Board to account and to take back some of the power that they suggest the Board has usurped.

Anyone in the AASW care to comment?

The Death of Common Sense

This is the title of the cutest email I have received in an age. If you too receive it read it and weep. Then hold up your hands and count off on your fingers the number of people you personally KNOW have common sense.

When you find yourself discovering that you cannot even manage to get up to ten ask yourself if this means that from now on you should be calling it 'good sense' because you have proved it is not common?

Let's Make Book on the USA in the Middle East

I wonder if anyone is actually taking bets on how long the USA will remain in Afghanistan and Iraq?

I know that I would be interested in taking a bet that the duration of their stay is likely to be longer than shorter.

The UK elections

Has anyone else noticed that the person who actually ran the successful campaign for the Howard government in Australia was hired to run the campaign for the Howard conservatives in the UK?

How unsurprising therefore that the issues should be about trust and about who can and cannot run the economy.

Pope Mobile sells for over 310,000 Euros

I simply love novelty acts which appear on E bay. A piece of cereal which appeared to have the face (supposedly) of Jesus Christ on it and now a pope mobile which was never driven by the Pope have sold on the Internet.

I have no problem with the people who sell such items - I mean to say if someone is stupid enough to buy things like that why should someone else not make money?

What gets me are the people who buy these items!

It's just like the scam that has been going on about Toby the rabbit. Two college kids have managed to raise in excess of US$28,000 by showing a picture of this cute little rabbit on the Internet and saying that unless people paid money they would eat it.

So what I say, rabbit's are either considered as pets, pests or food. Good on the college kids for trying it on. But who are the idiots who would pay good money to try and keep this cute little bunny alive?

Are we inventing the BORG?

Most of us watch the occasional show on TV that is in the Science Fiction genre and think of it as pure escapism. Some of us actually read the stories which SciFi writers produce and think of it as ways in which 'what if' scenarios are created.

In recent times those of you who are Star Trek fans have watched with interest a group called the BORG (no offence intended I am certain to people with that name from Malta).

Part human and part machine they represented a challenge to humans and their main claim to fame was the nanotechnology in their systems which enabled them to adapt to any threat to their survival and at the same time enable them through the adaptation process to lock on to scientific advances of all of the peoples that they 'absorbed'.

Truth is often the precursor to fiction but if the following is true then perhaps this time the fiction is leading us to the new truth.

Have a look at this: from New Scientist

You can create nanoscale machines by copying the way the immune system latches onto invading microbes

NANOSCALE machines and circuits could one day be assembled by exploiting the way immune systems latch onto invading bacteria and viruses. The idea has already been successfully used to guide individual nanotubes into position on a metal surface.

Researchers desperately need a way to assemble nanoscale devices. Nanotubes made from various substances can be used in many ways when building these devices: as passive components such as structural supports or conducting wires, or as the basis for active elements such as transistors or light emitters. But connecting up even a single nanotube between two points in a circuit, say, is much easier said than done. That's because a newly synthesised clump of nanotubes is much like a jumbled heap of lumber. The challenge is to pick one out and place it where you want it, says Rajesh Naik, biotechnology project leader at the US Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, ...

Are we evolving to fight cancer and other diseases

An interesting article in the New Scientist has noted that there are some recent studies that would suggest that both chimps and human beings are rapidly changing their genes so that their bodies are better able to fight current epidemics, possibly including cancer.

Worth a read.

If you already HAVE cancer, of course, then there is not much this information does for you - but at least you have some hope that human beings are evolving to fight the threat. The pity is that you can be reassured that you are a casualty of Darwininan evolution.

Do we reall NEED to sleep 8 hours a day?

New Scientist As alert as ever on just two hours' sleep - News:

"WHY do we have to spend a third of our lives sleeping? The discovery that fruit flies with a particular protein variant need only a third of the normal amount of sleep could provide part of the answer.

Surprisingly, sleep in flies and mammals shares many similarities; deprivation, for instance, leads to impaired performance. Chiara Cirelli's group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been screening thousands of mutant fruit flies to identify the genes that affect slumber.

She discovered that one mutant, dubbed 'minisleep', rests only 4 hours a day, compared with 12 hours in normal flies (Nature, vol 434, p 1087). Despite the lack of sleep, minisleepers showed no signs of impairment. Their escape responses also remained almost as quick after 24 hours without sleep, unlike those of normal flies.

The minisleep mutation is in a gene called Shaker, which is also found in mammals, and there are a few reports of people who really do seem to get by on a couple of hours' sleep without any ill effects. Understanding how the protein variant works might lead to new kinds of drugs for keeping sleep-deprived people alert, the team speculates. There is a snag, though: minisleepers die young."

Pete's Points:

I am one of those people who seem to need less sleep than most. So I am much taken with the information in this article that perhaps the reason for my situation may well be as simple as the fact that my body manufactures a protein and that this may well be due to a different gene structure.

Of course I am NOT happy about this "dying young" bit. I suspect the author of the article merely mentioned it as a way of helping readers who are slugabeds with their penchant for sleeping in.

For those people who have always thought that I was weird - now is the chance for you to be in a position to gloat.

You now have your evidence.

I would of course argue that I am simply an early adaptation (along Darwinian lines) to the current environmental stimuli created by the management mantra that we simply have to do more with less!