OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!
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Studying for the sake of intellectual extension is a luxury most people can't afford.
At least they think they can't afford it. The funny thing is, the career oriented degrees don't really raise your chances of any job other than something highly specific, straight out of University. The things that still lands people the good jobs is articulacy, being interesting, and being demonstrably able to learn basically anything. Being highly self-directed helps, which is quite unusual in people who have allowed some degree to dictate their career path. Being unable to take an interest in things outside of a perceived optimal path is extremely frustrating to employers who want flexible workers who can come up with ideas.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
Being unable to take an interest in things outside of a perceived optimal path is extremely frustrating to employers who want flexible workers who can come up with ideas.
That might be plausible if it were demonstrably true. But given some of the shit I've been through when looking for work in the past, I just don't buy it. Recruiters are morons, IME, and incapable of examining any deviation from "the client's requirements". Of course this then comes back to "the client's requirements" being prescriptive and narrow.
I've been turned down for even getting an interview due to lacking an entry-level vendor certification despite having been working at higher levels, with more-advanced kit from the same vendor, for a number of years. That doesn't encourage me to believe that most employers (or, at least, most hiring managers) want anyone who's not an exact fit to their to-the-letter requirements.Also, it can be quite the CLM to be smarter than your boss. Takes a very big person to be comfortable with subordinates who know more, understand more, and are more capable than you.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
Recruiters are morons, IME, and incapable of examining any deviation from "the client's requirements"
O, RLY?
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Martin Lindberg, in reply to
I’ve made no secret of my political leanings here, and also how this has been sorely tested by the likes of Bennett, Collins and co. I’m wondering on what basis I should vote now. Fashion sense? Bennet’s newly appointed opposition spokesperson would win, hands down. Just sayin’.
I think this is an interesting question in a general sense. On what basis do people vote? I can personally see three levels of reasoning. Voting for a particular MP that you like and trust. Voting for a party which represents policies you like. Or voting for a party whose ideology you support.
Ideally those factors would align, but that's rarely the case. Are you prepared to accept that the MPs in the party you like are morons, but it's still the better party? Or that the party's current policies are stupid, but the party still represents an ideology you support.
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BenWilson, in reply to
That might be plausible if it were demonstrably true.
The whole recruitment process is half the problem here, and I stand by my belief about what employers "really" want. But recruitment processes often can't deliver what they really want, only what they think they want. And they are so often completely wrong. Not surprising, they're only human.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Pure speculation. Can I have a pass on the heavy internal fiskiness that has been going on here lately? No?
You've felt it too, young Padawan? Like a thousand posts were written, and then suddenly trashed without publication?
I too feel that Goff has become the problem. Well, actually, I always felt that, but my feeling was that National would have to screw up majorly to not get 2 terms, and Goff was just a placeholder until they did.
Now, I feel strongly that they have actually screwed up. I think this election has suddenly become contestable if only a strongly decisive Labour with charismatic leadership could actually come up with the fucking patently obvious alternative, a strong response to recession, NZ's next New Deal.
Things I'd like to see are:
-Compulsory savings
-Increased taxation, targeted upwards
-Job creation through badly needed infrastructure projects
-Crushing property speculation by
1. Removing the tax incentives
2. Legislating on minimum equity requirements.
-Massive repatriation of debt by building up our government bank.
Here's a wild thought on repatriation: You can't claim a pension if you own property with the debt held offshore. So you have to refinance to Kiwibank.I expect all the foreign banks would scream blue murder about this. Fuck them. Our main financial problem is private foreign debt. Solve that problem.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
Here’s a wild thought on repatriation: You can’t claim a pension if you own property with the debt held offshore. So you have to refinance to Kiwibank.
Except that a) KB isn’t the only NZ-owned bank, or mortgage lender, and b) it would require quite some legislative circumlocutions to transform companies registered with the NZ Companies Office and licensed as banks under NZ legislation into entities whose local mortgages are "debt held offshore".
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Dismal Soyanz, in reply to
Here's a wild thought on repatriation: You can't claim a pension if you own property with the debt held offshore. So you have to refinance to Kiwibank.
Unfortunately Kiwibank also borrows offshore.
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Yes, I was thinking as I wrote that wild thought: "I bet there's no way any NZ bank could do that without borrowing the money offshore in turn".
Ah well, forget that. I doubt any government here will ever be strong enough to take on the banking sector. The US government sure couldn't. It's become the uber-government, and it's a greedy SOB.
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recordari, in reply to
You’ve felt it too, young Padawan? Like a thousand posts were written, and then suddenly trashed without publication?
Hmm, yesss. What to say? Feels like there’s something (or someone) missing.
Are you prepared to accept that the MPs in the party you like are morons, but it’s still the better party? Or that the party’s current policies are stupid, but the party still represents an ideology you support.
Need to think about this. Guess ‘all of the above’ is not possible?
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BenWilson, in reply to
Guess ‘all of the above’ is not possible?
On the contrary, it's the norm.
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Dismal Soyanz, in reply to
Yup. Hence my view that regulating the channel may have some effect but is not a long-term solution. More work needs to be done on decreasing the demand for credit (aka increasing savings) through nudging behaviour. The savings working group has acknowledged that need but the process will require buy in from a significant proportion of the political spectrum. Not holding my breath for that. Plus also some work on getting the public over its knee-jerk hostility (well, that's how I interpret it) toward compulsory and/or incentive-led savings.
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Going back to Infrastructure assets and the appalling way this Government has handled them, it seems that Chris Barton is not too impressed with the way the RBI (Rural Broadband Initiative) is going.
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Jacqui Dunn, in reply to
But recruitment processes often can't deliver what they really want, only what they think they want.
And in the ordinary scheme of things - at least, in these times - is that everyone must account for hours spent doing stuff, with payoffs to match presumably. Not much time for constructive thinking....
Off-thread slightly, but just looking at teachers' workloads, and the amount of time they are forced to spend dotting "i"s and crossing "t"s so that someone (higher up) can prove they have delivered their part of the job to their superiors. Endless. Gives me a headache.
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Sacha, in reply to
getting the public over its knee-jerk hostility (well, that's how I interpret it) toward compulsory and/or incentive-led savings
Didn't KiwiSaver have good acceptance and uptake? Naturally it was one of the first things the current ruling dolts hacked in 2008 to part fund the road-building and tax cuts skewed towards the top which were meant to be the nation's saviour. The public's problem is we keep voting for that approach, not that we resist the others.
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Rich Lock, in reply to
Why? Is NZ's problem actually a lack of engineers (or the quality of said engineers)? No. It's incompetence at the management level. We need to start training managers who can actually manage, as opposed to more engineers to be incompetently managed.
The 'we need more engineers' meme is fairly prevelant in a lot of countries, though. It's not by any stretch the first time I've heard this, both here and abroad.
Except that India and China actually did train up a whole bunch of engineers over the last 20-odd years, and look how well that's working out for them...
I don't think good managers can be trained, at least in certain areas. I think leadership is something someone either has, or doesn't have and never will. If you have it, you can sharpen it up with training, etc, but you can never teach it from scratch.
A worker drone down in the trenches wants to know that his or her hardships are worthwhile and pointful, and also that the pain is being equally spread around. If Mr or Ms Manager is fucking off home in their late model European car on the dot of 5.00 every night, having just deposited a whole bunch of new work on your desk which is going to keep you there 'til 7.00 (again), then you're going to get pretty resentful, pretty quickly.
If they don't have your back when the shit hits the fan, especially if the crisis is caused by their vague and sketchy instructions in the first place, then the workers are not going to be happy.
Certainly you can teach them how to manage the money/resource-go-round. But good leaders are few and far between.
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Sacha, in reply to
it seems that Chris Barton is not too impressed
As usual, a brilliant piece of work that makes the connection with the current mob gagging to sell off our electricity system as well:
Ever since deregulation of the telecommunications sector and the transformation of a publicly-owned New Zealand asset into our largest listed company, we've been at the mercy of foreign owners determined to under invest in the network and reap unsustainable monopoly profits.
Successive governments have tried for 20 years to bring this monster of their own creation under control, but all have capitulated under its share market might. Telecom rules OK.
It's even more extraordinary that this government is about to repeat the same mistake and consign our electricity companies to the same fate. All New Zealanders could benefit from cheap electricity and cheap ultra fast broadband provided by properly run government owned public utilities.
That is, enterprises prepared to operate under a steady- as-she-goes modest return on investment, rather than providing never ending dividends demanded by greedy shareholders. New Zealand business, built on such bedrock - free to waste bandwidth, not to mention electricity in creative endeavour - might actually deliver real productivity and wealth. If there us any way to leapfrog Australia, this is it.
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Sacha, in reply to
The 'we need more engineers' meme is fairly prevelant
..where people think that future prosperity will look the same as it did in the 1950s.
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Danielle, in reply to
getting the public over its knee-jerk hostility (well, that's how I interpret it) toward compulsory and/or incentive-led savings.
That's all very bloody well if you actually earn enough. I can't really blame people on average incomes for being hostile to compulsory savings when New Zealand's wages are low and our supermarket duopoly keeps raising food prices because they know they can. It's not as if most people are flush with discretionary income to save at the moment, is it?
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BenWilson, in reply to
Gives me a headache.
I'm continually amazed that so many really bright people even become teachers. They must have a passion for it, because it's hard work and not really well remunerated. The teaching itself is hard enough, let alone all the stupid accounting for it. I'm full of admiration.
But then again, I have to say, there is something to be said for being in such a workplace - at least your colleagues aren't know-nothing idiots, and there's a real feeling of common purpose. There must be daily, or even hourly hits of genuine satisfaction when some kid gets something, or does some fantastic work, and at the end of every year you can look back and think how far they all came.
It's what my Mum has always done. She's nearing retirement, and still the main thing she likes about teaching is the teaching. I'd say "the only thing", but that's not true - teachers do get good holidays.
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On what basis do people vote? I can personally see three levels of reasoning. Voting for a particular MP that you like and trust. Voting for a party which represents policies you like. Or voting for a party whose ideology you support.
Ideally those factors would align, but that's rarely the case. Are you prepared to accept that the MPs in the party you like are morons, but it's still the better party? Or that the party's current policies are stupid, but the party still represents an ideology you support.
Do people vote for a party? Or do they vote against the incumbent.
I've made it fairly clear that I'll be voting for a yellow dog before I vote Tory, ever. But I'll quite happily withhold my vote for anyone else if they're fuckwits.
With the greatest of respect, I'm always a bit bemused by those who vote Tory, and who then act surprised when they act exactly like they did last time they were in power - privatisation, law and order, public sector cuts, etc
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Rich Lock, in reply to
where people think that future prosperity will look the same as it did in the 1950s.
India and China have huge percentages of phd's and engineers, compared to the 'old west'.
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BenWilson, in reply to
I can't really blame people on average incomes for being hostile to compulsory savings
I can't blame them, but they are wrong. If you're not planning for the future, you're not actually living within your means. But this is not a concept we readily accept here, partially because we have this idea that the government is going to look after the future. Well, if that's how we want it, compulsory saving is indeed one way they could be looking after our future, and it's also a way that's quite hard for successive governments to fuck with.
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BenWilson, in reply to
India and China have huge percentages of phd's and engineers, compared to the 'old west'.
They also have huge percentages of peasants. Despite the fact that their economies are heading in a better direction than they were, I still don't actually envy them. I wouldn't want to go and work in China. They've got a looong way to go before they can really be held up as the boilerplate for how we want our economies to be structured.
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I can't blame them, but they are wrong. If you're not planning for the future, you're not actually living within your means. But this is not a concept we readily accept here,
Television and advertising sell us an idea of what a good life involves. It is based on aspiration to things we currently don't have. Giovanni has a fascinating examination of the relationship between ourselves and our objects, and the mediation of advertising. Slightly off topic, but wonderful anyway.
So we get to the point where a good percentage feel we can just magic up that standard of living indefinitely, without savings. Politicians are reluctant to disavow them of this delusion, and in any case blame the actions of others. And it continues, the inevitable becoming more inevitable.
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