From: WORD_CHEMIST@HOTMAIL.COM
wrote in message
news:1149693425.982077.113240@h76g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> ROBBIE wrote:
> > wrote in message
> > news:1149612457.293663.265300@f6g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
> .........
> vast scads deleted here
You mean you snipped them?
> .........
>
> > You may be well informed, but there is nothing in what you post
> > > here that suggests that your sources of information are anything other
> > > than tabloid journalism, pub talk etc.
> >
> > What an ignorant snob you really are. You have offered a rag bag of
> > anecdotes about a banana republic, and a whole lot of insulting surmise
> > about me.
>
> I give examples from the Dominican Republic because it is a place that
> I frequently visit, and because seeing what goes on in the developing
> world gives us a reality check on the dissatisfactions we may have with
> our more affluent societies. The DR is a beatiful and fascinating
> country full of wonderful people. They have interesting solutions to
> problems that we disregard. For example here in America we consume vast
> resources because we tend to have one car for each person. In the DR
> you can travel incredibly cheaply between cities by public taxi, in
> which the normal payload is 6 adults plus driver in a Toyota Corolla.
> (Two adults share the passenger seat.) You might say "how ridiculous
> and dangerous", but any discussion of how we might reduce our
> dependence on fossil fuels has to take into account the level of
> discomfort that people are prepared to tolerate. Personally I would
> argue that sharing the front seat of a Corolla for an hour with a total
> stranger of either sex is very good for the soul, not to mention the
> planet.
>
I don't disagree. I just think it is silly to hold up the situation in a
third-world country to justify error and decline in a first-world one. Two
wrongs don;t make a right. Lefties really need to chew that over. They also
need to remember that disagreeing with left doesn't instantly make someone a
neo-con or Barry Goldwater or Adolf Hitler. Such reactions are simply
childish.
> FYI, bananas as an export crop play a very small part in the economy of
> the DR. Plantains, which are a close relative of the banana are a major
> crop for local consumption (equivalent to potatoes where you live).
> There is a wide diversity of agricultural products including sugar cane
> (rum), tobacco, coffee, passion fruit (chinola), citrus etc., but the
> main earners of foreign currency are tourism, remittances from
> Domincans overseas, and manufacture of clothing, especially in
> factories in the Cibao region--not that it would interest you, except
> for the point that the DR is not and never has been a banana republic.
>
> >
> >
> > As you admit yourself that your
> > > station in life is a result of being a product of the socialist
> > > education system, is it not also possible that your opinions are the
> > > product of whatever mass media you consume?
> >
> > I read the 'broadsheets', watch the tv, read political magazines,
examnine
> > blogs and I live: I see and I listen. Is there anything more you have
that
> > gives you the right to this ludicrous, patronizing omniscience you put
out?
> >
> > ROBBIE
>
> OK, but there is a world of difference between being a consumer of
> retail opinion and making reference to first hand sources.
Yes, but in my limited experience as a journalist I have seen the mendacity
of first hand sources. Besides which, so much of what is offered as first
hand sources is untrue. After reading this yesterday, I opened Private Eye
and what was the FIRST thing I saw:
' The utter futility of New Labour targets - in particular the Public
Service Agreements (PSA) under which government departments have operated
for seven years - were underlined in a parliamentary answer from Treasury
Minister Stephen Timms last week.
Asked what progress the Home Office was making, Timms replied: "the latest
figures on the Home Office's performance against its PSA target to
'reassure the public, reducing the fear of crime and antisocial behaviour,
and beuilding confidence in the criminal justice system without compromising
fairness', show that the Department is on course or ahead of target in all
components of this target."
Could this possibly be the same government department that the week before
described by the new Home Secretary John Reid as "not fit for purpose" and
"inadequate in terms of its information techonology, leadership, management,
systems and processes"?
It certainly could.
This is
> where you differ from the journalists that you hold in such contempt.
> They have to digest difficult documents and present the key information
> in easily understandable terms.
See above.
Often they cause a lot of distortion,
> but that is probably an inevitable result of the simplification
> process.
>
Hah!
> There is a huge difference between first hand knowledge and second hand
> opinion.
See above.
Surely almost all of us know that when we get to deal with a
> problem close up, we realise that whatever impressions we previously
> had based on media reports etc. only scratched the surface of the real
> issues.
>
> The fact that you have probably never been involved at first hand in
> running, organizing or working with teams to improve some aspect of
> public service means that your perspective is skewed. You think that
> things can be done by some mandarin waving a magic wand, and poof, it
> is so. Well it isn't. Making improvements involves planning and
> organizing dozens of steps, rewriting policies and procedures,
> educating dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people in different
> locations and who work on different shifts, and then measuring the
> results in terms of employee compliance, documentation, and customer
> satisfaction surveys.
No, that's just jobs for the boys. The most important thing about making
improvments is thinking hard about them in the first place.
>
> To you this is all just "socialism"
Successive layers of ineffectual bureacracy? Indeed.
, because you do not understand how
> management works.
The cult of management has been the ruination of many things in my country.
While pure commonsense may work quite well when you
> are self employed, in a family business, or a very small concern, it
> cannot work like that in huge organizations with vast numbers of
> employees.
>
I'm not so sure.
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