A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish.
- Maycock, The Man Who Was Orthodox
Over a Chinese New Year luncheon, which doubled as a farewell, one of the more colourful characters, often described as a cool father, a down to earth soccer coach, a trainer Frank Lowy would be proud to have in every soccer club, has an uncanny ability to illustrate how the comedy of man survives the tragedy of man. Bureaucracy, Chinese, Czech or Australian, equates with inefficiency, laziness, ... achieving results which end up in enlarging the size of the bureaucracy. A bureaucrat is someone who is more concerned with avoiding mistakes rather than making good decisions. ‘No-one ever got fired for buying IBM' was the public servant's slogan of the 1970s and '80s. Now as we download Window 2003 in 2005 'No-one ever gets fired for buying Microsoft.' Lets hope Open Access Linux will soon rock this kind of mentality ... On a lighter note GM uses a rather thought-provoking analogy for bureaucracies: Public service is like smoking dope the more you suck the higher you get ;-) ...
It’s not what you know ... It is not depth or breath of knowledge ... To succeed, you must never ask awkward questions, you have to agree not to rock the boat, most of all you need to keep an eye on anyone who might rock the river!
Frequently executives have very outdated, or even no real skills in the area they are working in. Their real skills are in playing politics, going to meetings, wandering around giving orders, self-justification and backstabbing. They are like paying taxes (or bribes), or having to employ feminists to meet an affirmative action target. They are corporate 'overhead'. In order to survive, he (or she) takes credit for anything that works out well, and passes the buck when something goes badly. Rarely, if ever, are these people asked "so what are your actual people skills?"
The individuals are administering laws whose legislatures have long term goals, but whose performance bonuses have short term goals - All long lived bureaucracies are fundamentally self serving and this is why you often hear self serving managers claiming that while they will do everything in the best interest of the organisation the evil ones are working against it (LOL) Acting in one's own interests, while claiming to act in the interests of the organisation. Bum covering is still the dominant paradigm: Moore's Laws of The Castle
Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Closing Ranks: A Club Too Exclusive
Who cares if no one knows what will be in the Social Security reform package suggested by President Bush in concept but with no details? Not the club ...
The Republican Party rules the White House, as well as a majority in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, which means the party is flying so high that only Republicans can muck it up.
Enter the Club for Growth, a group of supply-side economists on a jihad to bury Republicans they don't deem to be pure enough. Given a choice between half a loaf and none, the club says: none.
So last week, the club's new president Rep. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., announced a campaign to send a "gentle message" to three Republicans -- Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., Rep. Joe Schwarz, R-Mich., and Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y. -- by airing ads in their districts telling voters to urge their lawmaker to support private savings accounts as part of a Social Security reform package.
• Au contraire, only cowardice or stupidity could prompt a member to sign onto a reform package that doesn't exist [NSW political leaders today welcomed a proposed film about Sydney’s notorious gang rapes, saying it was a story that deserved to be told. Gang rape film wins political backing; More than 40,000 weapons were seized in major crackdowns across NSW, the state’s police commissioner Ken Moroney A Million to Go? ]
• · By his own admission, writer Frank Moorhouse has benefited from almost every kind of government patronage - grants, awards, soft diplomacy jaunts overseas, even an Order of Australia. So he might have been peeved to find the government meanwhile had ASIO watching him, checking who came to his barbecues, what campaigns he mounted, which motions he moved at fringe meetings - exploring whether he was an enemy of the state. Not so. What left him “gravely disappointed” as he leafed through the thick file during his research at the National Archives of Australia was that his youthful anarchist activities ultimately weren’t taken seriously enough to make him a grave security risk. Frank Moorhouse Lesser Threat; Come and enjoy pre and post show drinks at Munchero’s (dress: trenchcoat; code: Steps to the Pole Dance; Period: March to Fool’s day). While many comics claim to push the envelope, Austen Tayshus tears it to shreds in a blistering evening that leaves no stone unturned. David Callan is the only spook ever to leave the spying game for the comedy game. He used to perform at the Icebergs Bondi and now even CNNN considers him to be Bloody Funny! He knows his Stuff and Yours Too! Cracker: Funniest show in the Festival. A five star rating is not enough. David’s is a sixer! And Sexier too
• · · Shobhakar Parajuli is on the move. He has slept in six different houses in six nights as he adjusts to life as an underground political figure. Democracy goes underground as fear grips Nepal; Steve Cole: Traditional thinking, focused on governments, still dominates US weapons policy The fear that terrorism will go nuclear; What does the son of an infamous Libyan colonel do for entertainment in Sydney? Host a bash at my old swimming club which turned into the trendy Bondi hang-out Icebergs, of course. Accordingly, the football player and wannabe media magnate Al-Saadi Gaddafi has invited 60-odd members of the meat, rice and media industries to Icebergs for an intimate dinner on Friday night. Brother of a gun
• · · · Kim Beazley has promised his Opposition will concentrate on making the Government more accountable and yesterday he scored a political hit. The grant of money to flush a creek that was already flushed was served up by Beazley as a prime case of the unstoppable Coalition pork barrel. Round one to Beazley: At the mouth of the Tumbi Creek; Media Dragon has referred to this quote about politicians by Nikita Khrushchev in the past and today it came back freshly re-observed politicians seem to be the same all over the world: They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river. He would have loved question time yesterday, as the Government struggled to rebut claims it had allocated $1.5 million - before it had been requested - for the dredging of a creek which didn’t need dredging. Overflow of pork leaves ministers over a barrel
• · · · · Former Liberal premier and mental health campaigner Jeff Kennett has joined a growing chorus of demands for the Howard Government to hold a public, judicial inquiry into the Cornelia Rau affair. BeyondBlue depression initiative
• · · · · · Allan Fels: Services to support people with psychoses have been shamefully neglected Rau is only an extreme example - our prisons are full of mentally ill people; Out of a system designed to produce failure: About 10am on Tuesday, Christopher Dean Binse blinked in the sunlight as he emerged from a 13-year sentence in Goulburn’s forbidding super max prison. Badness ready to come good Do you know a unique Sydney story? email: citizen@smh.com.au