One size policy of return to offices fits all
Our attention now turns to the transition back to our usual workplaces in a COVID-safe manner as restrictions are eased for workplaces,” Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Phil Gaetjens and Australian Public Service Commissioner Peter Woollcott said in an open letter to 155,000 federal public servants last week.
“Returning to our usual workplaces is a positive milestone and a shift towards some normality for all of us. It’s an opportunity to reconnect with colleagues and return to our team environments,” the two public servant leaders said.
But flexible working is being framed as a personal issue rather than being promoted as a sector-wide policy, with individual agency heads responsible for making decisions concerning flexible working arrangements, including working from home.
They said flexible work would remain important for the APS “in continuing to take individual circumstances into account, as well as supporting the transition back”.
Under the current settings in NSW, state public sector agencies must continue to allow employees to work from home, if reasonably practicable, until December 1, when all offices are open at full capacity.
C.E.O.s are eager for employees to return — and afraid of alienating those who have grown accustomed to working from home.
When the truth is inconvenient: how lying allows politicians to propser
The truth is becoming increasingly unimportant in our politics and Parliament — and this bodes ill for civilised society and the survival of democracy.
If you thought Covid was all over now might be the time too think again
I think it fair to say that I have never been a Covid optimist. Since February 2020 I have felt that those believing that Covid
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Video interview: Eric Topol on the Omicron variant Noahpinion
Specifically, at 3:48, Topol having just depicted Delta as unanticpated, says of Omicron that it was even more unanticipated because it is chock full of mutations.
Having heard years of “Whocoulddanode?” after the global financial crisis, it’s galling to hear that excuse for elite failure trotted out again.
As we quoted GM on November 19, based on an e-mail of November 13 that codified some things he’d been saying in bits and pieces over the preceding weeks:
The most likely future major developments of the pandemic fall into one of these three scenarios:
1. We get a second-generation Delta variant that has a major advantage over all other Delta lineages. This is the most likely one simply because right now 98% of the virus circulating around the world is Delta and Delta was the most fit variant to begin with.
2. We get a second-generation variant from one of the lineages that have still survived the Delta sweep that is capable of competing against Delta. Eyes are on Lambda/C.37 and Mu/B.1.621 and possibly P.1, because those are the only first-generation variants that still circulate in significant numbers in South America
3. Something new appears out of nowhere that is fitter than the rest. This will most likely come from Africa– there is no surveillance in the depths of the continent and there is no knowing what is brewing there.
New ‘Omicron’ Variant Stokes Concern but Vaccines May Still Work New York Times The future’s so bright I’m gonna have to wear shades….
The Kyle Rittenhouse acquittal on all counts is in the news. Acquittal or conviction (on some or all counts) was sure to become a political charged phenomenon. I don’t deal with the political issues here. I respond to a question I was asked yesterday as to whether Rittenhouse’s acquittal absolves him of potential civil liability related to the same conduct for which he was acquitted and specifically address the criminal tax analog of the phenomenon.
For a discussion of the nontax answer, I point readers to this discussion: Euguene Volokh, Could Kyle Rittenhouse Be Sued for Negligence?(The Volokh Conspiracy 11/20/21), here. Professor Volokh answers the question succinctly at the beginning of the blog post
Civil Liability for Conduct that is Acquitted in Criminal Case
The author of a new parliamentary inquiry report into public service capability has ripped into the consulting and contract
APS politicised, beholden to management consultants, labour hire firms: Senate report
Watergate revised: Prosecutor cover-up alleged.
It’s taken decades of work, but a former aide’s campaign to clear Richard Nixon’s name in the 1972 Watergate scandal has finally reached the Justice Department, with the aide seeking an investigation into allegations of prosecutorial misconduct and a “deep state” conspiracy to take Nixon down.” . . .
Shepard’s credibility is hard to challenge. He was an insider who turned on Nixon after hearing one of the most critical secret tape recordings in the Watergate case. In fact, he is credited with dubbing the tape the “smoking gun” because he believed it tied Nixon to the Watergate cover-up.
Only later did Shepard change his mind when he realized that Nixon was running through options in the scandal, not approving a hush payment in the case.
And more recently, he forced the release of the secret prosecutor’s “road map” used to convince a grand jury to indict key Watergate figures and egg on the impeachment inquiry that turned out to be a hoax, somewhat similar to the “dossier” used to spark the FBI investigation of former President Donald Trump.
“They knew it was a lie, and they made it up,” Shepard said. That road map, however, was never revealed to Nixon’s defense team and was sealed until 2019, when Shepard got it released. It is a central piece of his latest book, published by Bombardier Books.
He also found out that several members of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, then headed by prosecutor Archibald Cox, improperly left the group with their documents. In some, they described how they worked with the anti-Nixon judge in the case, John Sirica, to get Nixon — a big legal no-no.
RAYMOND IBRAHIM: How Muslim Racism and Inferiority Complexes Fuel the Jihad.
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