Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Can we do it?
We live in an era in which every one of us needs massive amounts of technology just to survive, and lots more to stay as comfortable as we are. Yet, paradoxically, there is a great deal of denigration in the UK and US for mathematics, science and engineering and the people who have skills in those areas, which discourages many from those fields of study. It is to the point where there are sometimes two jobs per graduate.
Can we make the cultural shift to nurture and reward those people, or are we doomed to drop backwards?
Yet another conversation with a wealthy parent (she pushes papers, he is a corporate lawyer) does not give me much hope. All the ones that I have talked to assume that we need such specialists, who will be someone else's children, but their own will go to college, graduate in non-technical fields, and then have successful high-paying careers. I cannot make these parents understand that we have run out of the wealth to get the technology from elsewhere, so we have to make it here. Without a manufacturing base, those nice parasitic managerial and service jobs just won't exist.
Or perhaps I'm wrong, and should have gone into accounting, instead of mathematics teaching and engineering research.
Can we make the cultural shift to nurture and reward those people, or are we doomed to drop backwards?
Yet another conversation with a wealthy parent (she pushes papers, he is a corporate lawyer) does not give me much hope. All the ones that I have talked to assume that we need such specialists, who will be someone else's children, but their own will go to college, graduate in non-technical fields, and then have successful high-paying careers. I cannot make these parents understand that we have run out of the wealth to get the technology from elsewhere, so we have to make it here. Without a manufacturing base, those nice parasitic managerial and service jobs just won't exist.
Or perhaps I'm wrong, and should have gone into accounting, instead of mathematics teaching and engineering research.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Where is Paul Moore's bonus?
Paul Moore, former head of risk management at HBOS (which, by the way, has just cratered its new owner, Lloyds Bank), was sacked in 2005 by Sir James Crosby, allegedly for warning about the bank's excessive lending.
Whistleblowers generally suffer for speaking out. Under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, there is no limit for compensation paid by industrial tribunals in whistleblower cases; but I should very much like to know what is the average paid out under such circumstances, and the most that has ever been paid.
Mr Moore has received "substantial damages" but was also gagged, so I regard whatever he was paid, as merely a recompense for his silence. I doubt whether the damages come anywhere close to the "compensation" paid to some greedy, corrupt and incompetent senior executives at top banking and financial firms; and I think it should.
The OFT has introduced a scheme to award up to £100k for cartel-breaking snitches. Big, fat, hairy deal: five bankers spent £44,000 on wine alone on a single evening in 2001.
Maybe demobureaucracy doesn't work; maybe we should go back to old-fashioned kingship. In Shakespeare's Henry V, the King goes about his camp in disguise before the crucial battle:
KING HENRY V: I myself heard the king say he would not be ransomed.
WILLIAMS: Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully: but when our throats are cut, he may be ransomed, and we ne'er the wiser.
KING HENRY V: If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after.
WILLIAMS: You pay him then. That's a perilous shot out of an elder-gun, that a poor and private displeasure can do against a monarch! you may as well go about to turn the sun to ice with fanning in his face with a peacock's feather.
After the battle, the King calls a trembling Williams out of the ranks and reveals himself as the anonymous interlocutor of the night before; but instead of dealing with his frankly-spoken subject as one might expect of a ruthless Plantagenet monarch, he returns Williams' challenge-glove, filled with gold coin from the royal treasury.
And how might King Solomon have adjudicated a dispute between a CEO and his erstwhile employee? Is it not possible that, in some cases, he would have taken years of earnings from one and passed it directly to the other? Where are the mega-bonuses for those who risk their careers to defend their firm, its shareholders and the general public?
Whistleblowers generally suffer for speaking out. Under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, there is no limit for compensation paid by industrial tribunals in whistleblower cases; but I should very much like to know what is the average paid out under such circumstances, and the most that has ever been paid.
Mr Moore has received "substantial damages" but was also gagged, so I regard whatever he was paid, as merely a recompense for his silence. I doubt whether the damages come anywhere close to the "compensation" paid to some greedy, corrupt and incompetent senior executives at top banking and financial firms; and I think it should.
The OFT has introduced a scheme to award up to £100k for cartel-breaking snitches. Big, fat, hairy deal: five bankers spent £44,000 on wine alone on a single evening in 2001.
Maybe demobureaucracy doesn't work; maybe we should go back to old-fashioned kingship. In Shakespeare's Henry V, the King goes about his camp in disguise before the crucial battle:
KING HENRY V: I myself heard the king say he would not be ransomed.
WILLIAMS: Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully: but when our throats are cut, he may be ransomed, and we ne'er the wiser.
KING HENRY V: If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after.
WILLIAMS: You pay him then. That's a perilous shot out of an elder-gun, that a poor and private displeasure can do against a monarch! you may as well go about to turn the sun to ice with fanning in his face with a peacock's feather.
After the battle, the King calls a trembling Williams out of the ranks and reveals himself as the anonymous interlocutor of the night before; but instead of dealing with his frankly-spoken subject as one might expect of a ruthless Plantagenet monarch, he returns Williams' challenge-glove, filled with gold coin from the royal treasury.
And how might King Solomon have adjudicated a dispute between a CEO and his erstwhile employee? Is it not possible that, in some cases, he would have taken years of earnings from one and passed it directly to the other? Where are the mega-bonuses for those who risk their careers to defend their firm, its shareholders and the general public?
Should we leave the EU?
Is this a fair picture of our relationship with the Far East and Europe? If so, what happens if we disconnect from "ever-closer union?" Wouldn't they just throw away the straw and drink straight out of the glass?
Friday, February 13, 2009
Confusion
America gets het up about a mother of 14, but feeds over 160 million cats and dogs daily. I must say, Nadya Suleman's website is a work of art, though.
Let them eat dirt
It begins, but so much sooner than I expected.
A panicky middle class moves from worrying about its bank account, to railing against those richer and stronger than itself, to turning on those poorer or weaker than itself. Then it seeks to connect the two:
"However you slice it this is ridiculous. FOURTEEN children as a single parent? Assuming she has medical "insurance" from somewhere, exactly how does a desire to have as many kids as humanly possible entitle her to this sort of abuse of that insurance? If she doesn't have insurance, who's footing the bill? And how do you possibly go out and earn a living while raising fourteen kids?
This is what the nation is up against.
This is why California is broke."
"...there are two Americas. A poor America on socialism and a wealthy America on capitalism...
A vast sea of perhaps well intentioned government programs, all initially set into motion in the 1960's, that were going to lift the nation's poor out of poverty.
A benevolent Uncle Sam welcomed mostly poor black Americans onto the government plantation. Those who accepted the invitation switched mindsets from "How do I take care of myself?" to "What do I have to do to stay on the plantation?""
"Because society no longer believes that it's appropriate to let these children die because of the gross irresponsibility of the mother, the only humane way to prevent this sort of stuff from happening again is to require sterilization of anyone who would receive food stamps or other sorts of welfare. "
Long ago, bailouts were unheard of; failure meant starvation, perhaps death. Consider the caveman: Ug's tribal chief couldn't afford to say, "It OK Ug no kill deer this week. It not Ug's fault. Tribe will bail out Ug."
If he wants his tribe to stick around, the chief must say, "Ug no kill deer: Ug family starve."
(For a moment, one has a vision: Ug family no starve; Ug family kill, eat Virginian economics professor.)
But the tendency... We must punish the wicked rich, correct the feckless poor, do something about the swelling ranks of the disabled, and then we'll all be jolly, prosperous and middle class. Without the bad, sad and mad, everyone would be happy. Patriotic citizens must form a united front... The communists are a deadly threat, and must be firmly suppressed... It's for the working man and the national good that we must for a while band together, almost as though we were socialists...
The clouds were boiling red and yellow over the Alps. Standing on the balcony of the Leader's retreat, the party gazed awestruck. A woman said to Him, "Das bedeutet blut, blut, und mehr blut." The Leader paled, trembled violently and said, "Wenn das sein musss, dann lass es sein."
So proud and lofty is some sort of sin
Which many take delight and pleasure in
Whose conversation God doth much dislike
And yet He shakes His sword before He strike
A panicky middle class moves from worrying about its bank account, to railing against those richer and stronger than itself, to turning on those poorer or weaker than itself. Then it seeks to connect the two:
"However you slice it this is ridiculous. FOURTEEN children as a single parent? Assuming she has medical "insurance" from somewhere, exactly how does a desire to have as many kids as humanly possible entitle her to this sort of abuse of that insurance? If she doesn't have insurance, who's footing the bill? And how do you possibly go out and earn a living while raising fourteen kids?
This is what the nation is up against.
This is why California is broke."
"...there are two Americas. A poor America on socialism and a wealthy America on capitalism...
A vast sea of perhaps well intentioned government programs, all initially set into motion in the 1960's, that were going to lift the nation's poor out of poverty.
A benevolent Uncle Sam welcomed mostly poor black Americans onto the government plantation. Those who accepted the invitation switched mindsets from "How do I take care of myself?" to "What do I have to do to stay on the plantation?""
"Because society no longer believes that it's appropriate to let these children die because of the gross irresponsibility of the mother, the only humane way to prevent this sort of stuff from happening again is to require sterilization of anyone who would receive food stamps or other sorts of welfare. "
Long ago, bailouts were unheard of; failure meant starvation, perhaps death. Consider the caveman: Ug's tribal chief couldn't afford to say, "It OK Ug no kill deer this week. It not Ug's fault. Tribe will bail out Ug."
If he wants his tribe to stick around, the chief must say, "Ug no kill deer: Ug family starve."
(For a moment, one has a vision: Ug family no starve; Ug family kill, eat Virginian economics professor.)
But the tendency... We must punish the wicked rich, correct the feckless poor, do something about the swelling ranks of the disabled, and then we'll all be jolly, prosperous and middle class. Without the bad, sad and mad, everyone would be happy. Patriotic citizens must form a united front... The communists are a deadly threat, and must be firmly suppressed... It's for the working man and the national good that we must for a while band together, almost as though we were socialists...
The clouds were boiling red and yellow over the Alps. Standing on the balcony of the Leader's retreat, the party gazed awestruck. A woman said to Him, "Das bedeutet blut, blut, und mehr blut." The Leader paled, trembled violently and said, "Wenn das sein musss, dann lass es sein."
So proud and lofty is some sort of sin
Which many take delight and pleasure in
Whose conversation God doth much dislike
And yet He shakes His sword before He strike
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