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| More!? More!? |
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| Will the real Muslim please stand up? | |
When not worrying that the government's new IR reforms will cause babies to be
eaten, and the dead to walk the earth, the attention of the average Australian
has been split between Muslims and drugs. Muslims have kind of been in the paper - blowing themselves (and a few of
the Kaffir) up in Iraq, Bali
and Jordan, and some were apparently planning to bring the same multicultural
message to Australia. Those particular ones are enjoying some R&R in one of
Her Majesty's Hotels. And Australians have been enjoying similar hospitalities overseas, after
getting themselves into trouble with drugs. What is it about overseas
Australians and drugs? Why can't they leave well alone? Even our own Dear Leader
looked like getting
himself into trouble over some baggage scan misreadings. And as for
Nguyen Tuong Van, who is about to be strung up in Singapore for his commitment
to the free market, well .. So any story about Australian drug takers and Muslims has to be a
good one. And model Islamic
convert Michelle Leslie has provided one - having apparently converted to Islam
during her imprisonment and trial over two ecstasy pills, and having abandoned
the hijab (along with most of her other clothes) on her way out of prison. Several Islamic community spokespeople started to squeal like stuck pigs at
the sight of Michelle's naked midriff, and apparent intention to go back to
modeling skimpy undies. They seem to be upset that she only pretended
to convert to Islam in order to get more favorable treatment from the
Indonesian court system. But it is unthinkable that any Muslim would discriminate in favor
of their fellow Muslims - so why could they be upset? Surely they should be
smugly commenting that her fake conversion did her no good. Except that it
seems to have done her a lot of good, because she got out. Which leaves her
critics with a prima facie credibility problem. So what gives? Another of the questions we may have to leave for the wisdom of Allah.
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| A Clear and Present Danger | |
Exactly what skills are befitting of a politician is not always clear, but
loud protestations of valuing justice, liberty and freedom must rank pretty
highly. Probably on par with the firm belief in the virtue of ever more
powerful government
regulating the lives government subjects. But surely the most important ability
is the ability to bluff, as indicated by the the fiasco surrounding the newly
introduced terrorism laws. Around three weeks ago, the State Premiers (and two self-important Chief
Ministers) met with Little Johnny to discuss possible 'anti-terrorism
laws'. The Labour Premiers went into the meeting determined to flex their political
muscles and give Little Johnny a hard time over violations of civil liberties,
personal freedom, and even a little thing called The Australian Constitution. It's not clear what Little Johnny said to them in their meeting, but it
must have scared the living daylights out of them, because they came out of the
meeting looking like lemmings. Ignoring the little matter of John Stanhope's
little indiscretions in posting proposed legislation on his website, and his
desperate face-saving after the event, it is clear that something at the
meeting changed his mind. And it was probably as simple as this: 'ASIO have told me there is highly likely to be a terrorist
attack in the near future. If you don't pass this legislation, and people die,
then I will finish your careers by saying 'that Premier wouldn't pass the
legislation which would have saved those people's lives'. Even the True Believers would have to be wearing their balaclavas backwards
not to see the logic of this statement. So it would really come down to how
likely they though a terrorist attack was. Unfortunately the only one to
actually know this was Little Johnny himself. Johnny was holding all
the cards, and all he had to do was to wink and say 'trust me - these ones
are hot!' The True
Believers, including Kim (Fatboy) Beasley, folded. Little Johnny out-maneuvered his opponents again. But since the laws were passed, there has been silence from ASIO. Shouldn't
they have
raided the wrong address and assaulted the hapless occupants before being
paying them an undisclosed sum in compensation by now? C'mon guys - you
needed these powers for a reason - now use them. Have you already rounded
hundreds of terrorist wannabes up into holding cells in Manus Island without
trial? Nothing so exciting. Lady liberty is alive and well and being held in indefinite preventative
detention.
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| Party Party Party! | |
Equality of opportunity is a wonderful thing, and apparently Muslims in
many French cities agree. Tired of watching their Parisian brothers-in-arms
having all the fun for the last ten days (rioting and torching the Kaffir's cars), Muslims all
over France have decided to
level the playing field by demanding equal opportunity. And have started to
riot and torch the Kaffir's cars themselves. They even torched two schools in the party atmosphere sweeping
France. Maybe it was something to do with banning headscarves, or maybe it's
just part of the French cultural assimilation:
liberte, egalite, fraternite means having an equal freedom to loot and steal as
your Muslim bretheren. Maybe something got lost in the translation? At least the French Government are united in their attitude to this: they
are all wringing their collectivist hands, and
are desperately trying to out-PC each
other. Even the 'hardline' Interior Minister has said:
"We are trying to be firm and avoid any provocation. We have to avoid any risk
of explosion."
Tell that to the people whose cars exploded with the help of Molotov cocktails. On the other hand, maybe the French have brought this on themselves. Every
Frenchman (and woman) knows that the French language is fundamentally better
than any other. That's why they need government programs to protect their
language. And French products are better than any other products. That's why
they need protectionism from imported goods. And French food is
so much better than any other food that French mobs trash McDonalds stores in
leftist riots. So when the Interior Minister now says:
"Violence is not a solution,"
He should be taken with a grain of salt. Many of their solutions are violent, or backed up by
threat of violence. But the French are averse to violence when it comes to protecting the
French borders from marauding hordes. Having been saved several times by the
(obviously inferior) English and Americans in wars, they willing
opened their borders to an army of 'guest workers', to do the dirty unpopular
jobs that the French were apparently too good for, and who would obviously
return home when they were no longer required. Except they didn't. The army of guest workers stayed. And bred. And there
are now second and third generation immigrants who have an unquenchable hatred
of the people who give them housing, education and welfare. Not enough hatred to
actually leave of course - but enough hatred to burn their cars, and demand
more handouts while screaming 'discrimination'. And the Interior Minister says
"Once the crisis is over, everyone will have to understand there are a certain
number of injustices in some neighbourhoods"
Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but the French are more into
appeasement. And how much welfare do the French think they need to give before the
recipients will be satisfied? Meanwhile the silent majority in many other countries are probably pretty
happy they didn't open their borders to the Religion of Peace. The best
things are life are sometimes taken in very small quantities - like seasoning
in a tasty dish. The Religion of Peace now compromise 8% of the French
population, and the experience has left a rather bad taste in the mouth. It's a
taste of things to come.
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Part II .. But why is alcohol legal freely available whilst heroin is banned and feared like the plague by all good law-abiding citizens? It's certainly not the effects the drug has on the brain. Alcohol has
wild and largely unpredictable effects on all different kinds of users. It can make you euphoric, depressed, aggressive, impair your hand-eye coordination, or inhibit sections of the brain that dis
courage criminal behavior. In a year in the USA:
Alcohol abuse results in the deaths of another 110,640 Americans, including 16,653 alcohol-related traffic deaths. Alcohol is a major factor in more than half of all homicides and rapes, 62 percent
of assaults, and 30 percent of suicides. And, of course, Alcohol can just plain kill you if you ingest too much of it. In contrast, very few rapes, murders, or car accidents happen under the influence of heroin. This is mostly because the primary effect of heroin is to make you lay back fall half asleep, wondering
why everything is suddenly so wonderful. There is none of the 'dutch courage' effect of alcohol that leads people to believe that they can drive home unaffected, fight 10 blokes at once, or that th
e cute chick at the end of the bar suddenly really wants to have sex with you. The primary danger of heroin is by overdose, and this danger is only so prevalent because it is illegal, and therefore not packaged in conveniently labelled standard dosages like legal dru
gs are. Secondary dangers are risk of infection from sharing needles, and the risk of being poisoned by contaminants. The 2nd two would simply not be a problem at all if heroin was legalised, and the first would be significantly less of a problem. So why is heroin illegal, exactly? Well, nobody really knows. Most people alive today can't remember why. It's illegal in Australia primarily because the rest of the world told us to ban it. Australia had no problem with heroin in 1953 when it was declared illegal. In fact, until 1952 heroin was one of a few that were distributed free of charge by the commonwealth's 'Lifesaving drugs s
cheme'. In other words, heroin was not only legal, but it was covered by the PBS. When banned in 1953, the primary reasons given was that it was the most addictive of all drugs, and at the time addiction of any kind was seen to be a moral weakness. In effect, heroin was banned b
ecause the sight of seeing people who were uninterested in anything except their next fix was distressing to the goodly folk who made the laws at the time. Additionally, it was argued that it was worth attempting to eradicate the drug from the world altogether:
If you take whisky from people addicted to it, they will take gin or methylated spirits. If you take one drug from them, they will take others. If heroin can be suppressed in all decent countries t
hen the manufacture of it is likely to cease. As you can see, even back then the prohibitionists made very little sense at all. It's worth remembering - and look, I know I harp on this, but it's important - that the US also made alcohol illegal at around the same time they made heroin illegal. Unlike heroin at the time, alc
ohol was an immensely popular drug enjoyed by all sections of society. The experiment was a colossal failure, one of the most transparently ba
d decisions in the history of government. The main difference between the prohibition of heroin and alcohol was simply that hardly anyone used heroin at the time, so the similarly catastrophic failings of heroin prohibition took nearly 50
years to become apparent. Yet, after learning their lesson the hard way with alcohol prohibition, the US simply stuck its fingers in its ears and shouted 'lalalalala', and has been continuing to do so since the 1970s. The r
est of the world has blindly followed suit, just as they blindly followed suit in banning heroin in the first place. Heroin may well be the only drug that has a more psychoactive effect on non-users than it does on users. Otherwise rational people seem to lose all control of their faculties when the topic of hero
in comes up. Ken says we should have a 'full public debate' before making any changes to our policies on the international drug trade, but how can we do that when our opinion leaders are permanentl
y under the influence of heroin hysteria?
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Part I Yesterday's 7:30 Report on the left's ABC carried a story about the role of the Australian Federal Police's role in making sure that the 'Bali 9″ were arrested in Indonesia where the
y will likely face the death penalty. Not being an avid ABC watcher I didn't catch this story, but rather read about it on Ken Parish's blog - where Ken puts forward the case for why Australia shou
ld help other countries execute our citizens:
But what would actually have happened if the AFP had followed the advice of Kezza and his PC luvvie mates? For a start, some of the 'mules' might have ended up slipping through the police net and u
nloading their deadly cargo on vulnerable young Australian kids. Come on, let's all say it together in chorus: WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN? Now, don't get me wrong, like any good RWDB I fully support the death penalty. I firmly believe there are some people that simply shouldn't go on living. Murderers are a good example. Genocidal Dictators. Terrorists. I can think of many situations where I'd gladly volunteer to be on the firing squad. However, people whose only crime it has been to deliver a product to a supplier whose main plan is to sell it to willing buyers don't quite make the list of people who should be put to death. If th
at were the case, about 80% of the world's population would be on death row. Ken describes heroin as a 'deadly cargo', so let's examine this statement .. It's true that heroin can cause death in certain situations - namely when too high a dosage is taken, or taken in combination with other depressants. According to the Alcohol and Drug Council, 599 Australians died in 1997 from heroin overdoses. In comparison, in the same year, nearly 3300 died and 50,000 were hospitalised as a result of alcohol abuse, and even more as
a result of tobacco smoking. About 2,000 Australians die each year in road accidents. The leading causes of death among 15-24 year olds (THOSE VULNERABLE KIDS) in Australia are shown in this graph:
 (Source) Motor vehicle accidents are the perennial favourite, followed by suicide and 'other accidents' including drowning and accidental poisoning a safe third.
As an aside, hanging is by far the most popular form of suicide amongst males, with more than double its nearest rival (firearms) by percentage. So let's go on and add rope retailers like Bunnings
to the list of bad people who are selling their deadly cargo to our vulnerable kids. It's true - in a fashion - to say that heroin is killing our kids. But then again, so are cars, booze, ropes, guns, insecticide, and water. Heroin would probably in somewhere between guns and Round
up in the list of what's killing kids in Australia. Yet, heroin is the only one of these things that is banned in Australia, and also the only one that would cause people like to Ken to approve of the death penalty for Australians caught selling the
m. I'm going to give Ken the benefit of the doubt here and assume he doesn't support the death penalty for car salesmen - the group of people most responsible for the deaths of young Australians.
But why not? Car salesmen are just as responsible for car accident deaths as bottle shop owners are for alcohol-related deaths, and as heroin dealers are for overdose deaths. Either this is about protecting the kids or it's not. All of the things mentioned above are killing kids, so if that's what really bugged you about heroin then you should be shouting in the streets
for all of them to be banned. It really is that simple. But that's not what really bugs people about heroin, is it? It's more the fact that it is illegal. But why, exactly, is heroin illegal while much more dangerous drugs like alcohol are not? (I'm not
going to lump tobacco in here, because it's not really the drug - nicotine - that kills you, it's all the other crap. If you just get your nicotine from patches you won't die - promise). Continued..
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| Political Party Animal | |
Human life, we all know, is a delicate and fragile thing. And it can be
taken so easily - even a simple error can take a life. Surely then, deliberately taking your own life must be pretty easy. Anyone
who has actually done it can (in absentia) attest to this. It's something which
stretches across cultural and economic divides - apparently even very stupid
people can quite successfully manage to do it. It must be easy. Surely someone
competent shouldn't have any trouble - like say the state leader of a major
political party? Nope. John (The Bum Pincher) Brogden couldn't even do
this. He was dragged off to hospital in what must now seem like a long 24 hours
in politics, which included denial, confession, a resignation and an apparent
unsuccessful suicide attempt. Clearly The Bum Pincher felt pretty high after Bob (each way)
Carr's resignation and, looking around at talentless applicants for his
replacement, thought that the next election was in the bag. No problem with
that, but getting pissed, calling Bob's wife a mail order bride, propositioning
an attractive female journalist and pinching another's bum wasn't very
statesman-like. That would have been ok if he had 'fessed up as soon as the allegations
became public ..
Yeah .. I was pretty pissed that night, and I probably did do a few stupid
things. I'm really sorry if I offended anyone, but hey - this is politics. If
you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. I'll certainly be drinking a
whole lot less at the next party, though.
.. would have gone down pretty well. But The Bum Pincher didn't choose that
route. Instead he chose the favored route of the politician: lie about it. He
didn't actually lie of course: he got his office to release statements about
conspiratorial political slur campaigns, so as to make plausible deniability
plausibly deniable. Watching people in stress frequently gives powerful insights into their
personality. The fact that his first reaction was to lie speaks volumes about
the man's character (and perhaps politicians generally). But the aftermath
spoke even louder. He confessed, and tried to sound contrite. And when that wasn't enough,
resigned from the leadership (he wasn't going to last long anyway). And when
the Telegraph ran a story 'Brogden's Sordid Past' he decided on a more direct
exit strategy: suicide. Or at least he pretended to. 'Suicide attempts' are pretty common on among
teenage girls. They don't really want to die - they are just pleas for
help. Teenage girls love attention and sympathy, and apparently so do disgraced
politicians. Then Jeff (The Headkicker) Kennett gave an interview on the ABC's 7:30
report as a member of Beyond Blue, moaning that media should be more
compassionate and forgiving and understand that politicians were only human. Only human? Does he mean that these moral guardians of the community are
only human? The people who have others locked up for taking drugs, for not
using baby harnesses, for cutting down trees in their own yards, those people
who take and spend 50% of our wealth on 'the common good'? Those people are
only human after all? How shocking. At least some people are behaving sanely. Tony Abattoir got a
roasting for making cracks about The Bum Pincher's dead political career, and
just responded with 'yeah .. that was a bit insensitive wasn't it? Sorry
about that. Next.' Now there's a man who understands how to manipulate The
Mob. And the future - well it looks like The Bum Pincher, after a period of rest
and recovery, will be rewarded for his little act of contrition by a position
on the front bench. But what area of our lives could this loser (sorry 'only
human') possibly be qualified to control? What skills could someone who can't
even organize a suicide possibly bring to politics? It could only be the mental
health portfolio.
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| Trumps, every time. | |
In a world of unexpected twists and turns, of unprecedented disasters and
mass human suffering, it's comforting to know that some things are always
predictable. Like Jesse (The Victim) Jackson pulling the race card to gain a
few cheap political points. The reverend has
slammed the Bush administration for incompetence in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina. After comparing the plight of thousands of (almost
exclusively black) victims to slave conditions, he
questioned why Bush has not named blacks to top positions in the federal
response to the disaster, particularly when the majority of victims remaining
stranded in New Orleans are black: "How can blacks be locked out of the
leadership, and trapped in the suffering?"
One wonders how thousands of stranded and desperate blacks feel about
merit being replaced by affirmative action as the deciding factor in determining
who leads the disaster response teams. Of course, in his haste to scream 'racism!', Jesse overlooked one small thing:
the facts.
U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Russell Honore, head of the military task force overseeing
operations in the three states, is black.
Oops. It is true that 98% of the stranded are are black. The only whites
appearing in the media images are those who voluntarily stayed (like nurses),
whose who were too sick to leave (like the very old), and the occasional
bemused tourist who forgot to listen to the local radio on their holiday ('that
Bush bloke makes a terrible DJ, and all those warnings are so boring ..'). But if the good Reverend wants to make race an issue out of this, he risks
the Great Melting Pot calling the kettle black. If 98% of the remaining people are black then who are the the gang members,
the looters, the rapists and the hoodlums? And who are they perpetrating crimes
against? Eye-witness accounts are now trickling out that whites and foreigners have
been targeted by the gangs and hoodlums. The obvious reaction to this - quietly smuggling out whites ahead of the
others - will doubtless be heralded as further evidence of racism by the likes
of Jesse Jackson. But that will not stop the unspoken observations that comparisons with Africa
may be a little more apt than the good reverend would care to admit. And as for claims about minority groups being victims, well,
maybe Jesse would be better off just pulling his head in over this one.
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| Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned | |
The whole world has been shocked to see the wealthiest, and most powerful
country in the world plunged into an unprecedented domestic crisis after a mere
storm. There are estimates of up to one million people homeless, and many still
trying desperately to escape the devastated city of New Orleans, while their
government wrings it's hands protests about how hard it is trying. The comparatively wealthy citizens left the area days ago - packing their
families and their home insurance papers into their SUVs and driving off into
the sunset. Middle-class Orleaneans have lost their homes, and possibly their
livelihoods, but they are now in comfortable hotels chatting to relatives and
former neighbors on their cell phones about how terrible it all is. Meanwhile, back at home, law and order has broken down as armed thugs have
taken over the city, carrying out rapes, beatings and mass looting. Not only have law enforcers failed to stop this, they have lost sight of
what law enforcement really is. In a crisis, the concept of law and order
changes. There is no point trying to prevent drug taking in a situation like
this. There is no point threatening someone who has entered a wrecked
convenience store which will never reopen and taking water, food or nappies
which can never be sold. But they have been trained to wage a war against drugs
and petty theft - not to handle real crises, so thats what they have fallen
back to. One TV report showed a policeman stopping a mail truck full of people
(presumably not post office employees) escaping the city. Thankfully he didn't
shoot them - he ordered them out of the truck and made them walk. But why? The
truck would be recovered eventually, and ten people would have escaped the
strife torn city. Having people break into gun-shops and help themselves to America's finest
sporting firearms is a serious concern - but many law abiding citizens would be
pretty anxious to arm themselves in that environment too - even if there was no
cashier to take their money. The difference is that the law abiding citizen
would return when the shop was reopened, and return their 'borrowed'
peacekeeper, or offer to buy it after their extended trial period. And at the same time, US senators proclaim that the profiteers are 'the
real looters' - particularly the oil companies who are perceived as profiting
from suddenly astronomical gas prices. Never mind that they face countless
millions of dollars repairing and rebuilding broken and lost oil rigs in the
gulf. And never mind that with a serious reduction in supply, they have choice
between shortages or price-rises. Shortages will do far more damage than price
rises. With an administration which has lost sight of the real issues, is it any
wonder that many police have just handed in their badges and given up?
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| The search for pattern | |
Some of us have labored under the belief that all those canings we got
from our sadistic school mistresses after the weekly spelling test were
actually good for us. They were certainly character building - and might
explain our fetishes for gags, thongs and rubber, but did the spelling skills
actually help out in our post-pubescent realities? How important is it to be
able to spell? Well it's very important because it makes us appear smart. And everyone wants
to appear smart because smart people are usually right. And people listen to
smart people. And smart people are better at telling others what they should
do. Smartness is the path to success. And the way to show you're smart is to know stuff. Like spelling. If two people
are having an argument, the better speller clearly knows more stuff (eg how
words are spelt). Therefore they must be smarter. Pointing out your adversary's
spelling mistakes proves that you're smarter than they are - therefore you must
be right. Remember Harvey Krumpet?
The lovable little retard who used to write facts in his little fact-book?
He knew that if he remembered enough facts he would become smart. Sarcasm aside, some of us (including yours truly) grit our collectivist
teeth when our colleagues confuse their/they're/there whether/weather/wether or
it's/its. Of course the annoyance is mitigated by the smug little inner glow we
get when our adversaries display similar peccadilloes. The reality is that some people just can't spell. Annoying to some of us
perhaps - but so are many things in life - those baseball caps and baggy shorts
that teenagers wear, techno, Ray Martin's toupee, Amanda Vanstone's dress sense
.. the list goes on. Sometimes it's just easier to look the other way
(metaphorically speaking). Particularly in light of the fact English is such a terrible language, and (if
the quality of the language itself were the only criteria) one of the worst
possible choices for an international lingua franca. It's just a
hodge-podge of different languages which were spoken by the
invaders-of-the-time in England, or by the elites who were trying to distance
themselves from the common English peasants. The Americans made some small
improvements to the language, but it's still an absolute bete
noire. However, like the qwerty keyboard and the Westminster system, we are kind of
stuck with it. So why not just memorize the little quirks, and take it
like men? It's not that hard - you just have remember .. you know .. stuff. Because maybe being a good speller doesn't actually make you smart. Maybe
just the opposite. One only has to read the relatively coherent ramblings of
people like Dear
Leader to understand that reasoning and spelling ability are quite
different things. People with a logical mind tend to reject irrationality and
inconsistency. Memorizing spelling rule exception after exception is a bit like
memorizing random numbers - why bother when you can learn principles, or facts
about the real world which can help to solve real problems? Which of the professions requires the most logical mind? No - don't say lawyers
- lawyers just need to lie with a straight face and perform logical
twists. Law is not about truth or justice, it's about persuasion. The
people who require real skills in logic are engineers (and IT developers). If
the bridge falls down, or the program fails there is little point in pleading
mitigating circumstances or reasonably doubt conspiracies - you will just get
sacked. And both of these groups have a reputation for appalling spelling
skills. Coincidence? Je ne crois pas. This is a good reason for never rejecting someone's arguments because of
their poor spelling. A piece of work rich in both vocabulary and spelling
errors is probably a sign of a logical mind. On the flip-side, it's also a sign of personality more concerned with solving
problems than convincing people of the correctness of their arguments. Someone
truly concerned with persuasion understands that more people will be
convinced by a spelling checker than logical structure. The real abuse of the language, of course, is not the spelling mistakes on the
web, but the sudo-Nglish which GEN-Y is SMSing on their mobile fones. The
tiny keyboards make proper typing nigh impossible, and the limited vocabs which
these ppl employ beg 4 a coding system which is all but unintelligible 2 the
uninitiated. Nglish has evolved gracefully over the centuries, but it may not
survive the age of the SMS txt msg. In the final NLysis, Nglish is in what the evolutionists wood korl 'a
period of punktuated ekwilibrium'. UR going 2 hv 2 lrn it B4 lng. I H8 it 2.
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| Back to the salt mines | |
The latest tactic in the union vs coalition industrial reforms battle is the
suggestion that employees will lose their rights to holidays including
Christmas and new year's day. Under the proposed changes, all holidays are up
for negotiation. Employers and employees will be free to negotiate the terms
and conditions of employment. The coalition claims that employees would be free to negotiate away holiday
rights for extra pay. Unions claim that employers will strip away the
hard-earned worker's rights. And many Australians are clearly concerned that
their bosses will demand they work these holidays - with penalty rates, and no
right of refusal. Ignoring the issue of whether the government should dictate the kind of
agreements which private parties voluntarily make between each other (if either
party doesn't agree, they can choose to go elsewhere), will this new law
(actually the removal of an existing law) make it worse for employees? The unions are certainly right that many employees will lack the confidence
to 'negotiate' better terms and conditions with their bosses. A young,
inexperienced worker will be no negotiating match for the experienced
businessman paying their wages, and they are well aware they will come out
second best. But over time, these people will take the less confrontational
approach - simply finding an employer who gives them a better deal. No
government legislation, or unions representation is necessary. People will just
gravitate to employers which offer better pay and conditions. From a personal point of view, I would love to get my employees working extra
days with no extra pay. I could extend the operating time of the business, and
the extra work done would increase my profits. But I wouldn't dream of
dictating this to my employees. About a third of them would quietly resign on the spot, another third would
turn up, but start applying for other jobs, and the remaining third are the
third that I would least like to keep as employees. Good staff are hard to
find, and up and coming employees (as they gain greater confidence and skills)
are even hard to keep. They get yearly performance reviews and pay increases,
not because the governments (or unions) dictate it (I don't think any of them
even belong to a union), but because they become more valuable to the business.
The cost of losing them goes up, and their attractiveness to other businesses
(like my competitors) goes up. So the reforms will make little difference in practice. They will create
greater possibilities. Perhaps one of my employees will one day negotiate to
work through public holidays, and neither of us will be prevented by government
legislation. But this is not very likely. But I am still hoping the reforms go through. There is the possibility
(however slight) that one of my competitors will be foolish enough to believe
the union propaganda and think they can take advantage of their staff. I might
be able to pick up some good employees, and maybe pick up some of his customers
in the fallout from his suddenly rapidly shrinking business. What a capital idea.
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>> Please Sir, I want some more
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| Feedback/Forum |
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- ANON -- Anonymous Coward 2011-12-02
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