The Political Thread

[The Legendary Shark]

Comply or die, then?
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I think the system is perfectly capable of treating everyone on a 1:1 basis - it already treats vast numbers of people "subtly differently". It doesn't treat a 68 year-old amputee from Newcastle in exactly the same way it treats a 68 year-old cardiac patient from Canterbury, for example.
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The suggestion that, in this day and age of computerisation and instant communication, a system that can do anything from organising the construction of a suspension bridge to the replacement of a broken wheelie bin cannot adapt to the individual needs of a single human being without collapsing is, quite frankly, ludicrous.

[Richmond Clements]

Another day, another UKIP candidate reveals himself to be utter filth. Still, that Nigel, he's a character, eh?
I'm seriously at a loss as to how or why anyone could vote for this scum. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30467897

[ZenArcade]

Shark, the difficulty is these systems aren't really modern. They are creations which stem partially from the mass systemisation of governmental departments in the late nineteenth century and more directly from further advances made in the mid twentieth century.
The computerisation we see today is essentically ad hoc, a bolt on (not Bolt 01) if you will, which partially augments extant processes. Moves towards truely 'smart' systems have been unsuccessful in the main; if not entirely - see the roll outs of governmental IT systems over the past 20 years - with the invariably associate 'massive overspend....not fit for purpose tags'.
An individual specific system or systems are in my opinion still in the realm of Science Fiction and in a way thank heavens they are. A system of this complexity would potentially do away with millions of jobs in the sense it would preclude the need for a decision making 'white collar group' (most of us) and again, in my opinion,  be the perfect tool for close control of the 'mass' individual, meaning you and I. Z. Ps I'll take my tiinoil hat off now.

[The Legendary Shark]

Not sure I agree with that analysis, Z. The System does not (and indeed must not) stand apart from society but is an integral part of it, changing and evolving and becoming more complex along with all the rest of the constantly developing, networked systems that comprise our world. Sure, the system lags behind a bit but it is infinitely adaptable.
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I do concede your point that computerisation and communications are only tools employed by the system, just like paper and pens, but they are powerful tools. The most important part of any system is the most adaptable and imaginative part - the human being - and everything else is just a mechanism to help those human beings operating the system.
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The part of the system most often overlooked is the person that system was designed to help. In fact, so overlooked is the importance of "the customer" that they are routinely excluded from the decision making process. All the customer is expected to do is provide information and let mysterious "decision makers" decide what's best for them whether the customer agrees or not.
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In my opinion, the fewer white-collar decision makers there are enforcing their opinions on the rest of us the better. That doesn't mean they all should be fired but, rather, have their jobs changed to something like decision facilitators or solution explorers, working With their "customers" on an equal basis to find the best solution in each specific case. In fact, there would probably be scope for more employment under these conditions than less as it would be a more involved process. Such a mutual and adaptable system would also be less likely to lend itself to oppression or tyranny by offering a great many adaptable options instead of just a handful of fixed ones. One of the main pillars of tyranny is limited choice - pay up or piss off, kind of thing.
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The system is as flexible and smart as we ourselves are - if it wasn't it would be no use whatsoever. It's age, therefore, is not an indication of the system's weakness but of its strength and durability. Just at the moment, though, the system doesn't quite know which way to go - is it here to help us or to control us? I'd go with the former but most people I know seem to accept the latter without much thought (present company excluded).
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I may be asking for something unusual but what I want is a very long way away from impossible, even for our present system - a couple of 'phone calls, letters and/or emails and a signed form or two and it's sorted. I reckon that the Council, the Government and myself could have sorted this out in under a week if we'd all been allowed to act like intelligent, thinking beings rather than bureaucratic automata.

[ZenArcade]

The issue pertinent to your situation Shark appears to me, and I have some experience of being on the other side of the process, to have been brought about by the very 'facilitator', 'customer' based culture you refer to.
I mentioned in my lenghty ramble (analysis is too flattering a term) the adhoc nature of modern governmental decision making processes. The very decision which has so badly impacted on you was quite possibly made by a customer service facilitator essentially ticking drop downs on a badly designed actulisation programme.
Had there been a properly trained decision maker reviewing the evidence before processing then the decision may have been different and more positive in respect to you. It is the very denuding of skill sets and independence of decision formulation and application brought about by adhoc 'cost effective', 'customer' based culturess now present in the public sector which has society in the morass we see on a daily basis. Z

[TordelBack]

All of which rather neatly overlooks the fact that the system couldn't function if it was reconfigured to match the needs of each and every person on a 1:1 basis. If we make an exception for TLS, why not the next person, who wants something subtly different, and the person after that, who wants something different again? Why not? Because the system will break down, and then it will serve no one.

This is  true of the system that we (in general western terms) have now.  However, I  honestly do not believe it is true of all possible systems, or that some level of flexibility can't exist in the ones we have now.  The system is operated by individuals, in the service of individuals: the possibility of doing things in a more human, less authoritarian, way automatically exists.  Exceptions shouldn't be seen as clogs chucked into the machine, but rather as a happy result of a system that is flexible and amenable to individual human outcomes.  There really are sufficient resources in all our economies to do things differently.

For all its academic and cultural gloss, my own line of work is essentially to mediate between the requirements of government expressed in planning permission and the needs/wants of individuals and companies who want to build things.  While I like to bleat about the stupidities and intransigence of both sides of this equation, the reality is that everyone involved is a human, most of whom you can talk to, and all of whom can understand the need to compromise For all that it's presented as a rigid system enshrined in statute and policy, no two outcomes are exactly the same, deadlines are massaged, footprints are altered, permissions are winked at, requirements are subject to change due to circumstance.   It's still a crap system, but once you can get humans talking things can usually be arranged to mutual advantage: and that's just buildings and roads.  The big difference from the social provision sphere is that the flow of money goes the other way and is constantly subject to outside pressure, but both represent a similar type of system.

If we look at the vast differences in the social welfare resources and methods of their deployment of near neighbours and close cultural and economic bedfellows (e.g. Ireland, the UK, France, Sweden, the US), it's obvious that there is no one way.  And that's just here and now: things have beenand are so very different elsewhen and where. 

So many things are impossible, until they are done: universal suffrage, universal healthcare, universal welfare, immunisation, social housing, recycling, renewable energies, lead-free petrol etc. etc.

A system that can allow individual decisions based on need and capacity must be within our capacity without the sky falling in.

[Professor Bear]

They can't have it both ways: either they have to rigorously stick to rules and regulations - in which case they shouldn't be presenting unsigned warrants and stitching people up like kippers - or they have leeway to act outside the normal expectations of their office.

I saw this one and thought of Sharky: WARNING!!  LINK CONTAINS RUSSEL BRAND

[The Legendary Shark]

Zen, you're correct. The terms I used (customer, decision maker, etc.) weren't quite right. Perhaps the word "partner" would be closer. "Hello, Mr Councilbod. I have a problem I need my system's help with. As you work for my system, let's sit down and hammer something out between us."
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Also, I am trying to be less abrasive in deference to those people here I tend to upset by just being me - hence your "lengthy ramble(s)" will hereafter always be thought of as analyses. :-)
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Tordels, as ever, makes some excellent points gathered from his first-hand experience. The flexibility in the system does not come from the system itself but from the human beings manning it. We all know of cases where rules have been bent or broken - I myself know of a young couple with a baby who were awarded an upstairs Council flat (which other parents with older children had been denied at least twice before) despite "inflexible" Council safety rules preventing people with offspring under a certain age moving into flats with staircases. Yes, it's a silly rule because a) lots of Council semis have staircases as well and b) there's no rule preventing anyone from having a baby After they've moved in to an upstairs flat. So there is flexibility already inherent in the system, as Tordels points out, but that flexibility comes from people.
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AA - damn right. They either follow their own rules or they don't, which is an argument I've thrown at the Council many times over the years - "if you accept the validity of Legislation X then you must also accept the validity of Legislations Y and Z - if not, then you must, logically, be open to negotiation using legislation as a guide." The Council (and courts and police) have a very effective counter-argument to this: silence.
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I think it was George Washington (or perhaps Abraham Lincoln) who said, "if you don't want to argue a point, don't bring it up."

[Theblazeuk]

"When the machine breaks down, we break down"


Also in regards to all the nonsense about immigration laws; our laws are not fit for purpose, averages are used in this mighty machine at all levels and those averages only truly work for the top 5% that massively skew our nation's 'averages'. As an example among what still seems to be perceived as a privileged sub-section of society - the 'average graduate starting salary" is  supposedly £29,500. 5 years on from Uni, I'm at £24k - and the vast majority of entry-level jobs requiring a degree are lucky to be £20k minimum, particularly outside London.

[Jim_Campbell]

As an example among what still seems to be perceived as a privileged sub-section of society - the 'average graduate starting salary" is  supposedly £29,500. 5 years on from Uni, I'm at £24k - and the vast majority of entry-level jobs requiring a degree are lucky to be £20k minimum, particularly outside London.

The first student loan came in during my final year at University. It was only a few hundred quid, but after ten years I had never earned anything close to the threshold for paying it back which, at that time, was (I think) just the national average wage. In the end, I paid it back regardless, just because I wanted rid of it.

Cheers

Jim

[TordelBack]

The first student loan came in during my final year at University. It was only a few hundred quid, but after ten years I had never earned anything close to the threshold for paying it back which, at that time, was (I think) just the national average wage.

As previously noted here the pay for people in my 'profession' generally with 3-5 years of university behind them (BA, BSc MA, MSc etc), plus 5+ years of experience (25 in my case) is the same as the union-mandated rate for a 3rd year Apprentice in any recognised trade - few of whom would be out of their teens. And in case anyone thinks that it gets better further on in an archaeology career, the most coveted job opportunity to come up in recent years, one which multiple folks with PhDs, PostDocs and decades of experience were lining up for offered a salary at €10K less than the national average wage.  A mate of mine with 20 years third level teaching experience, several definitive books and numerous major research projects to his name has just secured his first ever full-time academic contract (for two years) at the age of 43.  He's done literally nothing else but work towards this since he was 17 - he has no house, no car, no family of his own.

Third Level is not a passport to untold riches, and nor should it be promoted and treated as such.

I used to proudly boast that I paid my own way through 5 years of university, through a combo of 2-3 jobs, bursaries and scholarships, ending up with a loan of only a couple of grand at the very end when I was just too busy finishing my thesis to hold down a job.  But I think the highest fees I had to pay were IRP£1900 a year (I needed to put aside less than £40 a week), so that was less than ten grand in total for my education. There's no way I could manage that starting now. 

[Jimmy Baker's Assistant]

They can't have it both ways: either they have to rigorously stick to rules and regulations - in which case they shouldn't be presenting unsigned warrants and stitching people up like kippers - or they have leeway to act outside the normal expectations of their office.

It should be the latter, and generally is.

However, that doesn't mean that those with discretion are necessarily going to find in favour of a guy making an obtuse protest about the evils of accepting the government money that he needed.

[Professor Bear]

Sharky did accept it.  He made a post about it at the time and everything.

They can't have it both ways: either they have to rigorously stick to rules and regulations - in which case they shouldn't be presenting unsigned warrants and stitching people up like kippers - or they have leeway to act outside the normal expectations of their office.

It should be the latter, and generally is.

I am an Irish Catholic in a Nationalist town who lived through the Troubles.  Please explain this new concept you have invented.


In other news, I think I actually kind of admire this new idea of Iain Duncan Smith that will limit the amount of child benefit a person can claim to only their first two children, because even the Lord God Almighty only demanded the deaths of the firstborn sons of Egypt, so it takes balls of steel to ask for the in utero death of third male and female children alike just to continue punishing the estate-dwelling chav benefit cheats that only procreate in order to acquire state support for their addiction to cigarettes, alcopops and lottery tickets - oh, and that uses food banks only because the liberal media has told them that food banks exist and using one means more money for ciggies and Mickey D take-outs.
I am not sure what the numbers of such people are, but I am sure that there are millions and millions and millions and millions of people just like this justifying introducing a policy that even the Chinese government is currently thinking twice about, and it's not just that IDS is a cunt.

[Jimmy Baker's Assistant]

Sharky did accept it.  He made a post about it at the time and everything.

Yeah, but he wouldn't do so in the manner which the machine required, which was effectively rejecting the help (whatever one's wishes about individual discretion, and the hope that this would be used for rather than against Mr Shark, as discussed above).

I am an Irish Catholic in a Nationalist town who lived through the Troubles.  Please explain this new concept you have invented.

The wriggle room I favour possibly doesn't work so well if it can then be used to enforce sectarianism, discrimination and generally being a bastard. However, that's the trade-off because if you cut out all risk of people making wrong decisions, you also remove their ability to make the right ones.

[ZenArcade]

Know where you're coming from AA: 'a small town, Church without a steeple, where whores and bitches lean over half doors and scoff at decent people'. I encountered that sort of site for the larger part of my life as well but times change....a wee bit more slowly over here alas; but changed they have. z