Islam in 500 characters
I wrote this (in italics below) as an answer to some fanatic on YouTube a few months ago. You may realise that YouTube limits comments to 500 characters, and I had to keep juggling this to get it to fit. Anyone wanting to understand why I am an atheist can find plenty of articles on this blog, incidentally.
Dedicated to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev & his late brother
Islam is NEVER going to be the answer. It is enforcement of rigid outdated law on the "you better believe or else" and "never challenge" principle. Its denial of science and logic, and its rigorous pursuit of anyone who embraces intellectualism (one who challenges) condemn it to the past not the future. And its use of fear to enforce its regulations belongs in the 13th century, not the 21st. How many scientists in the Muslim world would renounce its myths if they were not afraid for their lives?
Being obviously in denial
According to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's mother and aunt, he and his brother did not do "these terrible things" and they had been "set up". Why the young man has confessed to doing "these terrible things" and the evidence of what he and his brother got up to on the campus of MIT (don't tell me - there were some crafty Russian agents there as well - well hidden of course) .... There is plenty of proof that they did do "these terrible things", and given the conversion of the elder brother to an extreme barbaric version of Islam, he had plenty of motivation as well.
Not understanding why - that I can understand.
Being in denial and refusing to face up to the facts? That is another matter entirely! It is time for both of them to get real and check out the facts! And the evidence. They will not like the results, but then the truth is often painful to accept!
Saturday, 27 April 2013
Monday, 22 April 2013
Giving an American dimension to international problems
While people's minds were still focused on the events in Boston this week (see later in this article for more), some quietly disturbing news emerged from North Korea.
One of my favourite questions in recent years has been what is the difference between North Korea and Iran? The answer being, of course, that North Korea does have for certain a nuclear bomb.
And the rocket launchers capable of firing them (though whether with any great accuracy or efficiency is another matter).
And a régime run by the third generation of a family of absolute nutcases fully capable of threatening to launch such a bomb, and a military that is fairly determined to show off its muscle.
There are some 28,000 American troops based in South Korea, who could be targeted by the madmen running the government in Pyongyang. That they would be the sole target though takes some believing - the government and people of the South will not just be bystanders in all this.
The theory that these weapons are intended to hit American territory, as some have claimed on the Internet in recent weeks, fails one very significant test. Distance.
The weapons that the North Koreans have set up as a threat have a range of 500 kilometres. The nearest major American state, Hawaii, is some 7,000 kilometres away.
Even the Japanese, who are increasingly disturbed by what is going on in Pyongyang, find themselves over 1,200 km away, which is again outside the range of the missiles in question.
Of course there is the question of nuclear fallout. The régime in North Korea, which seems to all intents and practical purposes solely engaged in the exercise of threatening South Korea, seems hardly concerned that the fallout from any weapon that they launch would also affect them directly! And it would also affect Japan, which us why the Japanese are rightly concerned.
But wharrever else, American readers have no reason to fear that, say, Indianapolis or Biloxi are under threat. Directly at least.
So context is everything. And this also applies to the strategic aftermath of the events this week in Boston.
Whereas American territory may not be directly involved in the events on the Korean peninsula, the events surrounding the struggle for Chechnyan independence inflicted themselves upon Americans last week, like it or not.
In my initial assessment of this problem - in the part of this item which I am now rewriting - I somewhat misread the Chechnyan situation. So imagine instead Palestine. The Palestinians are nearly all hostile to Israel, but on the one side you have Fatah which simply wants an independent Palestinian state, while on the other hand you have Hamas who want both a Palestinian state and an strictly Islamic one at that.
Chechnya's independence movement has something of a similar split, but the extreme Islamic wing is far more powerful. It is notable that a number of Chechnyan mercenaries have rolled up fighting for Al Qaeda's causes in other parts of the world. The influence of the extreme Islamic radicals does not stop when leaving Chechnya for other parts of southern Russia either. Islamic radicals have caused sufficient problems in neighbouring Dagestan over the years.
The easy mistake to make (as I did earlier this week) is to consider that the Chechnyan radicals would primarily target the traditional enemy, Russia. So why would they target the USA where the Chechnyan independence movement received some tacit support in the 1990s - not directly from the US government, but from some political figures who still tend to treat Russia as if the Cold War had never ended?
The answer does not fall into the "he who is not my enemy is my friend" category. Certain American politicians may well appreciate the arguments that Chechnya has been fighting for independence for years and may well have a case.
Add the Islamic militant element, and suddenly the USA (which sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan) is an enemy of Islam, and therefore an enemy of Chechnyan independence (or at least the predominant Islamic wing of the movement). Its relationship with Russia is actually irrelevant, when seen in this context.
Over the past 5-6 years the elder of the Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan, had become increasingly radicalised. His commitment to the extreme version of Islam had become virtually total, and while living in the USA he had also found himself alienated from the people and the culture. That an Islamic extremist, who finds himself alienated from the country in which he lives, would place bombs in public places without remorse may be shocking but not that surprising given the Al Qaeda we know and despise.
That his American wife knew nothing? Well given the role of women in fundamentalist Islam, are they suppose to know much? That his mother still thinks that it is a set-up and that he is innocent on all counts? Ditto!
The younger brother is more difficult to fathom. He had become an American citizen, had American friends, and indulged in the notoriously un-Islamic practices of smoking pot and listening to rap. His parents were back in Dagestan, and his elder brother was a sort of father figure and he was supposed to do what he was told? That he turned up for an event that led to 3 people being killed and over 100 injured - some of them maimed for life? And didn't object?
That takes some understanding. At 19 we can still be incredibly immature. It is though also interesting just how willing he has been to reveal the whole story as to what went on - the motives usw - without coercion.
Eventually the cause was Islam more than Chechnya, the rants of a now dead Yemeni-American imam, the lingering hatred caused by the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Chechnya and its struggle for independence was a backdrop but no more eventually.
But if there is a lesson in international affairs that needed highlighting, it is that relationships between some Western countries and Russia (notably the USA and to some extent the UK) need to change. Germany has already good relationships with Russia and could help bring the parties together.
But the situation where dissidents from Russia's mainly Muslim Southern provinces can play on the distrust that exists between Russia and other countries helped contribute substantially to the events in Boston last week. Some acknowledgement is also needed just what problems the Russians have had to face with these extremists and often had little choice but to pursue actions that we might regard as severe.
Without some resolution of the diplomatic problems involved though, a repeat of what happened in Boston may not be all that far away. Failure to cooperate with a party that you may not like that much is only going to play into the hands of your common enemies! With the obvious consequences.
One of my favourite questions in recent years has been what is the difference between North Korea and Iran? The answer being, of course, that North Korea does have for certain a nuclear bomb.
And the rocket launchers capable of firing them (though whether with any great accuracy or efficiency is another matter).
And a régime run by the third generation of a family of absolute nutcases fully capable of threatening to launch such a bomb, and a military that is fairly determined to show off its muscle.
There are some 28,000 American troops based in South Korea, who could be targeted by the madmen running the government in Pyongyang. That they would be the sole target though takes some believing - the government and people of the South will not just be bystanders in all this.
The theory that these weapons are intended to hit American territory, as some have claimed on the Internet in recent weeks, fails one very significant test. Distance.
The weapons that the North Koreans have set up as a threat have a range of 500 kilometres. The nearest major American state, Hawaii, is some 7,000 kilometres away.
Even the Japanese, who are increasingly disturbed by what is going on in Pyongyang, find themselves over 1,200 km away, which is again outside the range of the missiles in question.
Of course there is the question of nuclear fallout. The régime in North Korea, which seems to all intents and practical purposes solely engaged in the exercise of threatening South Korea, seems hardly concerned that the fallout from any weapon that they launch would also affect them directly! And it would also affect Japan, which us why the Japanese are rightly concerned.
But wharrever else, American readers have no reason to fear that, say, Indianapolis or Biloxi are under threat. Directly at least.
So context is everything. And this also applies to the strategic aftermath of the events this week in Boston.
Whereas American territory may not be directly involved in the events on the Korean peninsula, the events surrounding the struggle for Chechnyan independence inflicted themselves upon Americans last week, like it or not.
In my initial assessment of this problem - in the part of this item which I am now rewriting - I somewhat misread the Chechnyan situation. So imagine instead Palestine. The Palestinians are nearly all hostile to Israel, but on the one side you have Fatah which simply wants an independent Palestinian state, while on the other hand you have Hamas who want both a Palestinian state and an strictly Islamic one at that.
Chechnya's independence movement has something of a similar split, but the extreme Islamic wing is far more powerful. It is notable that a number of Chechnyan mercenaries have rolled up fighting for Al Qaeda's causes in other parts of the world. The influence of the extreme Islamic radicals does not stop when leaving Chechnya for other parts of southern Russia either. Islamic radicals have caused sufficient problems in neighbouring Dagestan over the years.
The easy mistake to make (as I did earlier this week) is to consider that the Chechnyan radicals would primarily target the traditional enemy, Russia. So why would they target the USA where the Chechnyan independence movement received some tacit support in the 1990s - not directly from the US government, but from some political figures who still tend to treat Russia as if the Cold War had never ended?
The answer does not fall into the "he who is not my enemy is my friend" category. Certain American politicians may well appreciate the arguments that Chechnya has been fighting for independence for years and may well have a case.
Add the Islamic militant element, and suddenly the USA (which sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan) is an enemy of Islam, and therefore an enemy of Chechnyan independence (or at least the predominant Islamic wing of the movement). Its relationship with Russia is actually irrelevant, when seen in this context.
Over the past 5-6 years the elder of the Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan, had become increasingly radicalised. His commitment to the extreme version of Islam had become virtually total, and while living in the USA he had also found himself alienated from the people and the culture. That an Islamic extremist, who finds himself alienated from the country in which he lives, would place bombs in public places without remorse may be shocking but not that surprising given the Al Qaeda we know and despise.
That his American wife knew nothing? Well given the role of women in fundamentalist Islam, are they suppose to know much? That his mother still thinks that it is a set-up and that he is innocent on all counts? Ditto!
The younger brother is more difficult to fathom. He had become an American citizen, had American friends, and indulged in the notoriously un-Islamic practices of smoking pot and listening to rap. His parents were back in Dagestan, and his elder brother was a sort of father figure and he was supposed to do what he was told? That he turned up for an event that led to 3 people being killed and over 100 injured - some of them maimed for life? And didn't object?
That takes some understanding. At 19 we can still be incredibly immature. It is though also interesting just how willing he has been to reveal the whole story as to what went on - the motives usw - without coercion.
Eventually the cause was Islam more than Chechnya, the rants of a now dead Yemeni-American imam, the lingering hatred caused by the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Chechnya and its struggle for independence was a backdrop but no more eventually.
But if there is a lesson in international affairs that needed highlighting, it is that relationships between some Western countries and Russia (notably the USA and to some extent the UK) need to change. Germany has already good relationships with Russia and could help bring the parties together.
But the situation where dissidents from Russia's mainly Muslim Southern provinces can play on the distrust that exists between Russia and other countries helped contribute substantially to the events in Boston last week. Some acknowledgement is also needed just what problems the Russians have had to face with these extremists and often had little choice but to pursue actions that we might regard as severe.
Without some resolution of the diplomatic problems involved though, a repeat of what happened in Boston may not be all that far away. Failure to cooperate with a party that you may not like that much is only going to play into the hands of your common enemies! With the obvious consequences.
Sunday, 21 April 2013
On Boston and American immigration policy
1. Boston
In the light of the events surrounding the bomb attack that struck Boston during the Marathon there last week, your thoughts go out to the relatives of the bereaved, and also to those who have been injured and in certain cases permanently maimed. There is no cause whatsoever that can justify inflicting death and injuries like that on the public at large and any such action has to condemned in the strongest possible terms.
My own connections to Boston are to say the least tenuous, and in one way, quite weird. I have visited the place once. For two days in 1975, as part of my "see the whole of North America in 21 days" trip. I saw all the stuff that tourists see there, not that I remember much of it.
I also saw the only game of live baseball that I have ever seen - I managed to get a ticket to Fenway Park on the second day that I was there. Again I do not remember much about it. Caught up in the atmosphere though, I became a Red Sox supporter and have remained so ever since. To the point where I still wince at the thought of the Yankees and understand the rivalry that has existed for some 90 years.
Thanks to mlb.com, I catch the highlights of games quite frequently - but only normally when they have won! When rooting for a team, losing is not that easy to take with the right degree of equanimity. I shall though remember Daniel Nava's game-winning home run for some time from yesterday, given the significance to the game following the tragic events that hit people in Boston this week. Nava is himself an interesting character. Whether you would describe him as a late developer or simply someone who was late getting recognition (and do I know that story personally!), I would not know, but I would recommend people to check out his resumé - it is some story.
2. American immigration policy
I read a few comments about the young men involved in the Boston bombing from some Americans on various websites this week. There was often a predictable theme running along the lines of "why did we allow these people in"?
The answer could well run along the lines: "Because you always have"! And "always" goes back a very long time.
Let me select part of the text written on the Statue of Liberty:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
To continue the metaphor, it is the light that has attracted thousands suffering under despotic régimes, living in poverty and lacking opportunity, or stuck in a war zone from which they need(ed) to escape. Some come as immigrants, some as refugees. Whatever you may think at times of American economic or foreign policies, this symbol of light - the new dawn, the hope of a better tomorrow - is one of the most positive aspects that the United States has offered to people in the rest of the world. That it has succeeded in turning round the lives of many who were without hope before is also a symbol of its greatness.
No matter where the people came from - Andrew Carnegie from Scotland, the families from which arose great popular composers like the Gershwins and Irving Berlin from Russia, Andy Grove (born András Gróf), who turned Intel into what it now is, from Hungary, Madeleine Albright, the former US Secretary of State, from what was then Czechoslovakia. There are dozens of successful examples.
There were criminals - the mafiosi and other dangerous people? Of course. It is not that easy to sift everyone out. The Tsarnaev family had no track record of involvement in any extremist activities, so accepting them would not have been a problem for the authorities - after the proper checks had been carried out in full. When established in the USA the younger son had an excellent academic record and indulged in very un-Islamic practices such as smoking marijuana and listening to rap. And had become an American citizen.
That he turned out to be a criminal thug who was prepared to kill and maim large numbers of people in an open place could not be predicted in advance.
It would be extremely unfortunate to back away from the long-established principle behind American immigration over the years based upon this one case. One more beacon of light would be dimmed. Sadly.
Vigilance is required to prevent terrorists getting in? Of course. Tighter background checks are needed (and not easily obtained in certain parts of the world - Central Asia, Southern Russia notably) - of course. It is not a question of accepting everyone with open arms.
The problem at times like this though lies in knowing where to draw the line in the sand and draw the correct conclusions. It would be as well though to look at long-term principle and place that against short-term expediency (also disguised as political convenience). The procedures may need altering to make them more effective, but for a great country like the USA the principles should not be compromised. Managing the two together will not be easy, but I am sure that a resolution can be found for the good of all.
In the light of the events surrounding the bomb attack that struck Boston during the Marathon there last week, your thoughts go out to the relatives of the bereaved, and also to those who have been injured and in certain cases permanently maimed. There is no cause whatsoever that can justify inflicting death and injuries like that on the public at large and any such action has to condemned in the strongest possible terms.
My own connections to Boston are to say the least tenuous, and in one way, quite weird. I have visited the place once. For two days in 1975, as part of my "see the whole of North America in 21 days" trip. I saw all the stuff that tourists see there, not that I remember much of it.
I also saw the only game of live baseball that I have ever seen - I managed to get a ticket to Fenway Park on the second day that I was there. Again I do not remember much about it. Caught up in the atmosphere though, I became a Red Sox supporter and have remained so ever since. To the point where I still wince at the thought of the Yankees and understand the rivalry that has existed for some 90 years.
Thanks to mlb.com, I catch the highlights of games quite frequently - but only normally when they have won! When rooting for a team, losing is not that easy to take with the right degree of equanimity. I shall though remember Daniel Nava's game-winning home run for some time from yesterday, given the significance to the game following the tragic events that hit people in Boston this week. Nava is himself an interesting character. Whether you would describe him as a late developer or simply someone who was late getting recognition (and do I know that story personally!), I would not know, but I would recommend people to check out his resumé - it is some story.
2. American immigration policy
I read a few comments about the young men involved in the Boston bombing from some Americans on various websites this week. There was often a predictable theme running along the lines of "why did we allow these people in"?
The answer could well run along the lines: "Because you always have"! And "always" goes back a very long time.
Let me select part of the text written on the Statue of Liberty:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
To continue the metaphor, it is the light that has attracted thousands suffering under despotic régimes, living in poverty and lacking opportunity, or stuck in a war zone from which they need(ed) to escape. Some come as immigrants, some as refugees. Whatever you may think at times of American economic or foreign policies, this symbol of light - the new dawn, the hope of a better tomorrow - is one of the most positive aspects that the United States has offered to people in the rest of the world. That it has succeeded in turning round the lives of many who were without hope before is also a symbol of its greatness.
No matter where the people came from - Andrew Carnegie from Scotland, the families from which arose great popular composers like the Gershwins and Irving Berlin from Russia, Andy Grove (born András Gróf), who turned Intel into what it now is, from Hungary, Madeleine Albright, the former US Secretary of State, from what was then Czechoslovakia. There are dozens of successful examples.
There were criminals - the mafiosi and other dangerous people? Of course. It is not that easy to sift everyone out. The Tsarnaev family had no track record of involvement in any extremist activities, so accepting them would not have been a problem for the authorities - after the proper checks had been carried out in full. When established in the USA the younger son had an excellent academic record and indulged in very un-Islamic practices such as smoking marijuana and listening to rap. And had become an American citizen.
That he turned out to be a criminal thug who was prepared to kill and maim large numbers of people in an open place could not be predicted in advance.
It would be extremely unfortunate to back away from the long-established principle behind American immigration over the years based upon this one case. One more beacon of light would be dimmed. Sadly.
Vigilance is required to prevent terrorists getting in? Of course. Tighter background checks are needed (and not easily obtained in certain parts of the world - Central Asia, Southern Russia notably) - of course. It is not a question of accepting everyone with open arms.
The problem at times like this though lies in knowing where to draw the line in the sand and draw the correct conclusions. It would be as well though to look at long-term principle and place that against short-term expediency (also disguised as political convenience). The procedures may need altering to make them more effective, but for a great country like the USA the principles should not be compromised. Managing the two together will not be easy, but I am sure that a resolution can be found for the good of all.
Friday, 19 April 2013
My take on wealth as it affects me personally
Quoted (and slightly amended) from what I wrote on LinkedIn.com:
If I had the job that I wanted (in IT needless to say) where I wanted (Frankfurt would mean not moving again, but there are also other possibilities like Paris or Amsterdam or Köln), doing the work that I enjoyed, where I could see a long-term perspective that would mean being with the company for a long time (no thoughts on retirement - the concept bores me) and was earning 2,000 Euro more a month after stoppages than I am currently earning (so that all the bills were paid on time, there was no personal debt and I could save a bit for the future) - then I would be delighted.
Travel to some interesting places (Brazil, Japan for example) would be a bonus but not essential.
That would be far more interesting for me than anything related to material wealth and all the unnecessary excesses involved!
If I had the job that I wanted (in IT needless to say) where I wanted (Frankfurt would mean not moving again, but there are also other possibilities like Paris or Amsterdam or Köln), doing the work that I enjoyed, where I could see a long-term perspective that would mean being with the company for a long time (no thoughts on retirement - the concept bores me) and was earning 2,000 Euro more a month after stoppages than I am currently earning (so that all the bills were paid on time, there was no personal debt and I could save a bit for the future) - then I would be delighted.
Travel to some interesting places (Brazil, Japan for example) would be a bonus but not essential.
That would be far more interesting for me than anything related to material wealth and all the unnecessary excesses involved!
Wednesday, 17 April 2013
My definition of failure
A slightly reduced version of an answer that I wrote on Facebook today (leaving personalities out of this):
Longstanding belief - no government has succeeded if there is even one person who wants to work and is unemployed, and no government has succeeded when underemployment (like having top-flight science graduates employed flipping burgers) is commonplace.
Longstanding belief - no government has succeeded if there is even one person who wants to work and is unemployed, and no government has succeeded when underemployment (like having top-flight science graduates employed flipping burgers) is commonplace.
Tuesday, 16 April 2013
The European Union not so united
If you listen to the xenophobes of the UKIP (better known as the EXP - the English Xenophobe Party), you would imagine that Europe was taking over the UK and nothing could be decided locally either in the UK or in any of the other nation states that comprise the European Union.
For some of us, such as myself, these national boundaries are nothing more than a pain in the neck that get in the way when things need doing which cross borders.
In the past week, this has affected me directly again - much to my frustration!
As regular readers will know, I am pursuing small claims against companies in France (JTI Development) and Belgium (2BTranslated) who owe me €1,498.67 and €1,296.05 respectively.
As regular readers will also know, I am using a European Parliament Directive (or was) no. 861/2007 to pursue these claims. A self-employed individual in one EU country trying to get money from delinquent payers in other EU countries. You would imagine such legal proceedings and competence to cover such would cross borders, right?
When you fill in the form you would imagine this to be the case. There is a series of boxes which you can fill in indicating where you want the case to be assessed. One of them is the country in which the claimant is resident. As the box exists and can be ticked off, you would imagine that you can pursue the claim in that country, right?
Last Tuesday, 7 weeks (!!!!) after they received the complaints (containing 65 pages of documentation that took 2 days to put together with every detail checked for accuracy), I got a letter from the Amtsgericht Frankfurt (the court responsible for legal matters in civil cases) indicating that they were not "competent to deal with the matter".
I had to arrange a (fortunately free) consultation with the legal advisory service at the court yesterday to check this out. Apparently according to a legal reference (which the person offering the advice could not find in any appropriate textbook or or any Internet site), the court in Germany does not have the necessary jurisdiction to deal with companies outside its borders, even if the wronged party on the receiving end of the delinquency is resident in that country.
Which means 7 weeks wasted. Which means having to pursue the matter in the courts in the country of the delinquent companies. Which sounds like the advantage if anything is with the miscreant rather than the wronged party. Certainly if what I was reading yesterday on the Internet is owt to go by, the process in the Flanders area of Belgium is going to be difficult to win. France looked somewhat more balanced, but ....
No doubt the EXP and its awful leader Nigel Farage (also a great admirer, apparently, of the awful Margaret Thatcher - people turning to the EXP as an alternative to the rotting major parties in the UK, be warned. If you think what you have got now is bad!) will be cheering like crazy. A great chance to rip off all these nasty foreigners. We know our law better than they do. Yee-ha!
Meanwhile the need for a neutral and fair method to deal with claims such as this crossing European borders becomes ever more obvious. Forcing claimants to "play away" on potentially unfriendly territory is hardly the road to go. The Directive above looked a step in the right direction. Unfortunately it still has a long way to go if it is to be applied fairly.
And how much longer will this take? Instead of expecting over 2,000 Euro in the next couple of weeks, I am stuck with a bank balance standing at around 30 Euro - because two firms have not paid me what I should have been paid, and the legislative rules in place make it very difficult to get at them, clearly, fairly and punctually. This is justice?
For some of us, such as myself, these national boundaries are nothing more than a pain in the neck that get in the way when things need doing which cross borders.
In the past week, this has affected me directly again - much to my frustration!
As regular readers will know, I am pursuing small claims against companies in France (JTI Development) and Belgium (2BTranslated) who owe me €1,498.67 and €1,296.05 respectively.
As regular readers will also know, I am using a European Parliament Directive (or was) no. 861/2007 to pursue these claims. A self-employed individual in one EU country trying to get money from delinquent payers in other EU countries. You would imagine such legal proceedings and competence to cover such would cross borders, right?
When you fill in the form you would imagine this to be the case. There is a series of boxes which you can fill in indicating where you want the case to be assessed. One of them is the country in which the claimant is resident. As the box exists and can be ticked off, you would imagine that you can pursue the claim in that country, right?
Last Tuesday, 7 weeks (!!!!) after they received the complaints (containing 65 pages of documentation that took 2 days to put together with every detail checked for accuracy), I got a letter from the Amtsgericht Frankfurt (the court responsible for legal matters in civil cases) indicating that they were not "competent to deal with the matter".
I had to arrange a (fortunately free) consultation with the legal advisory service at the court yesterday to check this out. Apparently according to a legal reference (which the person offering the advice could not find in any appropriate textbook or or any Internet site), the court in Germany does not have the necessary jurisdiction to deal with companies outside its borders, even if the wronged party on the receiving end of the delinquency is resident in that country.
Which means 7 weeks wasted. Which means having to pursue the matter in the courts in the country of the delinquent companies. Which sounds like the advantage if anything is with the miscreant rather than the wronged party. Certainly if what I was reading yesterday on the Internet is owt to go by, the process in the Flanders area of Belgium is going to be difficult to win. France looked somewhat more balanced, but ....
No doubt the EXP and its awful leader Nigel Farage (also a great admirer, apparently, of the awful Margaret Thatcher - people turning to the EXP as an alternative to the rotting major parties in the UK, be warned. If you think what you have got now is bad!) will be cheering like crazy. A great chance to rip off all these nasty foreigners. We know our law better than they do. Yee-ha!
Meanwhile the need for a neutral and fair method to deal with claims such as this crossing European borders becomes ever more obvious. Forcing claimants to "play away" on potentially unfriendly territory is hardly the road to go. The Directive above looked a step in the right direction. Unfortunately it still has a long way to go if it is to be applied fairly.
And how much longer will this take? Instead of expecting over 2,000 Euro in the next couple of weeks, I am stuck with a bank balance standing at around 30 Euro - because two firms have not paid me what I should have been paid, and the legislative rules in place make it very difficult to get at them, clearly, fairly and punctually. This is justice?
Friday, 12 April 2013
Funerals
I was asking myself this week whether Harold Wilson was still alive or when he died.
A bit of checking informed me that he died in 1995. As I was working happily and very successfully in Munich/München at the time, it does not surprise me at all that I took little notice then. One of his major claims to fame was that he managed to win four General Elections in a principally conservative country. No other UK politician can claim to have done that in my lifetime.
I was also wondering why there was no massive public funeral for him when he died - or maybe there was, but I do not remember hearing much about it. Somebody who was well-known on the world stage, who was popular enough to have won four general elections? I can be almost certain that huge amounts of public money were not spent on the occasion, though. Nor should they have been.
Was I a fan of Wilson? No, but that is not the point. I did, to my later regret, vote for his party in 1974 though. We all make mistakes.
The last even half-decent Prime Minister that the UK had was, in my opinion, Harold MacMillan. It says a lot that this opinion indicates that the UK has not had a decent Prime Minister since 1963. Look at the state of the country now if you want a reason. I know for a fact that MacMillan did not get a highly expensive funeral, but if anyone deserved one ....
What did people have under MacMillan? Growing prosperity across the board (for the people as a whole, not just for the fortunate few), low personal indebtedness (even if government finances were sometimes a problem) and unemployment figures that were so low that it would now take some believing. Tax rates were high? Maybe, but my working-class parents were prepared to vote for MacMillan's version of the Conservative Party (which was nowt like the post 1979 model) because, as my father never failed to inform me, they always thought that they had more money at the time they were in power.
Which is hardly what could be said in the 1980s!
The party under MacMillan practised what was known as "one nation" conservatism. Why this one nation theory should be such a problem baffles me. It is worth repeating until we are blue in the face that a country is all its people. I recall one individual in my mylot.com days constantly quoting Churchill and stuff like the "British people".
All well and good. It is worth remembering that the job of a government is to serve its people. ALL ITS PEOPLE! Not a selected few, not just the "captains of industry", not just the lobbyists, not just the party contributors, not just the people who voted for it! Or if you like not just the Trade Unions, not just the employees and the unemployed - either!
Any wonder there is such a response this week? An old Judy Garland song is the most played piece of music in the country and the conservative dominated media is shaken to its foundations that there has been such a venomous response to the death of their "flawless icon"!
Were the people ungrateful? What is with all these young people who were not even born usw usw .... They weren't, but their parents and grandparents were and have some gruesome tales to tell - particularly across the North of England and Scotland, but note some of the other critical musical notes are coming from musicians (Elvis Costello, Paul Weller usw) who came from the "affluent" South.
And when you see the government in power who are the logical heirs to what was there in the 1980s, are you not surprised when so many young people celebrate when the old conservative icon passes on?
Meanwhile the government is slashing benefits for the poorest members of society "because it cannot afford them", but has the gall to find 10 million pounds worth of public money for the funeral of a polarising individual who was not popular with, and very often despised and hated by, nearly half the population of the country?
One nation? OK, they are talking about building a statue for the aforesaid icon. Rather than putting it in Trafalgar Square, try building one and putting it in the centre of Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne or Glasgow and check what happens. The point being though that all those cities and their residents are part of that nation as well. Their views need to be heard, their situations understood, their lifestyles improved. All of them!
Postscript - to the 27-year-old (who also did not live through much of the 1980s) who informed me the other day that it was all about Thatcher and Scargill - go learn some history. Both were polemicists. Choosing between them is like choosing between cholera and typhus. The fact remains though that the Miners' Strike (deliberate uppercase) did not start until 1984. By then the terminal damage to the industrial base and the mass unemployment across the North of England were into their fourth year. There is an argument that the Miners' Strike was the product of what preceded it, but the damage had already been done before it ever started. Go check your history book!
A bit of checking informed me that he died in 1995. As I was working happily and very successfully in Munich/München at the time, it does not surprise me at all that I took little notice then. One of his major claims to fame was that he managed to win four General Elections in a principally conservative country. No other UK politician can claim to have done that in my lifetime.
I was also wondering why there was no massive public funeral for him when he died - or maybe there was, but I do not remember hearing much about it. Somebody who was well-known on the world stage, who was popular enough to have won four general elections? I can be almost certain that huge amounts of public money were not spent on the occasion, though. Nor should they have been.
Was I a fan of Wilson? No, but that is not the point. I did, to my later regret, vote for his party in 1974 though. We all make mistakes.
The last even half-decent Prime Minister that the UK had was, in my opinion, Harold MacMillan. It says a lot that this opinion indicates that the UK has not had a decent Prime Minister since 1963. Look at the state of the country now if you want a reason. I know for a fact that MacMillan did not get a highly expensive funeral, but if anyone deserved one ....
What did people have under MacMillan? Growing prosperity across the board (for the people as a whole, not just for the fortunate few), low personal indebtedness (even if government finances were sometimes a problem) and unemployment figures that were so low that it would now take some believing. Tax rates were high? Maybe, but my working-class parents were prepared to vote for MacMillan's version of the Conservative Party (which was nowt like the post 1979 model) because, as my father never failed to inform me, they always thought that they had more money at the time they were in power.
Which is hardly what could be said in the 1980s!
The party under MacMillan practised what was known as "one nation" conservatism. Why this one nation theory should be such a problem baffles me. It is worth repeating until we are blue in the face that a country is all its people. I recall one individual in my mylot.com days constantly quoting Churchill and stuff like the "British people".
All well and good. It is worth remembering that the job of a government is to serve its people. ALL ITS PEOPLE! Not a selected few, not just the "captains of industry", not just the lobbyists, not just the party contributors, not just the people who voted for it! Or if you like not just the Trade Unions, not just the employees and the unemployed - either!
Any wonder there is such a response this week? An old Judy Garland song is the most played piece of music in the country and the conservative dominated media is shaken to its foundations that there has been such a venomous response to the death of their "flawless icon"!
Were the people ungrateful? What is with all these young people who were not even born usw usw .... They weren't, but their parents and grandparents were and have some gruesome tales to tell - particularly across the North of England and Scotland, but note some of the other critical musical notes are coming from musicians (Elvis Costello, Paul Weller usw) who came from the "affluent" South.
And when you see the government in power who are the logical heirs to what was there in the 1980s, are you not surprised when so many young people celebrate when the old conservative icon passes on?
Meanwhile the government is slashing benefits for the poorest members of society "because it cannot afford them", but has the gall to find 10 million pounds worth of public money for the funeral of a polarising individual who was not popular with, and very often despised and hated by, nearly half the population of the country?
One nation? OK, they are talking about building a statue for the aforesaid icon. Rather than putting it in Trafalgar Square, try building one and putting it in the centre of Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne or Glasgow and check what happens. The point being though that all those cities and their residents are part of that nation as well. Their views need to be heard, their situations understood, their lifestyles improved. All of them!
Postscript - to the 27-year-old (who also did not live through much of the 1980s) who informed me the other day that it was all about Thatcher and Scargill - go learn some history. Both were polemicists. Choosing between them is like choosing between cholera and typhus. The fact remains though that the Miners' Strike (deliberate uppercase) did not start until 1984. By then the terminal damage to the industrial base and the mass unemployment across the North of England were into their fourth year. There is an argument that the Miners' Strike was the product of what preceded it, but the damage had already been done before it ever started. Go check your history book!
Tuesday, 9 April 2013
Thought for today
Appropriate in the circumstances today, I think.
It is easy in difficult times to call upon others to make sacrifices.
It is another thing entirely to make those sacrifices yourself and thus empathise with the people who have to heed your call to make sacrifices. You should be among the first in line to follow such an action.
Anything else is hypocrisy.
And if you call upon those with the least to make sacrifices so that others (including yourself) can increase the plenty that they already have available to them, it is the most disgusting form of hypocrisy going.
That should be remembered.
It scarcely behoves me, an atheist, to praise the actions of a leading Catholic, but the actions and statements of the new Pope with regard to the poorest members of society should set the example, not be the exception.
Unfortunately, in some quarters at least, more praise will be lavished upon those who expected others to be the suckers who were forced into making sacrifices while making none themselves.
It is easy in difficult times to call upon others to make sacrifices.
It is another thing entirely to make those sacrifices yourself and thus empathise with the people who have to heed your call to make sacrifices. You should be among the first in line to follow such an action.
Anything else is hypocrisy.
And if you call upon those with the least to make sacrifices so that others (including yourself) can increase the plenty that they already have available to them, it is the most disgusting form of hypocrisy going.
That should be remembered.
It scarcely behoves me, an atheist, to praise the actions of a leading Catholic, but the actions and statements of the new Pope with regard to the poorest members of society should set the example, not be the exception.
Unfortunately, in some quarters at least, more praise will be lavished upon those who expected others to be the suckers who were forced into making sacrifices while making none themselves.
Sunday, 7 April 2013
On declining birthrates and the consequences
Those of you in the United States who have read my articles on this blog would not think that I have much in common with the American talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
Those of you who live in Germany who have read my blog would not imagine that I have an awful lot in common with the Chancellor, Angela Merkel.
One thing does though connect the three of us.
None of us have any children.
You can make what you like of Mr Limbaugh's rowdy pontificating on abortion and the like. What I have heard of his opinions makes me glad that I am not too often impacted by his intolerant views. I wonder what it would be like if his current wife had a child, and in 16 years time Mr Limbaugh came home one day from his job and found his offspring snorting cocaine on the settee with a few friends. And got the usual anti-parental stuff that you often get from adolescents.
OK, not my business, stay away from it. Move on.
Frau Merkel meanwhile in her role of mother of the nation is stuck with a situation where she has to persuade families in Germany to have more children - which cannot be easy given the fact that she has none herself. Aren't children wonderful? Hmmmm.
The German birthrate currently stands at 1.36 per family. The current population of 82 million is seen as shrinking to 65 million by 2050. The percentage of people over 60 is currently at a record high and is likely to stay that way for some time to come.
The impact upon the workforce ought to be severe. Not that in the short-term you would notice. With unemployment standing at around 3 million officially (and I read a seditious piece the other week which suggested that this is a government fudge, and the actual figure is somewhere between 7 and 8 million - 12% rather than 5.5%) there are still more than enough people to fill the vacancies that far too rarely appear.
As the population grows older you would imagine that making employment more readily available for older people and raising the retirement age for people who are fit and healthy and want to work would make sense.
This week some government posters have started appearing around Frankfurt (so I would imagine around the rest of Germany) encouraging employers to take on older workers. For not unselfish reasons I hope that this has the desired impact. White-collar workers particularly are liable to be just as productive as they get older as they ever were. Ageism is unacceptable, and in a healthy job market (cough, splutter) ought not to be a factor - but it is, as much as the denials come from the commercial world suggesting the contrary.
Down the road though the problems will increase. Tax revenues will be impacted, public and private insurance companies will find that they have to pay out more for health care for an increasing number of elderly people while having fewer active contributors, properties will start to empty or be subject to inefficient usage (compare heating costs in relationship to the people requiring them). And so on and so forth.
The answer to the problems in the past when there were jobs to be filled and the locals were not interested was to bring in immigrant labour. Assuming a boom in the economy (cough, splutter - where are Adenauer and Erhard when we need them?) this could well happen.
With the Schengen Agreement in Europe the possibilities for that already exist. Last year the largest number of immigrants in terms of numbers came not as feared from the Muslim world (with all the potential fanatics usw - excuse the momentary paranoia), but from Poland. The largest percentage increase last year came from (surprise, surprise) Greece and Spain.
Here though as elsewhere in Europe immigration is a touchy subject. Immigration is something of a dirty word (although - see the paragraph above - falsely assumed to mean immigration from outside the continent and all the fears of Islamisation usw). People have also to be integrated according to government expectations. German will still be expected to be the lingua franca, for example.
And then there is the point that internal EU immigration may only be a short-term solution. While Germany is on the extreme with its low birth rate, the figures for the rest of Europe are not that much better. According to the Daily Mail (not my favourite UK media outlet, but not one given to deliberately falsifying the stats) the UK had the highest birthrate in Europe last year. The figure given was 1.91.
Which is still conducive to seeing a rise in the age of the population. There will still be more older people than people in the workforce in 20 years time at that rate. Getting back to 2.3 would be desirable.
So even Conservative governments in Europe are indulging their fantasies by offering incentives to people to have more children. The problem in the words of the old proverb being that you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.
Both major political groupings in Germany are trying to push legislation to improve the situation. Children-friendly legislation usw. The trouble being that there has been a ton of this stuff out there for many years already. The bait is out there, but the fact of the matter is that the population at large is not biting. There are all sorts of reasons, but economics plays a big part. You might not imagine that the world's fourth largest economy (with the world's second highest number of millionaires in per capita terms) was feeling the pinch, but that seems to be the story.
The 2008 crisis may not have bitten quite so hard here, but it did hit. There are some other quite scary stats - like the one suggesting that 1 in 6 children currently live in households which fall below the official poverty line. If more children are born, won't that get worse?
And then there is the sense that unemployment is actually a lot worse, or just round the corner, or that underemployment is disguising the real situation.
Is this a world into which to bring children?
Until the economy picks up and there is a sense of financial security out there (in which case the Neo-Liberal nonsense and all the attached insecurity better be booted out and replaced with summat along the lines of the Adenauer-Erhard model), I cannot see things changing. In fact it would not surprise me at all if that 1.36 actually fell below 1.3 before long if things don't improve.
Postscript for those interested - why didn't I have children? I will give you the answer some other time!
Those of you who live in Germany who have read my blog would not imagine that I have an awful lot in common with the Chancellor, Angela Merkel.
One thing does though connect the three of us.
None of us have any children.
You can make what you like of Mr Limbaugh's rowdy pontificating on abortion and the like. What I have heard of his opinions makes me glad that I am not too often impacted by his intolerant views. I wonder what it would be like if his current wife had a child, and in 16 years time Mr Limbaugh came home one day from his job and found his offspring snorting cocaine on the settee with a few friends. And got the usual anti-parental stuff that you often get from adolescents.
OK, not my business, stay away from it. Move on.
Frau Merkel meanwhile in her role of mother of the nation is stuck with a situation where she has to persuade families in Germany to have more children - which cannot be easy given the fact that she has none herself. Aren't children wonderful? Hmmmm.
The German birthrate currently stands at 1.36 per family. The current population of 82 million is seen as shrinking to 65 million by 2050. The percentage of people over 60 is currently at a record high and is likely to stay that way for some time to come.
The impact upon the workforce ought to be severe. Not that in the short-term you would notice. With unemployment standing at around 3 million officially (and I read a seditious piece the other week which suggested that this is a government fudge, and the actual figure is somewhere between 7 and 8 million - 12% rather than 5.5%) there are still more than enough people to fill the vacancies that far too rarely appear.
As the population grows older you would imagine that making employment more readily available for older people and raising the retirement age for people who are fit and healthy and want to work would make sense.
This week some government posters have started appearing around Frankfurt (so I would imagine around the rest of Germany) encouraging employers to take on older workers. For not unselfish reasons I hope that this has the desired impact. White-collar workers particularly are liable to be just as productive as they get older as they ever were. Ageism is unacceptable, and in a healthy job market (cough, splutter) ought not to be a factor - but it is, as much as the denials come from the commercial world suggesting the contrary.
Down the road though the problems will increase. Tax revenues will be impacted, public and private insurance companies will find that they have to pay out more for health care for an increasing number of elderly people while having fewer active contributors, properties will start to empty or be subject to inefficient usage (compare heating costs in relationship to the people requiring them). And so on and so forth.
The answer to the problems in the past when there were jobs to be filled and the locals were not interested was to bring in immigrant labour. Assuming a boom in the economy (cough, splutter - where are Adenauer and Erhard when we need them?) this could well happen.
With the Schengen Agreement in Europe the possibilities for that already exist. Last year the largest number of immigrants in terms of numbers came not as feared from the Muslim world (with all the potential fanatics usw - excuse the momentary paranoia), but from Poland. The largest percentage increase last year came from (surprise, surprise) Greece and Spain.
Here though as elsewhere in Europe immigration is a touchy subject. Immigration is something of a dirty word (although - see the paragraph above - falsely assumed to mean immigration from outside the continent and all the fears of Islamisation usw). People have also to be integrated according to government expectations. German will still be expected to be the lingua franca, for example.
And then there is the point that internal EU immigration may only be a short-term solution. While Germany is on the extreme with its low birth rate, the figures for the rest of Europe are not that much better. According to the Daily Mail (not my favourite UK media outlet, but not one given to deliberately falsifying the stats) the UK had the highest birthrate in Europe last year. The figure given was 1.91.
Which is still conducive to seeing a rise in the age of the population. There will still be more older people than people in the workforce in 20 years time at that rate. Getting back to 2.3 would be desirable.
So even Conservative governments in Europe are indulging their fantasies by offering incentives to people to have more children. The problem in the words of the old proverb being that you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.
Both major political groupings in Germany are trying to push legislation to improve the situation. Children-friendly legislation usw. The trouble being that there has been a ton of this stuff out there for many years already. The bait is out there, but the fact of the matter is that the population at large is not biting. There are all sorts of reasons, but economics plays a big part. You might not imagine that the world's fourth largest economy (with the world's second highest number of millionaires in per capita terms) was feeling the pinch, but that seems to be the story.
The 2008 crisis may not have bitten quite so hard here, but it did hit. There are some other quite scary stats - like the one suggesting that 1 in 6 children currently live in households which fall below the official poverty line. If more children are born, won't that get worse?
And then there is the sense that unemployment is actually a lot worse, or just round the corner, or that underemployment is disguising the real situation.
Is this a world into which to bring children?
Until the economy picks up and there is a sense of financial security out there (in which case the Neo-Liberal nonsense and all the attached insecurity better be booted out and replaced with summat along the lines of the Adenauer-Erhard model), I cannot see things changing. In fact it would not surprise me at all if that 1.36 actually fell below 1.3 before long if things don't improve.
Postscript for those interested - why didn't I have children? I will give you the answer some other time!
Thursday, 4 April 2013
Quotes of the day
"'God and Country' are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed".
and maybe less seriously, but no less accurate nonetheless:
"Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you are a cheese".
Luis Buñuel, Spanish film director
and maybe less seriously, but no less accurate nonetheless:
"Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you are a cheese".
Luis Buñuel, Spanish film director
Tiger babies
First a link in German (for the English readers, sorry I could not find a link in English).
http://www.fr-online.de/zoo-frankfurt/tigerbaby-zoo-frankfurt-tigerin-malea-ist-wieder-mama,4407556,22278642.html
People who work in zoos are remarkably committed to the animals in their care and do an excellent job in trying to keep species alive and healthy.
The Sumatran tiger is one of the world's endangered species and the news of a baby being born in the Frankfurt zoo has to be good news.
You will also note from the above article other snippets of animals born in the zoo here in recent years - the record is excellent.
The only thing that saddens me is that the future of these animals seems to be "in captivity". Establishing a "natural" environment for a creature in a zoo is not easy, as hard as all the people who work there try. And as hard as worthy organisations such as the WWF try, keeping animals like the Sumatran tiger alive in the wild - in its natural habitat - gets ever more difficult. Humanity has overpopulated itself to such an extent that living space is seemingly reserved for excess humans first and the remaining diversity of species a poor second.
Regardless of the other considerations (the poverty that goes hand in hand with having unmanageably large families for example), I cannot help but think that we have got this wrong. We are born with brains - instincts are controllable if we apply our brains to them. Unfortunately to the detriment of most other species on the planet, we still do not make sufficient use of our brainpower to enable other creatures to continue to exist alongside us.
And as exceptional as are the talents that you find among zoo personnel and nature conservationists, a lot more still needs to be done. 10 to 12 billion humans living in all the earth's livable areas and all the earth's remaining creatures in zoos, as may well be the case in a few years time? No thank you!
http://www.fr-online.de/zoo-frankfurt/tigerbaby-zoo-frankfurt-tigerin-malea-ist-wieder-mama,4407556,22278642.html
People who work in zoos are remarkably committed to the animals in their care and do an excellent job in trying to keep species alive and healthy.
The Sumatran tiger is one of the world's endangered species and the news of a baby being born in the Frankfurt zoo has to be good news.
You will also note from the above article other snippets of animals born in the zoo here in recent years - the record is excellent.
The only thing that saddens me is that the future of these animals seems to be "in captivity". Establishing a "natural" environment for a creature in a zoo is not easy, as hard as all the people who work there try. And as hard as worthy organisations such as the WWF try, keeping animals like the Sumatran tiger alive in the wild - in its natural habitat - gets ever more difficult. Humanity has overpopulated itself to such an extent that living space is seemingly reserved for excess humans first and the remaining diversity of species a poor second.
Regardless of the other considerations (the poverty that goes hand in hand with having unmanageably large families for example), I cannot help but think that we have got this wrong. We are born with brains - instincts are controllable if we apply our brains to them. Unfortunately to the detriment of most other species on the planet, we still do not make sufficient use of our brainpower to enable other creatures to continue to exist alongside us.
And as exceptional as are the talents that you find among zoo personnel and nature conservationists, a lot more still needs to be done. 10 to 12 billion humans living in all the earth's livable areas and all the earth's remaining creatures in zoos, as may well be the case in a few years time? No thank you!
Wednesday, 3 April 2013
Applying for a job below your status
It was something I read on Facebook the other day. The discussion was based upon long-term unemployment in the US, but there were implications that were universal in their application.
It was based upon a piece that had appeared in the Boston Globe entitled "Casualties of the Recession: Little help for long-term unemployed", and the discussion focused upon the following:
"Tucked away in this excellent but depressing piece on the lack of policy focus to address the needs of the long-term unemployed... "Suffolk University economist David Tuerck said he supports eliminating unemployment benefits and other social safety-net programs, such as food stamps, because they discourage workers from doing whatever it takes to get a job.... workers have strong incentives to stay unemployed"".
My comment to that, echoed by dozens of others, reads as follows:
"What always gets me no matter where you are in the world when I hear this, you would think that there were dozens more jobs available than people looking for them. In fact the reverse is the case, by some 4 to 1 in the US, and try Spain or Greece where the jobs have dried up almost entirely. Cut the benefits, people will look for jobs? What jobs???? Dozens of people are looking already and finding none!".
One of the stories that really hits home though came from a lady who pointed out that she had many years experience working in a professional role and had a Master's degree. Jobs at the level that she had been working had almost dried up, and when she applied for lesser positions she was invariably told that she overqualified.
Job shy? Hardly!
This is a story I have encountered time and time again in my life.
The argument I suppose is that when the economy picks up (if it ever does! I wouldn't count on it at least where jobs are concerned), you will pack up your professional bags and be on your way.
Why you do not get the person to sign an agreement for a fixed period of time (I agree to stay in this job for at least 5 years, and will pay compensation if I break this contract usw) to get round this possibility, would be interesting to know.
And anyway, isn't the style of the job the choice of the applicant rather than the employer's place to decide who is overqualified and who isn't? At my point of life, I will happily go back to doing what I was doing in IT 20 years ago. Status isn't that important - the job and the income are! And I would agree to a 5-year contract expecting me to stay with the company. And I would very likely enjoy the job as well! The only limitation I would place on it would that it would have to pay a living wage. Getting into debt just to work makes no sense!
Overqualified for the position in my own industry? Not a problem? What after all is the alternative? Filling supermarket shelves? Flipping burgers? Cleaning out office buildings?
NO! THAT WOULD BE BELOW MY STATUS!!!!!
I find it more than a bit curious that people want to have this double standard. They will not have you overqualified for a position in the industry where you have years of experience but they think that you should be working in a lesser menial job and that should not be a cause for concern?
Isn't the argument a bit stupid?
The answer in a perfect world is to have far more jobs which provide for all levels of ability. And allows for a removal of ageism and other nonsensical thinking that prevents full employment from ever occurring.
Get to the point where there are four "good" jobs for every applicant rather than the other way round, then I will agree with Mr Tuerck as quoted above. When the jobs exist and everybody who wants to work can work (and is not underemployed unless they so choose) then fine. Starving people back to non-existent work though is simply not a feasible option.
It was based upon a piece that had appeared in the Boston Globe entitled "Casualties of the Recession: Little help for long-term unemployed", and the discussion focused upon the following:
"Tucked away in this excellent but depressing piece on the lack of policy focus to address the needs of the long-term unemployed... "Suffolk University economist David Tuerck said he supports eliminating unemployment benefits and other social safety-net programs, such as food stamps, because they discourage workers from doing whatever it takes to get a job.... workers have strong incentives to stay unemployed"".
My comment to that, echoed by dozens of others, reads as follows:
"What always gets me no matter where you are in the world when I hear this, you would think that there were dozens more jobs available than people looking for them. In fact the reverse is the case, by some 4 to 1 in the US, and try Spain or Greece where the jobs have dried up almost entirely. Cut the benefits, people will look for jobs? What jobs???? Dozens of people are looking already and finding none!".
One of the stories that really hits home though came from a lady who pointed out that she had many years experience working in a professional role and had a Master's degree. Jobs at the level that she had been working had almost dried up, and when she applied for lesser positions she was invariably told that she overqualified.
Job shy? Hardly!
This is a story I have encountered time and time again in my life.
The argument I suppose is that when the economy picks up (if it ever does! I wouldn't count on it at least where jobs are concerned), you will pack up your professional bags and be on your way.
Why you do not get the person to sign an agreement for a fixed period of time (I agree to stay in this job for at least 5 years, and will pay compensation if I break this contract usw) to get round this possibility, would be interesting to know.
And anyway, isn't the style of the job the choice of the applicant rather than the employer's place to decide who is overqualified and who isn't? At my point of life, I will happily go back to doing what I was doing in IT 20 years ago. Status isn't that important - the job and the income are! And I would agree to a 5-year contract expecting me to stay with the company. And I would very likely enjoy the job as well! The only limitation I would place on it would that it would have to pay a living wage. Getting into debt just to work makes no sense!
Overqualified for the position in my own industry? Not a problem? What after all is the alternative? Filling supermarket shelves? Flipping burgers? Cleaning out office buildings?
NO! THAT WOULD BE BELOW MY STATUS!!!!!
I find it more than a bit curious that people want to have this double standard. They will not have you overqualified for a position in the industry where you have years of experience but they think that you should be working in a lesser menial job and that should not be a cause for concern?
Isn't the argument a bit stupid?
The answer in a perfect world is to have far more jobs which provide for all levels of ability. And allows for a removal of ageism and other nonsensical thinking that prevents full employment from ever occurring.
Get to the point where there are four "good" jobs for every applicant rather than the other way round, then I will agree with Mr Tuerck as quoted above. When the jobs exist and everybody who wants to work can work (and is not underemployed unless they so choose) then fine. Starving people back to non-existent work though is simply not a feasible option.
Tuesday, 2 April 2013
My definition of success
This is almost a direct copy of a reply that I wrote on LinkedIn.com yesterday. I hope that no copyright is infringed, but I think that it deserves a wider airing.
Success is having a job to go to where I can fully utilise my talents, get excellent results for the people I am working with/for (customers and colleagues alike), and gain respect for my integrity, professionalism and commitment.
Success is having enough money in the bank so that I can pay off all the bills on time and never get into debt. This means a regular income appropriate to my skills, talents and experience - not a fortune, but rather the results of recognition. Enough is as good as a feast.
Success means living in a place where I am comfortable and can stay as long as I want, both in terms of accommodation and in a city where I would choose to live.
Success is the certainty that while there will be challenges tomorrow, it will still be a good day.
And success is persuading the intolerant to learn tolerance, teaching the greedy to learn to give more, and getting people to understand that people over 60 can do a magnificent job in the commercial world when given the opportunity!
Success is having a job to go to where I can fully utilise my talents, get excellent results for the people I am working with/for (customers and colleagues alike), and gain respect for my integrity, professionalism and commitment.
Success is having enough money in the bank so that I can pay off all the bills on time and never get into debt. This means a regular income appropriate to my skills, talents and experience - not a fortune, but rather the results of recognition. Enough is as good as a feast.
Success means living in a place where I am comfortable and can stay as long as I want, both in terms of accommodation and in a city where I would choose to live.
Success is the certainty that while there will be challenges tomorrow, it will still be a good day.
And success is persuading the intolerant to learn tolerance, teaching the greedy to learn to give more, and getting people to understand that people over 60 can do a magnificent job in the commercial world when given the opportunity!
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