Why a lot of non-jobs should go

As you cannot fail to be aware, the UK is going through a massive planning exercise to remove large sums of expenditure from the public sector.  It's not nice, but it's a necessary part of getting government spending down to lower levels so that the country can live within its means.

I have a suggestion.  In many local councils and government bodies there is a swathe of jobs in recently popular areas.  The jobs are a declaration by the body that they take an issue seriously and are taking steps to sort it.  I'm thinking of jobs in environmental, diversity, promotion of recycling, you know the sort of thing I mean - jobs that pay £30-50,000 a year (along with the associated employers and benefits costs).

Compare this with the real world of manufacturing which is part of an economy that actually generates money for the country rather than just spending it (OK that's perjorative, but not unfair).  There, as far back as the 80's Quality departments were under pressure as manufacturing costs had to be clawed back for businesses to survive.  The thinking then (and some of this came from the Japanese manufacturing world), was that everyone has a responsibility in the company for quality.  It wasn't a bolt on feature that came after the widget came off the line - it had to be built in, every member of staff had to understand their role in ensuring that quality was to the necessary standards.

I propose the same for all these jobs in local and national government and organisations like the BBC.

Any job that relates to a policy that should be embraced by all staff, and acted upon universally should be removed and those responsibilities transferred to all staff as part of their normal job requirements.

So for instance: promoting equality in the workplace.  Everyone in any workplace should know that they are required to be fair to all people irrespective of race, creed, colour, religion, sexual orientation, shoe size (OK, that's a joke).  Anyone failing to do that should be processed by the organisation's hierarchy as a natural part of employment.  It does not need a flotilla of staff within the organisation to ensure this.
Equally for an organisation that requires this of it's clientele (a local council for instance), the staff should also be able, trained, and required to ensure that the treatment of the clientele, and (if necessary) the behaviour of the clientele is appropriate and reasonable.  We don't need a bunch of highly paid staff to ensure that this happens.

The bottom line is that government funded bodies need to learn to integrate their policies and standards into day to day life, and stop employing expensive staff who only create policies and procedures that self justify, and then create a further workload to ensure that the incumbents positions are secure.

Global warming debate

I'm getting tired of reading stuff like this: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18363-debate-heats-up-over-ipcc-melting-glaciers-claim.html

It seems if you say something off the cuff, and/or non-peer reviewed that supports the hypothesis of global warming it'll end up, eventually, being treated as fact. With the UEA leaks, it really is time for the a clear peer-reviewed assessment of what is actually happening, a bunch of hypothesis and for some proper scientific findings. Most of all we need to sort out all this man-made stuff.

My proposal:
a) Start again with standard, proper, tested, peer-reviewed science
b) Stop treating sceptics as Neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers, and let them participate
c) Separate the 2 key questions by asking 2 of these three questions:
1. Is the planet getting warmer overall?
2. Is it natural (sunspots, earth core changes, solar wind, whatever) or;
3. If not is it industrialisation or other anthropogenic activity?
d) If the answers to 1 is no - then let's stop panicking everyone.
e) If the answers to 1 and 2 are yes, then we probably cannot do much about it, but can reduce our impact on the planet
f) If the answer to 1 and 3 are yes, then let's properly evaluate how to reduce human impact.,

I am fully in favour of proportionate activity to reduce our impact on the planet whatever the answers. In fact those people without children (me included) can trump any "saving the planet for my kids" claim, as our impact on the planet dies with us.

So yes:
* reduce, reuse, recycle,
* do it NOW
So no to:
* faffing around with carbon credits that end up closing a perfectly serviceable steelworks in Redcar for financial and geopolitical reasons (see: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6798052/What-links-the-Copenhagen-conference-with-the-steelworks-closing-in-Redcar.html)
* ridiculous and unachievable carbon policies
* penalising third world nations who want and need to develop
* expensive (and in the current cold winter when we need them most: useless) wind farms
* a failure to invest in tidal and wave energy production which is available 24x7 and permanently available and therefore a much more sensible alternative to wind farms that need oil/coal/gas/nuclear power station backup precisely because wind is irregular
* useless jobsworths in local government taking our hard earned money in taxes to pay for
* stupid energy saving schemes where nPower send out unsolicited light bulbs
* scrapping of incandescent light bulbs that are inefficient in the sense of light output, but contribute heat to a house when it needs it. The heat might be waste, but the lights are generally on in colder times - it's disgraceful that this is ignored in calculations, and that the disposal of mercury and other poisons in low-energy bulbs is conveniently ignored by the lawmakers.

Nanny state misses the point again

On first glance this advert seems like a sensible thing to do - even though I am yet to be convinced that anthropogenic climate change is happening*. Conserving resources is always a sensible thing, especially when money is tight.

But then you see the rest of the advert

If you look closely you'll see that the Climate Change enthusiasts are recommending that we still consider driving to pick up the children from school only a hundred or so yards away from home. The idea of the car outline might be funny-clever, but the actual implication is that everyone drives everywhere to do everything. Unless you are disabled, the various fictitous journeys through this map could all be done on foot or by bicycle for

1. better health
2. lower cost
3. a bit more time admittedly
4. less impact on the environment.

As our American cousins would say "go figure"


*If so then how do you explain ice ages, the mediaeval mini ice age, and so on. They all predate industrialisation. Do none of the climate change evangelists realise that the earth changes climate all by itself - can we have proof that WE are exclusively responsible for the changes?