I can’t think of a better way to honour him than to re-circulate one of his articles which sought to shine light upon the showboating of a pope, the hypocrisy of his money-grubbing, brain-washing institution and the dangerous, anti-women, pro-poverty fanaticism of “Mother Teresa of Calcutta”, all of which culminated in the farce of her “beatification”.

If after reading the linked article you want to dismiss it as wrong for logical, definable, reasons, that is your right — in fact, post your proofs in the comments. If your instinct is to dismiss it as wrong before you’ve even read it then at least know, just privately for yourself, that you might be one of the brain-washed and read it to prove that you aren’t. If you really can’t bring yourself to read it because it makes you angry to even think that an article exists that might express the sentiments above, then I hope that being confronted with the fact that you don’t even have the free will to read an article which might question your beliefs will at least niggle at you and, eventually, set you free.

Utterly engrossing, and filled with information we should all know to combat all of the disinformation about Genghis Khan and the Mongolian Empire which still passes for common knowledge. I honestly believe that this book should be a standard text for all high school students, everywhere (at least, in my world where history is required to the end of high school, since it probably requires a 10th or 11th grade reading level.)

My edition was the audiobook and I must say that Davis was truly wonderful (and that’s a professional opinion!) His pacing was perfect and never once, during the 14 odd hours, did he sound as though he was anything but fascinated, which is essential for the listeners’ comprehension. There was the occasional strange edit or technical hiccough but only one or two that a layman would have noticed. All in all a wonderful production so kudos to author, narrator and producer/director!

View all my reviews

For as long as I can remember, I have been desperately concerned with my level of metacognitive skill. It was the reason I gave the first story I ever wrote for public consumption to my best friend to critique, I was seven and I remember vividly the relief that I had a chance to fix it before I read it to the prep class (the grade before grade 1, in Australia.) Metacognition is the ability to assess one’s own skill level and, of course, I didn’t know the word until my university philosophy of mind studies, but my greatest fear has always been not failure to achieve perfection but to have thought that what I had done was objectively good and then to discover that it wasn’t.

Whether a child, probably too young even to have metacognitive ability, should be worrying about such things is a valid question for another, more private, forum, but it has driven a life-long love of theory and research, if only to do as much as I can to make sure I don’t find myself in that situation. It’s what drives me to believe that editing and story analysis classes are more important for a writer than any “Express yourselves, dahlings!” creative writing classes. It’s also lead to a morbid curiosity about how on earth people have the confidence to, for example, audition for So You Think You Can Dance despite having no ability whatsoever. Aren’t they embarrassed? And how can they not know how bad they are?

The same questions come to mind when I read an terribly flawed piece of writing.* When I have been asked to give feedback (professionally or no) I have to try to work out why the writer hasn’t noticed these flaws so that I can work out the best way to approach giving my feedback in the hope that it will be taken as constructively as it is meant. I have found, again and again, that the level of confidence the writer has is an excellent gauge, invariably, those whose pieces need the most work are most shocked that any work is required and genuinely seem to have believed they had produced a masterpiece.

I have discussed this many times with Superman and he recently pointed me to a 1999 report which shed some interesting light on the subject and backs up the, now old-fashioned, belief that anyone who believes themselves to be the best at anything is unlikely to be even close to the best.

The Report: “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”**

In their 1999 report, Kruger and Dunning outlined four studies they had undertaken which were inspired by previous studies which showed a correlation between level of confidence and lack of ability. Kruger and Dunning devised experiments in which they asked people to take tests in the areas of logical reasoning, humor and English grammar, then asked them to estimate both: what their specific test score had been and; which percentile their test results fell into (i.e., where their test result would fall in comparison to others’.) The aim was to find the subjects’ actual skill level in an area, and then see if they were aware of what their skill level actually was.

Their findings were unambiguous: the less skill you have, the more grossly you overestimate your ability and, perhaps more instructively, it seems only those with above average skill underestimate their skill. Thus, if you want to make an assumption about a person’s skill from their attitude, the best thing to do is to watch out for humility, not confidence!

“But, but, but!” I hear all the management-book-steeped would-be-Donald-Trumps of the world shriek, “That’s loser talk. Confidence is the most important thing! If you don’t think you’re the best, who will?”

This is an attitude that, as far as I can tell, began to seep into the world in the 80’s, as advertising men, salesmen and generic ‘business’ men began to make enormous amounts of money, and people started looking to them as icons of success. Suddenly, everyone was reading management and wealth-building books written by these ‘guru’s, and this requirement for uber-self-confidence was being applied in interview rooms across all sorts of industries. Quiet confidence and humility became associated with ‘losers’ – who just didn’t want it enough, or were cursed with low self-esteem – a condition which was to be treated like a highly contagious disease.

I’m not denying the existence of, or problems associated with low self-esteem. It may surprise some people who have met me, because I usually speak with confidence, but I’ve been close to crippled by low self-esteem for much of my life. When I speak up, it is with confidence, but that’s because I only speak up if I have done copious research, practice and, especially if it involved public speaking, throwing up, in private.  I understand completely that a certain level of confidence is required just to step into any arena of experience, some more than others, but beyond the minimum level of confidence required for the particular task at hand confidence is, as the studies demonstrate, more of an indication of lack of skill than of competence.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that projection of confidence is essential in marketing, or sales, or any profession which requires one to convince others to willingly do what you want them to do. I also understand the philosophy that any interview is a sales pitch of yourself. It is not true, however, that every job is a sales job and anyone who conducts interviews for non-sales positions and makes their decisions based on who sold themselves most confidently really can’t complain when that applicant turns out not to have the skill they’d hoped (or has even lied on their resume!) Such interviewers are as responsible for the bad hire as they would be if they’d ordered a disappointing piece of exercise equipment skillfully advertised in the wee hours of the morning.

Of course, a study like this isn’t going to instantly change the prevailing culture but I thought it worth sharing with my small audience of, mostly, writers hoping to be published who are wrestling with their own levels of confidence, or perhaps should be

*Note: Any discussion of ability brings with it the jinx that there will be numerous grammatical and spelling errors in the very piece discussing it. I’d like to point out that metacognition is the issue here and I’m fully aware that this blog post won’t be perfect, unwilling as I am to spend more time than it takes to jot down the thoughts and get my creative juices flowing for my fiction writing!

** “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”, Justin Kruger and David Dunning Department of Psychology Cornell University, © 1999 by the American Psychological Association For personal use only–not for distribution December 1999 Vol. 77, No. 6, 1121-1134

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Social Media cannot or should not be used for promoting a product, of course it can. I have no issue with someone I have followed or befriended posting about their current project on their account so that I’m aware of it and can opt-in in some way, nor do I have an issue with someone I have directly corresponded with sending me a private message asking me to give them a little support in their project before they go wide with it – that’s the good, effective way to use Social Media for PR. What I do have a problem with is the number of messages I have been getting, supposedly ‘tailored’ to me, or not, from accounts clearly set up purely for PR, which show very little genuine interest in either me or the platform they want to exploit.

So, fwiw, here’s my advice to anyone wanting to use Social Media for promotional purposes:

Any time you send an unsolicited message about a product directly to someone on any of these social media, you are not being an uber cool company that is down with what the kids are doing these days – you are TELEMARKETING. Not only are you telemarketing, but you are calling during a dinner party. Imagine being at that dining table when the call comes through. Now imagine the talk about you and your product afterwards – it’s not going to be good is it?

If you want to use Social Media to promote something, you have to actually BE social – be ready to put in the time or it will all be for naught. Tweet or post about something other than just your own products, something which will be interesting to your target audience so that they will engage with you and wonder what you or your product is all about. Getting a good word of mouth campaign going used to be a real coup in the PR world, because it was subtle, if sometimes vulgar, work. Social Media is all about word of mouth, so you need to put as much creativity into encouraging those conversations as you did pre-social media – the size of these vast networks you wish to exploit make it a more delicate process, not a shortcut.

Illustration credit: Matt Hamm

I don’t really believe in piggy-backing of other people’s content for my own but I love it when someone I read points me to something inspirational and TED’s tagline: “Ideas Worth Spreading” and their copyright permissions (for those who were wondering) ask us to do so. To do my part in my little part of the blogosphere, I thought I’d start a series embedding TED talks from over the years that particularly appeal to me and, in doing so, hopefully spread a little inspiration. If you are inspired to hear more from TED, you can find more talks than you throw a failed iPod battery at here.

I’m going to start with Ken Robinson’s talk on taking creativity as seriously as we do literacy, lest we educate creativity out of society. Serious subject but hugely entertaining speaker so grab a cuppa when you can afford to take a 19min 20 sec break and enjoy and absorb.

Murdoch said free news on the web provided by the BBC made it “incredibly difficult” for private news organisations to ask people to pay for their news.

“It is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it,” he said.

From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8227915.stm

When I heard this, I had the same response I have when I hear media distribution companies blame pirate media download sites for their refusal to come up with a decent international internet broadcasting model: SHENANIGANS. IT’S PROOF OF A  MARKET, PEOPLE!

Until you have actually offered your product for sale in an accessible, online form and found that no one will pay for it then you have no leg to WHINE on. Stop assuming that the world is sitting around waiting to steal from you, offer the same quality product at a decent price (people will often happily pay the same for the  downloaded version of books and software, why not everything else?) and you might just be surprised at the number of people just waiting to pay you for it!

When it comes to newspapers, one of the Murdoch stable is actually attempting to do it right: The TimesOnline is offering subscription to an ePaper which is not the paper’s online site but rather:

“it is the same as the printed newspaper in the UK. The News, Sport and Business sections, and the supplements are laid out just as in the actual paper, but are also complemented by a variety of digital tools.”

THIS is what we want. The actual product as it is in hardcopy but available to us without the turning and folding and the inking of the fingers and the bashing the guy next to us on the train. And I, for one, would be happy to pay the same amount for it as the real product because I know that the price we pay for that is pretty damn good for all that journalism anyway.

But there’s the rub – we want the journalism back and I want the editorial LAYOUT, too. I want a front page that is judged to be front page-worthy by an EDITOR – not by the clickity-clicks of my fellow readers who, all due respect,  might keep celebrity adoptions or anything with the word breasts in it at the top of the popularity rankings. Sure, I may disagree with the editor’s choice but that’s fine, it tells me about the publication’s journalistic priorities and bias – you know, like it always has. The internet is not some strange unknowable creature, it’s just another delivery medium – treat it as such.

“Okay,” I hear people asking, “well, the internet and 24hr news channels break stories before newspapers can so how can we possibly compete?”

Bollocks.

No one has bought a newspaper to find out what stories are breaking since radio (no one with any sense, anyway). As I learned in this Background Briefing podcast, when television came along, the paper owners tried to hang on to the news-breaker image and managed to manipulate television into making their news broadcasts after the evening editions had gone out. Now that the internet has arrived they are trying to make a similar argument. It just does not compute.

We don’t read newspapers to be told what is happening, we read newspapers to be told WHY it’s happening, to get background information and more depth than we will get from the time broadcast news allots a story. The background information includes the opinions of people we might respect or revile which might give us a different point of view (Annabel Crabbe is unmissable on Australian politics) Depth and educated opinion THEY are the newspaper’s niche – so be the good capitalists you claim to be and LEVERAGE THAT SHIT!

I don’t blame Murdoch for being worried about asking people to pay for online newspaper content because they have poisoned their own well. When they went online they went cheap, sacking journalists, demanding more from the ones they kept while hiring more people in ad sales (and, seemingly,  letting some of them write the headlines!) It was understandable but short-sighted. Actually, no, not short-sighted because that suggests that they couldn’t have offered the above (even just in a pdf format) YEARS ago. It was understandable but stupid and greedy.

And, of course, greed is the problem. The moguls don’t really care about saving journalism or they’d be doing all of the above. Like everyone else, from the twenty-something blogger in Japan who hates teaching English to the wanna-be writer who thinks he doesn’t need the big publishing houses anyway, they thought they would be able to make MASSES of revenue from content into which they could put minimal effort (read: funding) just because it was on the internet. Now they see the mistake they made (surely they have to?) and they’re crying underdog.

So where to now? It’s actually kind of simple. Admit you screwed up. Brush yourselves off, rewind, go back to start and (I can’t believe I’m saying this) follow the example of the Murdoch paper  The TimesOnline And if you’re a reader in Britain or follow the Times at all SUBSCRIBE – I’m even thinking of doing it just to encourage it!

If after giving it the sort of resources and time that any new venture requires to get going (sure, there’s a bit of a head start but there are also a bunch of bridges to consumer confidence which need to be built on the ashes of the old ones)  THEN, if it hasn’t sold, can you jump on your soap box and lament that quality journalism doesn’t pay. But not until then.

a) who the hell cares what I think? ;

b) it’s much more fun to do that in conversation so you have the benefit of more than one brain on the issue and;

c) this blog, despite the narrative disorder, does actually have general foci, namely life as a writer and/or expat wife.

However, as most writers will attest, when the creative juices are flowing and the brain is snapping, all sorts of ideas start demanding some of the attention you are trying to focus on your currently favoured child (atm: The Shadowkeeper adaptation – who’s my favourite girl? Yes. Yes, you are. You’re so pretty.) SO, in an attempt to get said ideas to sit down and quietly play with their colouring books, I’m going to try dashing off a line or two and posting them where they can get as much attention as they deserve.

There is every possibility the posts will be rant-like, poorly argued and without a hint of the Philosophical training messrs Bigelow and Khamara provided me in the early ‘90s. Fair Warning.

My Aunt lives in Beechworth and is safe at the moment, she has had her car packed for three days and is staying with her friend nearby whose husband volunteers helping keep the Fireys fed and watered, so they have a reliable source and will go when he calls and tells them to go. Though the northern fire is being referred to as the “Beechworth Fire” the winds have so far kept it skirting the town rather than hitting it. The sister of her friends lives in Yackandandah where a change of wind direction will have the beautiful, tiny town gone in minutes and everyone is on standby to put out spots until they see embers in the air and they will leave.

The International reaction has been mixed, once told of the devestation compassion has of course come forth but it seems that many people just don’t understand what a bush fire is. It’s a pretty innocuous phrase, I guess, a bush being a smaller thing than a tree and way less than a forest so perhaps people don’t think it’s a big deal. While is Sapporo, we heard nothing of it on CNN International and yet plenty about some bullshit cyclone about to hit the North West of the continent – has to be one of the least populous places in the world: seriously, CNN, get some geographical education for the production staff!

So, for those unaware there are some pictures and audio interviews with survivors here and some video here  – a warning that the audio interviews are distressing.

And just to make it hit home a little further here is the advice that is being given to those in danger areas. Note the warnings of what to do if you are caught in your car trying to get out – these aren’t just warnings to those who left late, it’s for those caught if the wind changes or the fire just picks up speed suddenly – it is a voracious, terrifying monster which can devour hectares of forest or all the buildings in a whole town in a matter of minutes.

From CFA updates page.

Core Advice

• Residents in this area may experience smoke and burning embers reaching their properties, and are advised to patrol their houses to find and put out any burning embers that may be landing.
• Protect yourself from radiant heat by wearing correct protective clothing consisting of long-sleeved shirts, long pants, sturdy boots and a broad brimmed hat. On no account should synthetic material be worn.
• As the fire front approaches, it will be unsafe to be either on foot or in a car as the heat radiating from the fire will be intense. Buildings will offer the best protection during the passage of a fire front. Close all doors and windows and stay inside the house while the fire passes. Remain alert, extinguish any small fires and if necessary, move outside to burnt ground once the fire has passed.
• If you are caught on the road, don’t get out and run.
  • Pull to the side, preferably in an area clear of tall trees and long grass.
  • Put your hazard lights on and close the windows and vents.
  • Cover any exposed areas of skin with a woollen blanket and get down as low as possible.
  • Only when the fire has passed do you get out and move to safety.
• Drink plenty of fluids to avoid dehydration.
• Residents away from home should not try to return to the area as access is limited and the roads may not be safe.
• Continue to listen to ABC or local radio for updates on this fire.

The good thing about remembering Ash Wednesday is that I also remember the recovery. My mother worked on reconstructing a couple of gardens in the Macedon ranges and we were up and down the mountains many times over the following months as the town rebuilt around the pub to which the stragglers had retreated and was the only building that survived (including the church 10metres to the right) . I know that you can now wander through the Macedon ranges, for example, and the bush and the communities show little evidence of the destruction except for the odd memorial and the improved fire safety measures. Though they won’t be able to think beyond finding the next meal for their kids or shelter for the night for the next few weeks, those who survive these fires will one day be able to walk through the devastated areas and marvel at the regeneration of nature and their community. 

If you feel it in your power to help at all, you can find some ideas on this page from the Australian Red Cross

For NZ. K., in case she has any time at all in her busy busy schedule on her trip home, thinking of you and letting you know we won the quiz last night! Yay!

For readers waiting for the next instalment in my Moving to Japan Tips series – it will be coming next week, it’s on language and I’m taking a bit of time to find some good links for you to help you get a handle on the minimum you really, practically need to live here for the finite period of time that most expat families do. Don’t fret if the language scares you – it’s not as much as you’d think

We’re off driving to Takayama early tomorrow morning with A & R where we hope to see lots of original antique buildings much, much older than at Meiji Mura. Crossing fingers that the rain will hold off enough for us to get some lovely photos (not that rain doesn’t add it’s own beauty if you can keep your camera safe!)

Last but by no means least, Thursday’s Daily Show was sheer genius – you know when you laugh so hard your stomach is sore and your lungs feel like they’ve been vigorously scrubbed from the inside? It was THAT funny. You’ll never be able to listen to John Kerry with a straight face again!!! Enjoy!

…okay, obviously the entire world thinks it’s as funny as we did and the embed is getting a little overloaded so just in case here’s the link to follow

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=189149&title=gaffe-in

I’m not claiming the US government has started to work exactly like 1980′s Britain, I’ve simply noticed that the US media, including the Daily Show pundits, have found themselves aghast at behaviour that Messrs. Appleby and Hacker would have performed in their sleep! Sir Humphrey would have acclaimed Gonzalez’s performances under questioning as high art. So, for the next month, I will be putting a “Yes, Minister” (or Prime) clip in my sidebar video widget for your enjoyment.

The accuracy of the series’ observations prompted many politicians to be unabashed fans – no matter how it portrayed their own positions! To the left is a picture of keen fan Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher meeting with Nigel Hawthorne (Sir Humphrey Appleby) and Paul Eddington (Hon. Jim Hacker MP/PM)  She does look like she’s giving them a bit of a dressing down!

Afterwards, head over to read Dennis’ post and watch the other just as serious but less funny video he has embedded… it’s getting ridiculous over there.

Shane has had the gig longer than I and has obviously got her act together while I am still finding my way/identity here. I don’t have the multiple international households to run and don’t have enough visitors to be run off my feet like Shane has been the last couple of months (hope you’re enjoying the rest now, Shane ^_^) However, moving to Japan doesn’t mean that I’ve suddenly started to see “shopping” as an activity in itself nor do I desperately need to know where the closest “international” food store is so that I can find “real” food, the Japanese supermarket does me fine. Nor do I want to spend my social life with other ex-pats simply because they are not Japanese, occasionally taking a class in some “quaint little Japanese traditional craft” as one’s tightly controlled ‘cultural experience’ once a month (with said ex-pat acquaintances, preferably in the safety of the home of one of us, of course).

Certainly, there are many ex-pat wives who live their lives in essentially this way (especially in Tokyo) and I imagine falling into this life is a great way of insulating yourself from the stress of changing cultures constantly. If one develops a life wherein you arrive in a country and become part of ‘the foreign wives club’ which is amazingly similar to the club anywhere else then I’m sure it’s a wonderful support for many but it is just not my scene. Maybe one day it will be but, for the moment at least, I am not trying to emulate my life in my home country and so need to buffer myself against everything I therefore feel I am lacking. That does not mean I’m trying to be pseudo-Japanese, either – as the wonderful people who gave us our inter-cultural training before we left said “You want to be a first class Australian not a second-class Japanese.”

All that being said, due to language and not working, I don’t have that much opportunity to meet Japanese people and the friends I have made so far are ex-pats (some are ex-pat wives) but they are people with whom I share interests and with whom I can have a good conversation and a good laugh because we have things in common other than that we are strangers here. To quote another of my online community in his comments on Shane’s post: “…my foreign friends here in Japan are cool people who would be my friends back home, too.” Obviously being a foreigner and new to Japan is a great ice-breaker and it does make it easier to find new friends than it is being at home, but it can’t be the only thing you have to talk about – for my money anyway.

Technorati Tags: ex-pat wife,japan,living in Japan,friends in Japan

The Japanese government watches over the companies and fines and (more importantly) shames them if their worker welfare slips so far as to be headline news but the government also seems to depend upon companies as a kind of social safety net, regulating company behavior to an extent that would have Australian companies up in arms. Companies here pay our equivalent of the medicare levy, for example, and recently it has been proposed (I’m not sure if it has passed yet) that companies be made responsible for the increasing obesity of their workers – for each worker over 45 who is over a certain waist measurement after a certain date, the company will have to pay more of that levy to handle the assumed extra cost in medical care that person may cost the state (though since arriving here I’ve been told that there is no public health system except for keeping prices at the many private hospitals/clinics down by decree – not subsidization, so I’m not sure where said money is actually going… so I am obviously missing a piece of the puzzle here.)  This example may not be as severe as it may seem to many Australians since obesity in Japan is very much a ‘salary man’s’ disease caused by too much time in the desk chair and too little time to eat healthily. Grabbing some curry and rice from the station curry stand when heading home on the very last train (if you haven’t missed it) is the best many can do. And this is the thing – the Japanese spend so much of their lives working and so much is expected of them by their companies that it does actually make sense that companies should be held at least partly responsible for their employees welfare beyond what is strictly the work environment. Of course that could equally apply to many Australian companies – particularly when it comes to excessive drinking of their employees at official and unofficial after work gatherings – but then we all know I’m a raging socialist so we can ignore that

But what about the welfare of temp agency staff?

Temp agencies apparently took a while to catch on in Japan because employers weren’t sure they wanted someone who was not indoctrinated in the company ‘way’ to invade the compound, as it were. It has taken off now, though, and people are not happy with the way the temporary workers are being treated – the companies they temp for do not consider them their own but the temp agencies do not offer the kind of protection that permanent staff get at a regular company. Rather than asking the temp agencies to, say, only take on the number of employees they can regularly offer work and so can afford to take care of as other companies take care of their workers (something which was the norm in Australia within my own memory but is now long gone) some have wanted to ban temp agencies altogether and the following appeared in Japan Today, today.

Ruling bloc eyes banning daily-basis dispatch of temp workers

Thursday 03rd July, 04:52 AM JST

TOKYO —

A task force of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner New Komeito Party agreed Wednesday to seek basically banning temp staff agencies from dispatching temp workers on a daily basis, a practice criticized for spawning young working poor and widening Japan’s social disparities, lawmakers said.

As the task force put out its basic stance Wednesday in seeking amendments to the worker dispatch law, the two parties plan to formulate their recommendations on the matter, and based on them the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry is expected to submit a bill to revise the law to the Diet in an extra session convening around late August

Interesting solution. On the surface it looks like those who wanted to ban the agencies altogether have come to a compromise, maybe that’s the case or maybe they are cleverer than their opponents think. It is inevitable that workers will need individual days off at least for the odd flu or funeral. If companies cannot hire temps for the day, what will they do? Two solutions come immediately to mind – the second of which might just see less demand for temp agencies altogether and more permanent (even if part-time) work for people.

The first solution is the one which, frankly, many companies (at least in the West to my knowledge) already resort to instead of hiring temps: foist the work onto some other poor soul or souls who already have enough to do and then blame the poor sick or bereaved worker for not being there . The second solution is for the company to ‘take the high road", if you will, and actually take responsibility for managing this inevitable, unavoidable situation by actually preparing for it. Afterall that’s what today’s leadership is supposed to be all about isn’t it? Human Resource Management? The skeletal staffing arrangements of western companies where they might hire one person to be admin assistant for 5 or 6 mid level executives seems to me a false economy especially when you take into account that over-work and over-stress actually causes the kind of illness which will have people needing days off or working at half-strength if they come in. If you do not order enough copy paper in advance for your requirements then you have managed your needs badly – similarly if you find yourself without enough staff then you have also managed your needs badly, no matter what the reason, because people are wet machines that need rest and become ill if they don’t get enough.

In the ‘olden days’ before employees became "human resources" and, admittedly, before word processors and photocopiers there were ‘secretarial pools’ from which people, ok lets face it women, could be transferred for the day or the week that someone was away. If there was notice, as in the case of planned leave, then there could even be a hand-over. Of course it meant that people in the typing pool had to handle the extra work and I wasn’t around then so I’m not sure how that was handled but I’m sure it was handled well in at least some companies.  Obviously there isn’t the amount of work that justifies a typing pool as such these days, but, it seems to me, with the huge cost of temp staff it wouldn’t hurt a company to have one or a few (depending on the size of company) extra ‘floating’ admin staff who are on permanent salary (even if it’s part time) to help out and be available to fill in where necessary. In fact I remember seeing adverts when I was first starting work for ‘admin floaters’ (and giggling stupidly because I was 14.)  Of course, this solution would lead to less demand for temp workers altogether and a decrease in temp agency revenue but it would mean more real jobs and maybe that’s what the anti-temp employment politicians have in mind – but it’s probably just a political compromise. It will be interesting to see what happens.

She’s also quite a lot of fun. 

In this important article, Annabel asks:
"Why do our police have to sound like they learnt English from a mobile phone instruction pamphlet?"

If you’re cerebrally inclined (and you’re unlikely to be a friend of mine if you’re not – lets face it I’m either excruciatingly boring or completely baffling to anyone who isn’t) click the link and enjoy!

Guilty of grievous oratory harm – Annabel Crabb – Opinion – smh.com.au