Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

With the hectic pace of things over the past 12 months, I’ve not had a chance to take much time out for tidying up nor for catching up in quite a while. Net effect is, of course, that there’s a backlog of things in both categories.

What really needs caught up is the new entries on my holiday accommodation listings sites as I’ve only done the paid entries for several months now which means that I’ve now got over 100 of the free entries to get through. First up on that front will be those that don’t need tidying up. I’m constantly amazed at how little effort some people put into advertising their property. I can forgive (or, rather, correct) the odd spelling or grammatical mistake and I’ll tidy up the layout for people but why bother with an advert that’s just one sentence long and all in capitals? If I’ve time to spare I’ll drop the too short entries a line to say that they need to add a lot more text and some do really up their game when asked. If it’s otherwise good, I’ll even retype the all-capitals ones but generally they’ve got dreadful spelling and grammar too so I just delete them.

Also needing done is the upgrade of the Android applications. Those were put on as a trial about six months ago and are pulling a steady stream of downloads so the planned upgrade should improve on that somewhat as it’ll be a really major upgrade in terms of quality and usability.

Ongoing is a lot of administration which I’m starting to make some inroads with but there’s a long way to go.

And, of course, there’s the things that have been tootling along in the background. This afternoon for instance is a trip to the hospital with Mum to see about her upcoming operation.

That’s the problem with the euro situation at the moment: it really is placing a bet on it surviving.

Spain is being given another 100 billion to bet on it’s banking system surviving the crisis. Greece, unless they elect a far left or right government, will probably be given a similar amount to bet on it’s banking system and not too long from now Italy and Portugal will follow with equally large bets.

All this is just fine if the bets win. If they don’t that money will need replaced and the amount remaining in the kitty will be rather low at that point. Moreover, if the bets don’t win there’ll be a whole bunch of real-world things needing financing at the same time that the bets are written off which is a nightmare scenario for everyone in Europe and none too good for anyone anywhere else for that matter.

Either way, it would appear that we’re in for an interesting second half of 2012.

An awful lot of people are now taking it for granted that Greece will be parting ways with the euro later this year. The only question now seems to be whether it’ll be an orderly exit or a total fiasco. Either way, it seems sure to be something of a roller coaster ride for everyone.

But, whether or not Greece exits the euro, there remains the question as to what to do in the rest of Europe. There are just too many major economies in trouble and needing to grow their economies at the same time as cutting their deficits. One country trying to do one of those choices is difficult but several countries trying to do both simultaneously seems an incredibly unlikely prospect. The result seems likely to be a little of one, a little of the other and overall nothing much happening that’s in any way positive.

In the midst of this the European central bank president sees the future as him taking over the position of the central banker for all the Eurozone countries. That would have been the sensible way to go 10 years back when the euro began. Now it brings forth the vision of Bankia writ very, very large: not the merger of seven lame-duck regional banks this time to create one bigger failing bank but rather the merger of a number of lame-duck central banks to create one bigger failing central bank. Even if he had the time and there were the political inclination to do it, it seems just a means of postponing the inevitable break-up of the Eurozone and, just as the collapse of Bankia will be more painful than the collapse of the individual banks that created it would have been, the collapse of the super central bank would be much, much more painful than the collapse of one or two smaller ones would (will?) be.

Painful as it may well be, it would seem that the best way forward would be to recreate the drachma, lire, peseta and perhaps the punt.

Pension payments for all but the lowest paid in the public sector are going up (mostly doubling) and they’re going to have to work longer before they are entitled to the maximum pension. Surely it must only be right that the well paid public servants in secure jobs pay more for their gold plated pensions? Why should the rest of us pay for their pensions anyway?

The snag with public sector pensions is that the employer is the government so therefore, yes, the rest of us do have to pay for their pensions. Unless you’d rather that they get no pensions at all (in which case, I hope you don’t mind doing without schools, hospitals, etc.) then the government (ie taxpayers) must act as responsible employers and pay for those pensions. The other snag is that, unlike private sector pensions, the public sectors operate on a pay as you go system which means that the current workers pay for the pensions of the current pensioners or rather taxes do (that’s how the normal retirement pension operates too).

OK, so we should pay them a pension, but surely we shouldn’t be paying the well-paid public servants gold plated pensions? Actually, well-paid public servants are very much in the minority with a considerable number getting close to the minimum wage. Courtesy of a number of changes in recent years, that “gold-plating” is looking distinctly tarnished with three separate schemes being introduced over the last 10 years, the prior schemes being closed to new members and each new scheme being markedly poorer than the one before. The latest offering is a lurch towards an average salary rather than the current final salary scheme which will be a major, major drop in the pensions that people will be eligible for though, as usual with pensions, a magnitude of a drop that most people wouldn’t realise until it was far too late.

In some ways it could be a good thing. The net effect, for public servants who realise it, is that their lifetime earnings is being cut quite dramatically so it might encourage more to leave for the private sector. The only snag with that is that we need those public services that the people most likely to leave provide. On the whole, those most likely to leave would be the higher earners. Do you really want to have an exodus of teachers, nurses, etc.? What about the well-paid Whitehall people perhaps? Surely they can be done without? Certainly, if you’re happy to have poor advice given to the government on all kinds of matters, you could do without them.

Should you strike? Despite being what I’d say was one of the most right wing union representatives ever, I think, yes, this is a time to show that you support your union negotiators.

Should you support the strike as a taxpayer? I think yes too as it’s really going to impact on the quality of public servants and hence public services that you get over the years to come.

With starting the new job the week before Easter, this is my first week of work holidays in over eight years!

As we normally do, it was off to Portrush on Easter Monday. Usually, there’s a mass of traffic along the way, a traffic jam a mile or two long going into the town, pretty much nowhere to park, wall to wall crowds everywhere regardless of the weather and no money in the cash machines. This year the traffic seemed a bit light on the way up, there was no traffic jam at all, loads of parking spots even quite close into the town, hardly any crowds and money in the cash machines even in the late afternoon as we were leaving. We didn’t even have to queue in the café and there was next to no queuing in Barry’s either. Methinks that Portrush is going to have a tough time financially if they can’t fill up even on Easter Monday.

Ongoing throughout the holiday has been the assignment for SD329 a biology cum psychology course that runs through to October. Although it was very much a last minute thing, it was a much easier assignment than the chemistry one which I’ve been ruminating over for weeks. I wasn’t too keen on the breakdown of every section of every question into a specific word count but it did prompt me to write a little more on some questions than I otherwise would have done which, hopefully, will improve the marks. Anyway, it’s off so it’s just the final chemistry question to complete tomorrow.

I came across a neat site which converts any website into an Android application so I’ve put on four trial ones. They look fine on the ASUS tablet but I’ll need to rejig the style sheet a bit to tidy up their appearance on Android phones. I may need to get myself an Android phone to really try them out too. No downloads as yet but then they’ve only been on a couple of days.

The materials for the Infectious Disease course arrived yesterday. No big surprises there as I picked up a copy of the pre-course briefing last year. I’ll have to get going on reading it properly soon as I want to get that well underway before I need to start the chemistry revision and indeed the pre-course work for the chemistry summer school for that matter. Oh, and the two assignments that’ll fall due in the midst of that revision time too. It’s going to be a hectic time for me in May and June.