On 13 Jul 2011 at 1:22pm Boing wrote:
Do you know what I'm sick of?
I'm sick of being simultaneously judged by society on the basis of earnings and employment, whilst also being denied an opportunity to prove myself as a capable and worthwhile member of said society.
That's what I'm sick of.
I'm sick of people defining themselves by their jobs and how much money they earn, and the knock-on effect of that, whereby I somehow come to subconsciously judge myself as not being successful because I can't get anyone to pay me loads of money...
No wonder people end up depressed nowadays.
On 13 Jul 2011 at 1:49pm 'ere be monsters wrote:
What has society said or done in particular to make you feel so inadequate.
On 13 Jul 2011 at 2:31pm Paul Newman wrote:
Life is not not fair, never was, never will be .I think Boing does raise a good point though.I was reading a book about being a father of boys and it was saying how communities in the past had adult mentors and ways for teenage boys to become men. The book reckoned that just at the point, (puberty) when all societies in the past had given a boy the maximum input we just say "more of the same ..." More school" ... without a way to move into the world take risks and gradually become a man.In other societies this was a crucial time for other adult men to get involved with the youngster ending with some rite of passage but that was only the end. The last they would allow was for him to wander aimlessly with his peer group.
People used to play that role and many others in communities and they were valued. Now it is , as Boing said , just the lonely acquisition of money if possible .
Its true we have lost a lot as well as gained much.
On 13 Jul 2011 at 3:11pm Toot wrote:
It seems to me that we're stuck in between two 'systems' of society - halfway between the olden days of old boys networks/giving jobs to people on the basis of initiative, and the new system of complete equal rights and having to advertise every single job opportunity and go through the rigmarole of interviews, etc.
So we're stuck with some sort of random hybrid where the old boys network still exists, but only for the elite few, and the rest of society has to battle and fight in faux-fair recruitment procedures.
I happen to be god awful at interviews and other social occasions, hence why I didn't go into a field where social skills are highly important (like hospitality, etc.), but why do I have to have a formal interview for every single job I go for? I'm always bound to lose out to someone who is confident even if they'd be worse at the job than me.
On 13 Jul 2011 at 3:51pm HR Manager wrote:
Good point, on the next job we advertise, we'll say "Bad at interviews? Don't worry we'll just give you the job without even meeting you"
Did you know, you can avoid hiring unlucky people by taking half the job applications you receive and throwing them straight in the bin.
On 13 Jul 2011 at 4:21pm Toot wrote:
Typical self-important HR manager response.
You'll note I said FORMAL interview - didn't say anything about getting a job without ever meeting your employer - but in some cases it may be better to judge an applicant on other factors than their ability to bulls**t strangers (which is all a formal interview is), particularly if the job has nothing to do with bulls**tting strangers.
I'm not surprised you're a bit precious over recruitment procedures though mate - without all the bureaucracy and red-tape HR departments love, you wouldn't have a job at all.
On 13 Jul 2011 at 4:36pm HR Manager wrote:
Blimey, your right, your social skills aren't really up to much are they. Straight in there with the insults.
Surely if all the applicants had informal interviews, you'd still have the problem of people with better social skills "bulls**ting" their way in. How exactly would you like the interview to be held?
On 13 Jul 2011 at 5:08pm kevsy wrote:
HR Manager, You aren't really putting yourself forward in your best light I feel. It is generally accepted in the HR world that interviews are a bad predictor of performance in the job. If you think otherwise I would invite you to go up to your instituteâ??s library at Wimbledon and have a flick through the literature. The reality is slowly but surely better selection techniques are creeping in including assessment centres, written tests, presentation on pre prepared topics etc etc. To be honest, if they arenâ??t using such techniques you reap what you sow. I'm not saying interview isn't still widely used and often it is appropriate as it is effectively cheap and cheerful but it isnâ??t the only way or indeed the most effective way. Also it seems hard to imagine that it wouldnâ??t at least form part of the process and not all of it. That way people who don't perform brilliantly can be seen in light of a broader set of results from the selection process. Sadly there are still quite a few idiot HR managers like the one above, with any luck they will be required to interview for their own job and be found out for the dinosaur they are
On 13 Jul 2011 at 5:11pm Toot wrote:
Holy smokes.
I think you're missing the point. Formal interviews are fine for some jobs - e.g. customer-facing, client-based, management roles etc. But surely, if the job role is solely (for example) data entry, the main thing is that the candidate can accurately and efficiently enter data onto a system - not that they can tell you an example of how they solved a problem in a previous role using the skills developed from their prior esperiences?
In this situation wouldn'tit be better to have an informal chat, and then get them to enter some data accurately and efficiently onto the system in question?
On 13 Jul 2011 at 5:13pm Toot wrote:
That last post was aimed at HR Manager, not Kevsy btw.
On 13 Jul 2011 at 5:28pm Ed Can Do wrote:
We don't give our new staff formal interviews at work any more. We have interview workshops where we get all the candidates in together and see how they interact with each other in a few different work related assessments. We reckon that gives you an idea both of how they'd perform the tasks asked of them and their general personality as people tend to relax a bit when interacting on a task than compared to being sat in front of an interview panel.
On 13 Jul 2011 at 6:25pm jrsussex wrote:
HR is an industry born out of the excessive bureaucracy and red tape loaded onto the statute book by succesive governments throughout the last 20 years or so. So much so that companies directors etc can no longer spare the time (Which is because they have to earn the profits to keep the company going) to ensure they are not breaching some law, regulation or rule. If any future government has the balls to action their constant promises to cut bureaucracy then the HR industry will disappear in about a similar time in which it appeared.
A local authority officer once told me that in his opinion I should hire an HR person, when asked if his department would like to contribute to the inflated salaries people such as they are paid he replied"No, I just think it would help you"
On 13 Jul 2011 at 8:20pm kevsy wrote:
JRS, as a lapsed HOUR perofessional, I agree with you. The day to day stuff has now been handed back to the line manager, the strategic stuff is best done by someone who understands the business not the latest bit of employment law. HOUR is increasingly bundled up as a shared service and outsourced for someone far away to run the payroll etc. I think the HR manager we see above is on its way out. Which given this ones attitude is no bad thing.
On 13 Jul 2011 at 8:59pm Clifford wrote:
Paul Newman wrote: 'Life is not not fair, never was, never will be.'
Don't you think, then, that as human beings able to analyse and plan we should construct an economic and social system that removes as many of the unnecessary unfairnesses of life as possible?
On 13 Jul 2011 at 11:14pm Anti-Lefty wrote:
No. That's what lefty types waste their time and our money trying to do. IT DOESN'T WORK!
On 13 Jul 2011 at 11:16pm Paul Newman wrote:
Clifford- the substitution of the discredited Latinate term 'equality' with the English 'fairness', by New Labour, has been a fascinating linguistic ploy.
Its chief use was hitherto in "fair play" that quintessentially English virtue.In that sense it means that men ,having agreed to certain rules, like not handling the ball, before the game, stick to them. It describes adherence to a mutual contract
On 13 Jul 2011 at 11:16pm Paul Newman wrote:
You see the cunning of it, by using the word 'fair' the implicit meaning is that we are all in the game and we all agreed the rules.Worse still , some of us are cheating.
We have not agreed the rules, there is no game and in fact we are still discussing Marxist derived equality cunningly re-cast in a sly mis-use of English with the rich branded cheats.
Plenty more and deeper levels to discuss that huge question of course but I have long been an admirer of whatever New Labour arachnid came up with that idea.
( trouble posting)
On 14 Jul 2011 at 8:04am hi wrote:
Was that meant to ready 'troubled posting' thereby alerting readers to your state of mind. If so, very decent of you PN.
On 14 Jul 2011 at 8:15am kevsy wrote:
Or perhaps he has been limited to a certain number of keystrokes as a condition of returning after the last flare up.
On 14 Jul 2011 at 10:23am Clifford wrote:
Paul Newman wrote: 'Clifford- the substitution of the discredited Latinate term 'equality' with the English 'fairness', by New Labour, has been a fascinating linguistic ploy.'
'... we are still discussing Marxist derived equality cunningly re-cast in a sly mis-use of English with the rich branded cheats.'
Are you thinking of the slogan of the French Revolution - 'Liberty, equality, fraternity'? Here's something for you to get your head round - French Revolution, 1789. Marx born, 1818.
On 14 Jul 2011 at 11:34am Paul Newman wrote:
You are welcome to associate yourself with the joys of the French Revolution Clifford why not " When Adam delved and Eve span , who was then the Gentleman ? ".
The Labour Party and the British left, however, were an unhappy alliance of Marxist Intellectuals and ( quite reasonably ) self interested Unions. Marxism was overwhelmingly the intellectual hinterland of the left from the start, up to about Michael Foot.
" Fair" as in fair dealing between individuals was the foundation of capitalism....
On 14 Jul 2011 at 12:39pm Clifford wrote:
Great stuff Paul. Now, tell us what you mean by 'Marxism'. And what 'Marxists' thought of the Fabian intellectuals in the Labour party.
On 14 Jul 2011 at 2:22pm Paul Newman wrote:
Splitters ?
On 14 Jul 2011 at 2:51pm 'ere be monsters wrote:
There we go again, all politics, slagging off the left!! Boring PN.
On 14 Jul 2011 at 5:18pm Clifford wrote:
Paul - funny.
'The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.
'The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff.
'The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Natureâ??s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground â?? what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?'
On 15 Jul 2011 at 9:41am 'ere be monsters wrote:
Who said that?
On 15 Jul 2011 at 10:30am Mercian wrote:
"The Labour Party and the British left, however, were an unhappy alliance of Marxist Intellectuals and ( quite reasonably ) self interested Unions"
What a load of tosh. How would someone like Roy Jenkins or Hugh Gaitskell fit into that? There was always a huge European Social Democrat side to the Labour party, still is - something that likes to be obscured by Tories who simply refer to the party as "the Socialists" or something similar.
On 15 Jul 2011 at 10:32am Mercian wrote:
Whatever you think about "fairness", a country such as Sweden manages to provide its population with much more equal access to healthcare, education and job opportunities while simultaneously being one of the most successful economies the world has ever known.
On 15 Jul 2011 at 11:03am 'ere be monsters wrote:
Also one of the most highly taxed.
On 15 Jul 2011 at 11:06am Paul Newman wrote:
The Swedish Tax system is less redistributive than the UK Mercian, and its educational system health care and media less state dominated. Yes we may take much from it all of which is opposed by the left. Australia is also more equal with better opportunities and a better life style Its Economy is vastly more robust than Sweden`s and it has a smaller state than ours and Sweden`s .
On 15 Jul 2011 at 11:08am Paul Newman wrote:
Roy Jenkins left the Labour party to form the Social Democratic Party. Wonder why he felt the need with so many chums around.
The fact that more or less a-political patricians of managed decline attached themselves to either main Party during the post war period of concensus known as Butskillism tells you nothing. the Labour Party. It is rooted in the Union Labour movement and socialist intellectual groups. The history is crystal clear
On 15 Jul 2011 at 1:29pm mercian wrote:
The Labour Party is indeed rooted in the union movement but its intellectual groundwell was much more Methodist / Fabian than Communist / Marxist, and like all parties it is a broad coalition of different groups, including Social Democrats. The Conservative party is a landowners party rooted in opposition to the corn laws and free trade. Obviously I don't think it's like that now!
I really don't think Australia's economy is more robust than Sweden's. Have you seen how much is dependent on two sectors - minerals and financial services? It has also had the mother of all housing bubbles that is just about to pop. Housing in Sydney and Melbourne is now the most unaffordable in the world.
I'm not sure how you can claim that the Swedish tax system is less redistributive. The UK tax burden as a % of GDP is around 36%, in Sweden and Denmark it is 48-50%, yet those countries are far higher up any measure of well-being than the UK and are far more successful economies by almost any measure. For example, in Sweden the equivalent of jobseekers' allowance amounts to more than twice the British level, and don't get me started on maternity and childcare allowances.
On 15 Jul 2011 at 1:30pm mercian wrote:
Obviously I meant opposition to the reform of the corn laws and free trade.
On 15 Jul 2011 at 1:34pm mercian wrote:
I agree with you on health though, but how you can claim television is less state-dominated is beyond me. SVeriges Television, which is pretty much identical to the BBC, had a complete monopoly until 1992!
h++p://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sveriges_Television
The state also interferes much more in commercial television. For example, all advertising to children or of children's products is completely prohibited by law.
On 15 Jul 2011 at 2:37pm 'ere be monsters wrote:
They have good export products. Ulrika Jonnson for one 
On 16 Jul 2011 at 3:56am Ever been to Oz? wrote:
The reason Australians have a better lifestyle is because employment is amongst the most heavily unionised in the world. Australians get a fair wage and decent working conditions. Their economic model is born from that starting point. Perhaps, Mr Newman, you should start campaigning for stronger union power in the UK? No, I though not.