Employment figures are no longer trusted
The imminent British general election has in common with the pending New Zealand general election that both elections will swing on the issue of immigration rather than the face value and rather more acceptable and perennial matter of trade and the economy.
In Britain the topic hinges often unspokenly on the nation’s ability to accommodate immigrants in the refugee category.
In New Zealand the issue is a wider one and encompasses especially the demand-over-supply pressure that liberal immigration policies have on infrastructure in general and residential accommodation in particular.
In Britain the issue devolves to a greater degree on the nation’s National Health Service which is viewed as buckling under the strain of coping with the influx of immigrants from everywhere.
Both countries vigorously portray a belief in the dual pivotal theorems of multi-culturalism and diversity even though in the UK the operating process in effect remains that of the 19th century United States which is the melting pot one.
In both countries immigration means different benefits to each of the two major political parties.
Immigrants carry value to labour parties because the new arrivals in the political process are considered to cast their new votes in the general direction of the socialist party, however nominally socialist it in fact is.
For the conservative parties immigrants generate industrial demand and thus the economic growth that conservative parties are expected to deliver.
In between these two fixed points are a number of tender topics centred on the pressure such influxes bring to bear on both ends of the voting spectrum with the poor at one end and the prosperous on the other.
As is frequently heard in New Zealand, and increasingly so in the run up to general election, the negative pressure is focussed at the poorer end simply because those of limited means find it harder to compete with the additional competition for residential accommodation, especially in the nation’s northern and most populous industrial regions.
The higher income groups with their invested capital are seen as benefiting from this. But they are also sensitive to the pressure immigration puts on essential services funded by taxes that directly or indirectly they see themselves as funding.
The common element in both countries is the refugee-category immigration cheerleading especially from the non-productive services sector.
The position in Britain between the opinion centres has suddenly become scrambled before New Zealand observers as both ends of the spectrum have taken up the cause of the other.
The Daily Mail, for example, the tribal noticeboard on the nation’s middle class, in recent weeks has trumpeted the way in which Britain’s Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn has closed the gap on the once seemingly unchallengeable lead held by Theresa May’s ruling conservatives.
This narrowing the gap news is though presented with ominous conjecture about Labour’s deep down commitment to letting in more immigrants.
A de-coding of this indicates that the middle class tribune has detected a signal danger –- that of the conservative vote becoming complacent to the point at which it will not bother to deliver itself to the polling booths on the election day.
A feature of both elections will be the distrust of unemployment figures once the stand-out indicator in both countries of their economic state of health.
The reason is that these figures are now widely distrusted, as was experienced in the run-up to Brexit, because they carry no indication of the value of the job in terms of pay, or whether the job is part time, full time, or temporary.
Similarly voters have now largely woken up to such statistical wheezes as people taking part-time courses on any subject at all considered officially as being employed.
In Britain immigration hovers as a national security issue first and then as putting pressure on available public resources.
In New Zealand this is reversed.
The British general election is on June 8 this year. New Zealand’s on September 23.
| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. || Saturday 3 June 2017 |||
New Zealand’s Most Famous Tabloid Editor Said it Does not Exist in the First Place
New Zealand’s last tough-talking Front Page era editor, the late Frank Haden, declared that the press in any official court room or other such tribunal would always emerge much the worse for the experience.
Therefore he stated the press should take every precaution against appearing before such a body for any kind of judgement at all.
The reason for avoiding court rooms and the like he stated was that “the public hates the press.”
This meant in practical terms that those seeking to represent the general public in any deliberations involving the press either separately or collectively would inevitably grasp their opportunity to “savage” the press.
Therefore he stated the press should always avoid, somehow, all such appearances, because it was simply not going to win. It could only come out of the encounter much the worse for it.
The press, insisted Haden, was reluctant to accept the loathing in which it was held and thus found itself before juries and other such panels in the fond and misguided belief that it’s clams would fall on receptive ears.
Instead, the crusty Haden insisted, the officially constituted panel would simply become a lightening rod through which the public hatred of the press would be transmitted.
It is hard not to consider the likelihood that the Haden dictum figured in the twice-declared no by the Commerce Commission to the nation’s two predominant newspaper chains ardently seeking permission to merge.
It is hard too not to entertain the notion that the Commission had no sympathy either for the individuals before them who were advocating the merger.
The two-act episode was a startling re-affirmation of Haden’s Law.
It holds that the press and those who work in it in any appearance before any group formed to represent the common weal, the considered opinion on the public benefit, will simply act as a conductor for the public antipathy to it.
The second part of Haden’s Law can be stated by saying that the only avenue open to the press in this entire matter is to do its utmost to avoid any exposure at all to these constituted courts of public opinion.
Haden’s views were expounded many years ago and were widely heeded at the time if only because of the distressing experience of the industry’s libel lawyers in a string of fixtures.
Since this raffish era and with the disappearance notably of Truth the tabloid tyranny largely subsided.
The institutionalisation of the press through the mandatory university induction process ensured a commonality of voguish opinion and thus stated views.
The era of politesse thus became well established. Gone are the Woodbine-smoking renegades who once inhabited Vulcan Lane and Cuba Street.
In their place are corporate employees nurturing their careers and sharing a similar liberal outlook. They are about as threatening to societal values as the Vienna Boys Choir.
The most interesting element in their newspapers is now the surreal debate over who owns them, and how.
The newspapers management, no longer now “bosses,” have the appearance of well-intentioned pillars of society, doing their best.
But who have been publicly slapped in the face, twice, for subverting society.
SO how did Haden’s Law propounded so long ago, and in an era in which the tabloids were often villainous, now so evidently, re-emerge like a bolt, two bolts, of lightening from the heavens?
Because the two chains in seeking to please everyone, pleased nobody.
The more they sought to personify diversity in all its forms the more constricted they appeared. Their quest for plurality led them to losing their singularity.
In Frank Haden’s era the unbridled cheek of the press meant it was feared and loathed with a sprinkling of respect.
Haden himself was the last practitioner to have worked for all of Australasia’s dynastic publishers – the Fairfax, Packer, and Murdoch families
Today, the corporatist harmonised fashionable wisdom-friendly version has instead inspired an attitude of low-resonating indifference of the type that in turn has inspired two Commerce Commission verdicts in its disfavour .
Even given their joint tendency to treat the world as if it had started this morning, the two chains who are said to be contemplating a return and third match, this time with an appeals court should now heed Frank Haden’s Law.
Stay away from these types of convocations be they judicial or quasi judicial.
| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Email followed on heels of major international flap
A scam email today is the latest in a concerted fakes sent out to Xtra users. The current one (see below) is filled with grammatical and spelling mistakes that reveal it as a fake. It follows a similar email drop last week (see below) inviting recipients to access a fake Westpac site.
The barrage pin points the need for a central bank 0800 query pool on suspect emails. The email followed on the tail of the global WannaCry cyber attack and at a time when New Zealand households still remain plagued by phone-ins from bogus Microsoft “certified” technicians now seeking to take advantage of the enhanced fear of cyber implant disruptions.
The first bogus Westpac email reads:-________________________________
Dear Westpac Customer,
New Successful Payment.For more information about this payment please follow the link below:https://westpac.co.nz/transaction
If you received this message in your SPAM/BULK folder, it is because of the restrictions imposed by your Mail/Internet Service Provider.
2017 Westpac New Zealand Limited.
________________________
The second and most recent fake email is rather more convincing being centred on account verification procedures. Its message:-
Dear Customer,
Account Update
Due to the recent upgrade of our servers, we have urged all our online banking users for possible verfication.
Kindly use our website below to verify your profile to avoid account termination.
http://www.westpac.co.nz
Thank you for choosing us
Westpac Bank New Zealand.______________________________A problem recipients encountered with these email mass-drops, is that they feature the inference when it landed in a Westpac customer in-box that it was specially targeted at them.
In the instance of the first email inquirers had to compete with phone-ins in the regular course of bank business, as well as those now alerted by the bogus email.
MSC Newswire has lodged an enquiry with Westpac seeking to discover the source of the bogus email as well as more details on its modus operandi.
The arrival of the second such bogus email points up the problem that the Australian trading banks have in coping with this problem.
The incidents point up the need for a cooperative banking rapid response enquiry centre for customers to obtain information about all doubtful emails.
Banks of course do not contact customers with emails. Only by traditional post. Or via a customer-prompted and subsequently verified phone call.
Aware of this the international email fraudsters seek nonetheless to entice a response, in this case by conjuring up the notion of an inward payment.
The banks are no strangers to cooperative efforts.
They have profited greatly by keeping their customers at an economic distance by electronic banking, thus reducing their premises overheads.
A small proportion of these savings should now be re-invested in a quick-response shared call centre dealing with bogus emails which are now demonstrably on the increase.
Promo emails in middle of Mother of All Hacking Attacks
What was Spark thinking when on Sunday it released to its Xtra email subscribers a promo message from its entertainment operation Lightbox?
The emergency over the global WannaCry hack was sounded at 2030 hrs on the Friday just before. This should have conveyed the message to the entertainment subsidiary that this was most definitely not the time to start a mass promo over email –especially over your own circuits. And have given the unit plenty of time to intercept any such planned scheme. Several days, in fact.
But out the customised marketing email went out on Sunday......by which time the rest of the world was convulsed by the new intruder emergency which this time demanded pay-off for unfreezing users’ computer data.
The Lightbox marketing invitation was ironically entitled “Laugh, cry and escape this Mother’s Day.”
Many Xtra users are unaware that Lightbox is a Spark product.
The email greeted the Xtra customer by their first name and continued-
“This Mother’s Day make a cup of tea, grab the comfiest chair in the house and settle in for some entertaining television.
"Laugh and cry with other people’s families in Better Things, Life Unexpected, Outrageous Fortune and everyone’s favourite and colourful Modern Family.
Don’t forget the biscuits!”
Meanwhile MSC Newswire has received an explanation from Spark over our report of the scam email over Xtra demanding passwords that used in its subject line these words: “Dear Xtra Spark Email User “
Spark notes that the email address rogers.com is a Canadian telco –making very hard for spam filters to detect and block this. This is a very common attack vector for scam emails, because they are more likely to get past filters and into your inbox. Such emails “phishing” emails, because they are fishing for information and- the goal of this email is to get you to respond with personal or sensitive information so they can steal from you or defraud you.
“We have some information about how these work and what you can do on our website - http://www.spark.co.nz/help/internet-email/troubleshooting/what-is-phishing-spoofing-spam/”
Netsafe is also recommended : https://www.netsafe.org.nz/phishing/
MSC Newswire anticipates a response from Spark relating to how in the middle of the WannaCry emergency, a canvassing product email was allowed mass circulation over its own Xtra network.
| From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk || Wednesday 17 May 2017 |||
Incident Points up Danger of Microsoft Windows Standardisation, Dependence.
The failure of the global extortion cyber attack to get a foothold in New Zealand vindicates the value of the continuous system upgrades that from the outset of the information technology era has been a characteristic of the institutional information technology scene here, notably that of governmental services.
The ransomware attack, as it is known, notably attacked Britain’s National Health Service. Here it penetrated especially the service-to-patient delivery systems in health trusts. Services affected include picture archiving communication systems for x-ray images, pathology test results, phone and bleep systems and patient administration systems.
Institutional systems upgrades have long been considered to be conducted at twice the frequency in New Zealand as in the United Kingdom.
In addition to the routine and enforced upgrade of distributed systems here is the long-standing centralised structure of New Zealand health services.
Healthcare it can be clearly seen now is a natural target for computer-freezing extortion malware just because if someone’s life depends on something such as an operating theatre functioning or not functioning then there will be a greater readiness to pay the ransom to restore the computer systems driving it.
The disturbing aspect of this most recent attack is that the various ransom demands have been payable via bitcoin, the virtual liquid money technique. This means that the ransom payments are to a substantial extent untraceable,
All the indications so far lead to the cyber extortion attack being targeted on Microsoft systems that are no longer in fact officially supported by Microsoft. The pressures on Britain’s National Health Service continues to lead to budget cuts of which information technology savings have been foremost, leaving a large proportion of legacy systems vulnerable.
The freezing of targeted systems so that users cannot in fact use them ramps up the cyber war notably in the demand for the untraceable bitcoin ransom payments.
New Zealand’s reliance on the overwhelming global standard Microsoft Windows means that there are few grounds for complacency.
Internationally this latest attack has renewed the call for operating system diversity such as into independent operating systems especially in the open source sphere, notably Unix and Linux.
On this occasion Russia has not been blamed for the cyber attack and indeed is a victim of it probably because of its very large proportion of legacy systems vulnerable to precisely this type of hack.
Indeed Russian resident and fugitive CIA sleuth Edward Snowden has rounded on the popularly-supposed originator of the cyber implant, the United States National Security Agency. The NSA points out Snowden should have alerted its allies to its systems-paralysing device, especially at the time that it suspected, knew, that it had been filched.
This in turn leads to the supposition that in fact the cyber-sharing Five Eyes alliance, an English speaking union which includes New Zealand, had in fact been notified of the piratage and had taken steps to avoid it.
This does not explain though how Five Eyes signals intelligence-sharing member the UK got such a bad hit?
In turn this can be explained by the signals intelligence community failing to identify the vulnerability of Britain’s once admired but now ramshackle and sprawling public health system and also to comprehend how it would present such a tempting target to the pirated and now modified interference penetration weapon.
The quick response to the attack in the United Kingdom is substantially credited to a lone cyber security buff who got into the back of it, and discovered a sink-hole which now acted as a decoy into which the systems crippling onrush dumped itself and was smothered and drowned.
This could well be a part of the story.
But it is unlikely to be the full story. Which should also encompass the notion that with the systems paralysing genie out of the bottle, and still assuming that it had its genesis in a national security agency, that someone quickly produced an antidote to it.
| From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk || Sunday 14 May 2017 |||
Mass Scam Follows Xtra Security Overhaul
MSC Newswire has taken up with Spark how a counterfeit email seemingly from Spark itself and with the subject line title "Dear Xtra Spark Email User” had been able in fact to make the transit of Spark’s own security-enhanced messaging service.
The issue was taken up with Spark in the morning of Monday May 8. No response had been received by the close of the business day on Thursday May 11.
Astonishingly while MSC Newswire was talking to the Spark official and referring online on their mailbox to this counterfeit email unwanted pop-ups appeared (see screen grab top of this story.)
Here is the email. Note the subject line:--
From: Xtra Spark NZ eCare <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>To:Date: 06 May 2017 at 10:14Subject: Dear Xtra Spark Email User
Dear Xtra Spark Email User
This message is to all Xtra Spark Email Service Users. This is a notice and update to our valuable customer’s that a malware was recently detected in your account system so we have implement Anti-Malware software removes and virus free. As a result of that our Internet Tech Support is currently re-upgrading and verifying your email system networking center to identify and delete all email accounts registered unduly. This will enable us increase storage capacities for existing users and create more space for registration of new webmail future users.
To finish and fix your email account system service problem as it’s always up to date, and stops viruses before they reach your email account reply with the following details to upgrade and secure your email account for best internet service supply.
Email Address:
User name:
Password:
Reconfirm Password:
Zip Code:
Warning! Failure to reply with the above information will rendered your webmail account temporarily suspended by technical service admin.
Copyright © 2017. All Rights Reserved.
The pop up on the user's online Xtra mailbox was peddling a variety of services.We contacted via a given pop-up phone number the service advertised. It was from an organisation calling itself Financial Services Complaints Ltd.
The person answering the phone said that they were called Jan and confirmed that they were in the business of pay-day loans. Jan said the firm was based in Takapuna.
This state of affairs follows Spark’s bringing “home” its Xtra email service which was previously run in association with Yahoo. The association soured when Yahoo was the target of international and well publicised email hacks.
Spark’s core security work was undertaken by a third party specialist security company in New Zealand.
Spark has been hunkered down since its Xtra changeover which has been characterised by individual Xtra users having trouble migrating themselves onto the new all-New Zealand service.
Meanwhile MSC Newswire has questioned one of the spyware scammers making a pest of themselves with New Zealand internet users.
The scam spyware presentation said that it was in a position to rid the internet-user's computer of a variety of incriminating material that was now deposited on the user’s computer.
The telephone number 09 8010 177 was identified and was rung back.
The individual at the other end of the line identified themselves as “Tony” and said that they were based in California, and claimed to be legitimate.
| From theThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. || Thursday 11 May 2017 |||
Indicates need to distinguish between what is known and what is hoped for
The two newspaper companies always gave the appearance of being confident that they could win over to their way of thinking the Commerce Commission?They made the mistake, so evident now, of believing in their own assumption to the effect that the Commerce Commission would see the merger positively.
What were the contrary signals from the Commission that they missed?The Commerce Commission’s point of view in its rejection of the first draft of the merger proposal turned on several doctrinal, ideological, words that indicated that it was not for turning.
What were these words?Democracy, plurality and above all, diversity.
Why diversity?The loaded word runs through the Commission’s deliberations in a now clearly visible thread. It means that people considerations carry clear priority over any competing considerations in this case those of efficiency, economy of scale and so on.......
Why did the two companies go to the Commerce Commission in the first place? Would it not have been more effective to have simply concocted a new structure with a holding company?The Wellington and Auckland based companies had their hearts set on a single merged New Zealand company with a consolidated balance sheet and all that goes with it such as just one management structure.
Until quite recently the two companies worked closely together with a cooperative news pool and joint advertising sales promotion – why didn’t they just carry on as a de facto cooperative?This cooperative structure began to dissolve when the two newspaper groups came into play during the stock market bubble. The old proprietorial families moved away and were replaced by professional managers.
Where and when did they lose the plot?In their search of their competitive edge they opted for going it alone and thus they acted independently now in terms of their own evolving individual web sites and also in acquisitions. They dissolved their news gathering and dissemination cooperative, the New Zealand Press Association. Also abandoned now were certain geographic areas in which they had long agreed not to compete with one another.
Did they underestimate what the internet was going to do to them?At first the internet looked even promising. There were new personalities, celebrities that people wanted to read about. Covering the internet brought in the coveted younger demographic. Let’s look back. When television arrived in New Zealand the newspapers actually benefitted, and the Sunday papers were now launched to satisfy the interest in the new world of television
What happened with the internet?The internet instead now ushered in the era of disintermediation which is still accelerating all around us. People want to deal direct, sweep away the middle operator, the mainstream media, which had hitherto controlled the gateway to news coverage. You want an event covered?You go to Facebook. You want something known – there’s Twitter. You have an opinion? Then you start a blog. You have a range of points you want to air? Start your own website.
There are also any amount, at least 50, broadcasting channels available now. Plenty of competition you would think?The Commerce Commission took a narrower view of this scene than the newspaper managements jointly appeared to appreciate. The Commerce Commision’s verdict centred on most of the nation’s daily newspapers being held in a single set of corporate hands, and the perception thereof.
The daily newspapers published by the two groups are often considered to say the same thing about the same things anyway?The Commission concerned itself with the perception. In this case the perception of most of the dailies being controlled by just the one proprietor. It was now at the first decision that there was introduced the notion that New Zealand if the merger went through would convey a similar perception as that of China in that the press in China is controlled by just the one entity, the Communist Party. The signal was clear. It was not picked up.
The Commission’s second and seemingly last veto was delivered at the very start of International Free Press Day. Was this symbolic?Perhaps – and just because in this attenuated affair so much can be viewed as turning on symbols and perceptions.
What happens now?The two newspaper groups, the ones based in Auckland and Wellington must wash their minds of further approaches, appeals, to constituted authority including now the judiciary, and they must do so primarily on the grounds of sidestepping any further distractions. The danger of a strategic assumption, in this case that the Commerce Commission would approve the merger, is just that it is so enticing just because it makes the transition from supposition to reality. The wish becomes the fact.
In practical terms, this means....?The two groups will have to rearrange themselves around a new corporate structure and one that stops just short of a unified balance sheet. The daily newspaper business, an extremely marginal one, is riddled with intensive and in-built administration procedures especially on the subscriber and circulation side where there are stop-starts that can only be automated up to a certain point. They must now merge these departments. They must merge too their printeries.
They will have to be more radical than that, given their falling circulations?They will have to adopt a new business model and my feeling is that they will develop a franchise model which has already been experimented with by at least one rural newspaper management buyout. Print is relatively strong in the provinces. A franchise move will allow the two groups to develop their centralised services and will dilute the liability also of their substantial staff contingencies.
What about the hedge funds and such like said to be lurking in the middle distance?The two newspaper groups began to go heavily into play in the 80s bubble and will have been stripped by now of hard asset value i.e. real estate. So they are unlikely to be a target for speculators.
We keep hearing about the Auckland and Wellington-based groups. But what about the third proprietor, the one in Dunedin?The Smith family who control the Otago Daily Times group kept it within the family. They are a force to be reckoned with and in the affair under discussion remain the dog that did not bark. Or, if it did, was not heard by anyone. They remain in an envious competitive situation notably now dominating the high value tourist region centred on Queenstown.
What would you recommend that the two beleaguered would-be North Island-based suitors NOT do?Cut the frequency of any of their dailies to let us say three issues a week. The disruptive force of the internet and everything that came with it was to break the newspaper-reading habit. This custom so dominant until just so recently can only be further disrupted by meddling with the frequency of established daily titles.
One has this impression, somehow, of unfinished business. Was anything held back by any one of the parties involved?The episode was characterised by candour. It was just that the two parties looked at the same thing, the merger scheme, and each saw something that was quite different.
Your full hindsight?The two groups should have pulled back after the first round when the Commission’s viewpoint was made clear. They should have done so issuing high-minded yet truthful communiques about the severity of their position, and their continuing determination to better the lot of the public at large. In the event they appeared resentful and so their task in formulating a virtual amalgamation will be harder than before.
| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. || Sunday 7 May 2017 |||
Racketeers apply two-prong scare threat pincer
Overseas scammers have stepped up their assault on domestic New Zealand internet users in a two-fold pincer movement. The first pincer is a series of telephone calls that seek to alert the user of the perils that they face from the existence on their computers of unwanted bugs of various descriptions.
This is run in harness now with the placement on the computer of an actual bug that talks back to the user and alerts them to the existence on their computer of viruses in the spyware category that have turned up on the target’s computer the existence of pornography of the most diabolical description.
The threat amounts to--- “you’ll be in trouble if you are caught with this.”
This is then bracketed by more telephone calls that are always from an international 0909 prefix number or 0988. The 0909 prefix is that of Ireland while the 0988 number is a “spoofed” prefix used by telemarketeers to avoid detection.
Computer service houses say that this new concerted campaign has caused immense distress among their more elderly users who are unaware of the measures that such scammers will go to in order to be paid to “fix” the “problem.”
The racket last reached a crescendo two years ago and in recent weeks has again been in ramp up mode in New Zealand.
The objective of the racket is to get the user to open up access to their machine via a series of set-piece instructions which allows the racketeer to secure access as and when required over the longer term to the domestic computer.
The landline-driven racket operates on the assumption that any household that still operates a landline will also be the home of an internet-linked computer and which will therefore run Microsoft applications.
The phone callers stick to their routine even if the recipient explains that they do not have a computer in the first place.
The racket operators are human and are trained to deal with objections including those of the most hostile nature.
Their task is to keep the householder talking with a view to eliciting information that may be useful later on, and which will ideally convince the target to follow their instructions.
The post-prefix numbers are scramble encrypted which means that householders who ring back are greeted by an invalid beep-beep-beep signal.
The cold callers always claim to represent Microsoft or be Microsoft “certified” technicians.
The racket is itself two-fold with the target being persuaded to transfer money to the imposters in order to have the viral infection eliminated and/or to get the access to the user’s bank pass codes.
The racketeers will seek to have “fee” money remitted them via an independent wire transfer service which from their point of view makes the transaction harder to trace, and from the target’s point of view means it can never be recovered.
The addition of the sequestration of the talking spyware into household computers with its vocalised threats introduces a new and heightened level of intensity in the racket.
Netsafe should be a first port of call from those under harassment from the racketeers -0508 NETSAFE (0508 638 723)
Meanwhile scareware, , as the malware implants are known, and quite recently upgraded to the talk-back delivery, has become increasingly applied by the international criminal gangs behind these rackets.
The scam follows a common pattern. A pop-up shows what appears to be a security scan that falsely detects dangerous or illegal files or programs. In some cases, the bogus warnings say there is porn on your computer. The malicious software may even display pornographic images on the screen. And those pop-up warnings won’t stop until your click the button that says “register now” or “remove all threats.”
Those who do that wind up on a site run by the cyberthieves. It says you need to buy their antivirus program — which is fake — to fix the security problems.
| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. || Friday 5 May 2017 |||
Engineering Students Must Rub Shoulders with their Workforce
Canterbury University’s dining firewall between its students and its campus site construction force personnel represents the most valuable control experiment into the causes and effects of the nation’s quality control and productivity problems which is the separate development of management and those who actually do the work.
Canterbury University in the middle of the last century was a crucible of engineering science, notably seismic science.
A series of earthquakes which coincidentally began in Christchurch demonstrated that the post World War 2 surge in seismic technology has somehow tapered off and that there has been for quite a few years a chasm between theory and practice
In other words the gap between what is taught and assimilated in degree courses and what is actually installed, notably in buildings.
Many point to the problem having its roots in the cultural void between those who emerge from a university background and those who emerge from a technical and hands-on apprentice background.
So why did the university with its large investment in engineering degree courses allow to be discarded the opportunity in the form of shared canteen facilities for its undergraduates to rub shoulders with the very people responsible for realising the very plans that they are being educated to produce?
This alarm appears to have been sounded over this bizarre, contradictory, yet indicative situation by the canteen operators themselves. They saw an immense volume of their potential income being diverted from their established canteens and being diverted into segregated mobile worker-only canteens
The students and their tutors appeared to have accepted the discarding of an opportunity to rub shoulders with these technical implementers of the theory for which they sought academic degrees.
The existence was referred to of individual identification markings, beyond that of high-viz, on each construction worker’s attire.
The matter was left to dangle. Yet it is hard not to draw the conclusion that such identification was/is in place so that should any nuisance be created, then the source can readily be pin-pointed.
The proportion of females who are part of the university construction force remains to be specified.
No mention was made of Canterbury University’s ample law faculty. Should any such occasion arise for such litigation then such an in-house resource might similarly use the doubtless horrifying experience to enhance the practical experience of its many students?
We are left though with the impression of the academics and with their refined sensibilities and their discomfort while dining of being quite literally within coo-eee of people who actually work and do so in the classical sense propounded by mathematical philosophers of “moving material in relation to the surface of the Earth.”
The university canteen operators did not appear to be worried about any mud or such debris brought into their premises by the university construction workforce.
The university is well-known for its extensive academic arts faculties and again an opportunity has been passed over for its students to study at close hand the people whose wealth-generating skills lie at the base of their hoped-for subsequent incomes.
The incident might well become the subject of a thesis, perhaps a doctoral one? This would emerge from Canterbury University’s Sociology faculty – and shared perhaps by its Psychology Department too?
Canterbury University’s Anthropology Department meanwhile may find the matter of interest in regarding to the disquieting emergence of hierarchies that is introducing under official guise these unnecessary and damaging ruptures in society?
Ones that impede the information exchange between the academics and the applied practical people who implement their plans.
| from the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk | Sunday 30 April 2017 |||
Only age and hemispheres separate the identical twins of Social Democracy
Slight of build and with their perma-grins they even look alike. The two clever sticks share similar backgrounds, give a zig-zag or two.
Both are outsiders who put themselves on the inside – and both entered party politics at the same age
Mr Macron is from a wealthy professional family and he went into the Socialist Party.
Mr Key is from a working background and he went into the conservative National Party.
Both made their name and fortunes in big name investment banking, Mr Macron with Rothschild. Mr Key with Merrill Lynch.
Both displaced in their upward trajectory seemingly permanent institutional figures.
Mr Macron has swept away France’s underpinning centrist conservative party, and its leader Francois Fillon.
Both seem from a very early to have seen their destiny in politics. Both in their different ways are dedicated family men.
Both established strong institutional careers in finance prior to public life and thus boast that they are not professional politicians
A notable difference here being that Mr Macron did not have to wait for acceptance by an established party, and simply unwrapped his own, En Marche.
Mr Macron entered party politics in the same year that Mr Key handed in his prime minister’s warrant and quit party politics
Both Mr Key and Mr Macron are anything but dreamers. Their ascent is a product of their ability in the sphere of risk assessment: constantly calculating and weighing up the probabilities in the options before them.
Both understood the value in Napoleon’s dictum to the effect that those of high ambition and ability ascending the ranks do well to conceal their field marshal’s baton.
Mr Macron pulled out his baton a year ago when he suddenly resigned as President Hollande’s economics minister and went out on his own with his own party France En Marche which is best translated as France on the Move.
His calculation was that all the existing parties had lost their appeal and he has just been proved right as the Republicans were swept aside and the ruling Socialist Party hardly figured at all.
France’s left of the left, gauche de la gauche, was similarly swept from France’s variegated political board.
Mr Macron’s calculation can now be viewed for what it is. He has cleared away the clutter of parties from the landscape and has left the electorate with two clear options in the form of the National Front or his own En Marche.
En Marche is essentially a Gallic version of Tony Blair or John Key’ middle way, with its accompanying flexible and inclusive policies.
Like his Oceania avatar John Key, Mr Macron keeps his options open, preferring to give the impression that he will deal with the problems as they are encountered instead of sweeping them away with a ruthless doctrinal broom.
In Mr Macron’s inclusiveness will be his biggest operational problem. In sticking to the EU he must also adhere to the Euro currency.
This collective single currency contains 19 different public debts, 19 interest rates, 19 tax rates. All free to speculate in.
The shackling effect of this uniform currency is often considered to be the chain that binds and which explains why the Eurozone is taking so long to recover from the United States-induced bank bust.
Mr Macron might now be putting a probe into Mr Key’s stewardship of his economy which recovered so quickly from the same event that it seems a miracle that the nation did not succumb to a collective bends.
Mr Key personifies an entire anthology of French proverbs to the effect that the cleverest thing a clever person can do is to conceal how clever they in fact are.
He has simply quoted the Economist’s “rock star” economy value judgement on the success of his government.
Mr Macron meanwhile being from a Mediterranean nation does not have this need for public modesty and can let his light shine forth.
| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. || Friday 27 April 2017 |||
Palace of the Alhambra, Spain
By: Charles Nathaniel Worsley (1862-1923)
From the collection of Sir Heaton Rhodes
Oil on canvas - 118cm x 162cm
Valued $12,000 - $18,000
Offers invited over $9,000
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
Mount Egmont with Lake
By: John Philemon Backhouse (1845-1908)
Oil on Sea Shell - 13cm x 14cm
Valued $2,000-$3,000
Offers invited over $1,500
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242