Oh dear, it looks like the "silly season" is back!

Anyone but Branson

There's a nice comment to the article which made me chuckle.....

"Not one of us! He made his own money and didn't inherit it."

And an even better one that just might work......

"Make the lot self employed, and make them work for there money,no garden leave, no sick leave, I could go on and on,what a load of wasters."

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Branson like Alan Sugar, is still seen by the "Establishment" as a pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap, up market barrow boy.

It is high time that attitude changed.

Couldn't have said it better myself!

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Oh dear, just proves that "Money Talks, Honesty Walks"

The problem with the civil service is that many of the good ones are trapped in that due to constant rules & regulations changing, it's almost impossible to keep abreast of those changes, & when they have used their common sense, actually get reprimanded which I have personally witnessed & felt genuinely sorry for the person geting reprimanded as it shouldn't have happened in public!

As already stated by myself, the major problem is not the civil servants themselves but the mandarins (as well as some "jobsworths" that slip through) that control them! This is what needs changing & reforming, not the civil service itself!

Titantic cover up of safety warnings

"Notes written by civil servant Maurice Clarke five hours before her departure from Southampton on April 10, 1912, were dismissed because its owners were bent on making sure she left for New York on time. The cover-up has emerged for the first time in a century after Mr Clarke's 'smoking gun' documents were made available for sale at auction. Clarke was told to keep quiet and threatened with the sack after he said Titanic should have 30 not 20 lifeboats, which could have saved more than 600 lives when the liner later hit an Atlantic iceberg and sank."

Not much difference then 100 years later!

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Ah the quantification of risk. The thing humans are terrible at but have 20/20 hindsight on.

Just ask the captain of the Costa Concordia.

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Ah the quantification of risk. The thing humans are terrible at but have 20/20 hindsight on.

Just ask the captain of the Costa Concordia.

Maurice Clarke having hindsight on April 10 1912? Seeing what you only want to see again! Nothing new there then is there?

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Ah the quantification of risk. The thing humans are terrible at but have 20/20 hindsight on.

Just ask the captain of the Costa Concordia.

Maurice Clarke having hindsight on April 10 1912? Seeing what you only want to see again! Nothing new there then is there?

Quantification of risk. Do you give everyone on the airplane a parachute and rocket ejection seat? Do you put seatbelts and airbags on a bus? Do you forbid commission sales of option arm liars loans? Quantification of risk.

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Off on your "profit" high horse again!

I was highlighting the fact that there are civil servants out there[past,present & hopefully, future] that are/were good at their job. Maurice Clarke highlighted the fact that even though Titanic had met the legal requirements, there were insufficient lifeboats in the event of a disaster - he was proven correct without him having the benefit of hindsight!

The point being that had they took his advice & just increased by 50% the death toll could have been reduced by 50%.

"Clarke was told to keep quiet and threatened with the sack after he said Titanic must have 30 not 20 lifeboats, which could have saved more than 600 lives when the liner later hit an Atlantic iceberg and sank."

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Regarding the UK state pension system, up until the mid 1960's it was run
as a separate government fund. During this time it has excess funds, and like
school boys let free in a sweet shop, successive governments dipped into
this fund until it was all gone. Because of lack of controls on social spending
no surplus pension fund was ever built up again because the excess money
available was being spent else where. Now, today, the tail is catching up with
the dog and now people will be driven to doing their own independent pension
arrangements because one day the state pension may either have to be greatly
reduced or stopped all together. The governments idea on this is to have a
government controlled private pension system to safeguards against pension
companies committing any dastardly deeds....good idea....for the government
will force the pension companies to operate the funds under very strict
ethics and controls. Then years down the line when these funds are bursting
with excess money, Mr Browns son becomes chancellor and dips his hands into it
just like the old-man did years before....."Excess funds my dear boy, that's
naughty! going to have to apply a wind-fall tax on that"..."Er, can't we just
increase the pension payouts to our punters, Mr Brown? even though we are
trying to make sure we do have sufficient funds to see us through the lean years"...."Shut yur Mouth!!!and pay up".

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The Kite Fliers

--------------------
Kite fliers: An imaginary club of solo members, those who don't yet
belong to a formal team so "fly their own kites" - as the saying goes.

Nick, you describe a very sorry, Malthusian condition of your society and maybe the specie.

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Nick, you describe a very sorry, Malthusian condition of your society and maybe the specie.

Betreger, I've never read Malthus, shame on me may be, so you will have to
enlighten me here. So, are you hanging me from the nearest yardarm? he-he.

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The Kite Fliers

--------------------
Kite fliers: An imaginary club of solo members, those who don't yet
belong to a formal team so "fly their own kites" - as the saying goes.

"Must it not then be acknowledged by an attentive examiner of the histories of mankind, that in every age and in every State in which man has existed, or does now exist

That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence,

That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and,

That the superior power of population is repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice."

Hmmn, wondering if that's why the "austerity" program was introduced......

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"Must it not then be acknowledged by an attentive examiner of the histories of mankind, that in every age and in every State in which man has existed, or does now exist

That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence,

That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and,

That the superior power of population is repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice."

Hmmn, wondering if that's why the "austerity" program was introduced......

I'll have to sleep on that one, Sirius....

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The Kite Fliers

--------------------
Kite fliers: An imaginary club of solo members, those who don't yet
belong to a formal team so "fly their own kites" - as the saying goes.

Same here....we gotta be careful quoting Thomas Robert Malthus.......

....he influenced.......

Karl Marx
Charles Darwin
John Maynard Keynes
Chairman Mao

...& I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the louts from the "Bullingdon Club" were influenced by him.

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You don't get it. It isn't profit. Nothing is 100% safe. Not the chair you are sitting in. Someone has to decide if that chair is safe enough. Quantify the risk. Some well meaning bureaucrat decided on the number of lifeboat seats that was sufficient. He is the person who quantified the risk. There is always someone who comes along and says that isn't safe enough. There is always some loss of life event that "proves" it wasn't safe enough.

After the sinking there isn't a bureaucrat that would let a boat sail with less seats on the lifeboats than passengers and crew. But is that enough? Is that safe enough? Can you quantify that risk? Consider that having exactly the same number of seats means each life boat must be completely full or someone goes down with the ship. Quantify that risk. Is 10% extra capacity enough that in the confusion of an order to abandon ship there still will be enough seats on the last lifeboat to pull away? Does it need to be 20% more? Lines can foul and a lifeboat might not be able to be launched. How about if the ship lists severely enough that the lifeboats can't be launched from one side? Quantify the risk.

The bureaucrat will quantify this risk differently than the ship builder/owner. The bureaucrat is charged with public safety. The ship builder has profit to think about. Can the bureaucrat quantify his risk in money? Yes he will. The ship builder will. His insurance company has to. Which risk measure is right? As I said humans are horrible at doing this.

Consider Apollo. The USA burned the crew of Apollo 1 to death. Risk managers didn't think there was a problem until Murphy showed them there was. But consider the rest of the program. What was the risk of a failure bad enough to kill a crew from launch to landing. Remember Apollo 13. The risk was very very high, likely over 10%. Yet many people would have done anything for a ride. Are they so willing for a ride on a commercial airliner? Can you imagine if the same risk factor was attached to that? Why the difference in acceptable risk? Think about participants in "extreme sports" before you answer. Think about the people who refused to evacuate from hurricane Sandy's path. Humans are horrible at judging risk. This should be no surprise, casinos only exist because of this.

So how much risk is acceptable? Does the monetary value to lower that risk change the level of risk that is acceptable? Does the "coolness" of the activity change the level of the risk that is acceptable?

Tough questions. Humans don't have good answers.

Quantify that risk!

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You don't get it. Yes I do get it It isn't profit Profit is the over-riding factor. Nothing is 100% safe You're preaching to the choir.

Quantify that risk! There's not a man/woman alive that can do that!

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Quantify that risk! There's not a man/woman alive that can do that!

So you admit is it all hindsight.

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Nick, you describe a very sorry, Malthusian condition of your society and maybe the specie.

Betreger, I've never read Malthus, shame on me may be, so you will have to
enlighten me here. So, are you hanging me from the nearest yardarm? he-he.

Nick, my comment was not hanging you from the yardarms. As for the allusion to Malthus I was commenting about the possibility that the population is exceeding the capacity to create the wealth it wants.

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Nick, you describe a very sorry, Malthusian condition of your society and maybe the specie.

Betreger, I've never read Malthus, shame on me may be, so you will have to
enlighten me here. So, are you hanging me from the nearest yardarm? he-he.

Nick, my comment was not hanging you from the yardarms. As for the allusion to Malthus I was commenting about the possibility that the population is exceeding the capacity to create the wealth it wants.

Ah, repreved at the last moment, thanks Betreger....

Limits to growth covers what your stating, Betreger; and I do agree with you.
So some time in the future we will have to switch over from wealth creating
to something completely different. But I do suspect though that to maintain
wealth building then some time in the not too distant future population reduction
will be a big agenda issue across the world. This reduction will have to occur
anyway simply because technology will leave us with many idle hands in time. If
not then limits to growth will be experienced sooner than one realises.

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The Kite Fliers

--------------------
Kite fliers: An imaginary club of solo members, those who don't yet
belong to a formal team so "fly their own kites" - as the saying goes.

The foundations of this country have totally collapsed & require fresh new foundations from scratch, rather than patchwork repairs.

Former Europe minister suspended for 12 months

Street cleaner fined for Fly-tipping

Hey Butch, think it's time you had a quiet word with IDS

Time to Stand Up Butch, Listen then Act - Decisively!

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Time to Stand Up Butch, Listen then Act - Decisively!

It's all to do with battling with Brussels. Does he do it now and gain short
term poll benefits. Or does he leave it till later making a Europe referendum,
declaration, to be held immediately post next General Election. The latter
should see a majority victory for the Con's in elections during 2015, so will
Cameron bide his time here?

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The Kite Fliers

--------------------
Kite fliers: An imaginary club of solo members, those who don't yet
belong to a formal team so "fly their own kites" - as the saying goes.