Winston Churchill apparently said "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government apart from all the others that have been tried" Well I'm a fan of Churchill the wartime leader (as opposed to Churchill the politician) but he was talking bollocks in this case.
Democracy is too messy, give me a benign dictatorship anytime. Democratically elected governments have one major weakness. They are elected by the general population, most of whom are morons. Every four or five years these morons are asked to elect the government for the next four or five years. Four years in the US, five years if you're lucky in the UK, which means no sooner is the new bunch in than the campaigning for the next election starts. The main problem with that approach is that the government is often faced with difficult decisions, they have a choice, do what will fix the problem, often a slow and painful process, or do what will be popular in the short term thus ensuring at least a fighting chance at re-election. The system is designed to fail, simple as that.
But you don't have to look as high as the government to see how stupid democracy is, look at local government, The UK has a central government that hardly anyone understands and a local government at County level that no one cares about. To see democracy taken to the point of crazy you really need to come to the US. We have elected officials in positions as obscure as school boards. Most parents just want a decent education for their kids but what sort of people do you imagine actually go out their way to get elected to a school board? Busybodies, that's who and they're not to be trusted. busybodies with an agenda can get together and seriously screw with an education system. Hence we have continual battles in various regions between teachers trying to teach science and school boards trying to get teachers to teach nonsense, such as the age of the planet is 6000-8000 years old. We even elect coroners here, coroners? who cares who the coroner is? You're dead for gods sake.
Get this, we elect Sheriffs, this is like electing the chief of police, except they don't have to be a policeman. Wait, what??? So a plumber could be elected? Yep, what about a cleaner, yep. OK so maybe that's not so bad, we could elect an attorney at least they understand the law. No.... what? You can't elect an attorney, it's against the rules. Here's a thing though, jury's although not elected are selected and this really is stupid. Financial fraud trials are notoriously complicated. Months of convoluted complex evidence is sifted through and argued over, some of the most brilliant financial brains in the world are drafted in for both sides and at the end who decides on guilt or innocence? A bizarre mixture of coffee shop servers and contractors, it's ridiculous, It'll be different when I'm in charge, that's for sure!
Rant over!
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Monday, September 5, 2011
Welcome to corporate hell.
You know what I hate? I hate the way it's now considered normal to be "welcomed" into every store you set foot into. A bored chorus of "Welcome to (insert store name here)" is called out to you before the doors have swished closed behind you. This puts me in the awkward position of having to respond or appear rude by ignoring them. You can tell they hate it, their voices give it away, you must be able to tell I think it's stupid by the way I respond. So why are we doing it? Because some twerp in corporate thinks its a good idea that's why. You can be absolutely sure that whoever it was never worked on a shop floor for $10 an hour with no benefits.
I've noticed another insidious trait creeping into the shopping experience now, not content with welcoming me into the big box home improvement store I'm now pursued around the isles and continually badgered about my requirements, what do I need?, can I find everything?, is everything ok? how's my day going? Look, I'm a man, if I can't find something I'll stumble around blindly looking for it before giving up and going home, that's the way it is, 200,000 years of evolution has finely tuned me to be completely individual shopper, an autonomous, belligerent, miserable master of my own downfall, and that's the way I like it! Leave me alone.
See all this "Have a nice Day" bullshit, you can stick that as well. Don't tell me how to live my life, a simple please and thank you is perfectly adequate and don't get me started on "awesome" possibly the most overused adjective in the US. However, I have a weapon against this glib overuse of superlatives though, I take them literally. On been ordered to "Have an awesome day" I offer the retort that it's unlikely, this completely throws them off the page, this isn't in the script, I'm supposed to respond with "you too" or something equally inane. But I didn't start this, I was told to have an awesome day so I think it's now within the bounds of the responsible person to either understand what @#$%ing awesome means, shut up about it or, and this opens a world of possibilities, make it so, because if I'm buying dog food in a grocery store it's pretty unlikely my day is going to be "awesome"
Rant over.
I've noticed another insidious trait creeping into the shopping experience now, not content with welcoming me into the big box home improvement store I'm now pursued around the isles and continually badgered about my requirements, what do I need?, can I find everything?, is everything ok? how's my day going? Look, I'm a man, if I can't find something I'll stumble around blindly looking for it before giving up and going home, that's the way it is, 200,000 years of evolution has finely tuned me to be completely individual shopper, an autonomous, belligerent, miserable master of my own downfall, and that's the way I like it! Leave me alone.
See all this "Have a nice Day" bullshit, you can stick that as well. Don't tell me how to live my life, a simple please and thank you is perfectly adequate and don't get me started on "awesome" possibly the most overused adjective in the US. However, I have a weapon against this glib overuse of superlatives though, I take them literally. On been ordered to "Have an awesome day" I offer the retort that it's unlikely, this completely throws them off the page, this isn't in the script, I'm supposed to respond with "you too" or something equally inane. But I didn't start this, I was told to have an awesome day so I think it's now within the bounds of the responsible person to either understand what @#$%ing awesome means, shut up about it or, and this opens a world of possibilities, make it so, because if I'm buying dog food in a grocery store it's pretty unlikely my day is going to be "awesome"
Rant over.
Blueyouth
Now I've mentioned my lack of patience with stupidity in the past but today I'd like to talk about the perfect storm, stupidity and rudeness in equal measure. The epitome of this is the obsession with cell phones in public and in particular those ridiculous Star Trek looking widgets that are popular amongst the criminally dimwitted. Just because you look like some geek at a trekkie convention doesn't mean you've actually been transported to another dimension, WE CAN STILL SEE YOU! and more importantly hear you, your inane babble is of no interest to me or anyone else save perhaps your equally dimwitted partner in crime.
I had the misfortune this last weekend to come across just such a scene in my local home improvement store. Behind me in the line for the register a lady was yammering long and loud about absolutely nothing in particular. When I say loud I mean you could hear every word from twenty feet away, lady it's a phone, they were invented specifically so you didn't need to shout. I don't know why but I find it intensely irritating, maybe because there's no escape and I'm too polite to say anything and she's too stupid and rude to realize that there's a problem here.
We finally left and moaned about the stupid cow all the way to the car, we were convinced that her ignorant burbling probably continued throughout the transaction at the register which I find particularly galling. Picture this, your grandmother is buying her groceries, she gets to the register and completely ignores the teller, deciding instead to talk non-stop to her friend, it wouldn't happen, so why is it happening now?
My wife and I decided to grab a little lunch while we were out and popped into the restaurant over the road, 5 minutes later in comes rentagob, still yacking on the @#$%ing phone! Fills her take out box to the point of groaning collapse and completely ignores the teller again!
I just don't get it, where did this section of society come from? It wasn't always like this, this is not a learned behavior, your parents were perfectly civil. Now you're weighed down with cheap imitation gold, telling all the world your 'business'. You think you look like a rock star but you don't, you look like a fashion faux pas with a big mouth and a learning disability, your rims are worth more than your car and your car is worth more than your house. You have no pride, no future and no idea, pull your pants up, put the phone down and shut @#$% up.
Rant Over
I had the misfortune this last weekend to come across just such a scene in my local home improvement store. Behind me in the line for the register a lady was yammering long and loud about absolutely nothing in particular. When I say loud I mean you could hear every word from twenty feet away, lady it's a phone, they were invented specifically so you didn't need to shout. I don't know why but I find it intensely irritating, maybe because there's no escape and I'm too polite to say anything and she's too stupid and rude to realize that there's a problem here.
We finally left and moaned about the stupid cow all the way to the car, we were convinced that her ignorant burbling probably continued throughout the transaction at the register which I find particularly galling. Picture this, your grandmother is buying her groceries, she gets to the register and completely ignores the teller, deciding instead to talk non-stop to her friend, it wouldn't happen, so why is it happening now?
My wife and I decided to grab a little lunch while we were out and popped into the restaurant over the road, 5 minutes later in comes rentagob, still yacking on the @#$%ing phone! Fills her take out box to the point of groaning collapse and completely ignores the teller again!
I just don't get it, where did this section of society come from? It wasn't always like this, this is not a learned behavior, your parents were perfectly civil. Now you're weighed down with cheap imitation gold, telling all the world your 'business'. You think you look like a rock star but you don't, you look like a fashion faux pas with a big mouth and a learning disability, your rims are worth more than your car and your car is worth more than your house. You have no pride, no future and no idea, pull your pants up, put the phone down and shut @#$% up.
Rant Over
Friday, September 2, 2011
One Nation, Invisible
As a European, I'm constantly amazed at the fractured nature of American society, Europeans have an idea that the US is one country, everyone pulls together and gets great things done. Well it turns out that the US gets great things done in spite of the fact that it operates as 50 different countries. I honestly had no idea before I moved here that so many people viewed the residents of other states with such suspicion and fear. I guess it's a size thing, coming from a relatively small country (the UK is roughly the same size as Florida) I'm used to regional differences but not regional animosity.
There is an internal migration going on within the US, the citizens from the north have finally figured out that the weather up there is terrible, that the folks in the south speak the same language (after a fashion) and the winter isn't nine months long. This has led to a large degree of "Git the hell back to whur ye cum from." Personally I think it's a good thing, we could do with the fresh DNA, shit was getting a little weird around these here parts.
You see evidence of state before country everywhere which is ok I guess, provided it doesn't become counter productive, unfortunately such is the incredible level of distrust in the federal government it has long since passed the point of being counter productive. Added to that we have the on-going civil war. For my European readers I'll need to explain, in 1861 eleven southern states broke away from the rest of the union and declared their secession, forming The Confederate States of America. Rumor has it that the war ended in 1865 but no one seems to have told the locals down here. I live in Charleston which is actually where the war started so feelings are running pretty high. What they don't realize is that they're all yanks.
So we have a federal government that thinks it runs a country and we have 50 individual states that think they are countries, constantly challenging the government and resenting federal interference into state issues such as appalling education, shockingly bad health care provision, unsafe roads and blatant violations of the federal constitution. To make matters worse, each state is fractured to a ridiculous degree and as a result huge inefficiencies exist, here's an example. I work on James Island it has a population of around 40,000. There is currently no Town of James Island, it's been incorporated 3 times and has been taken to court three times by the City of Charleston which is trying to incorporate the island into the city, each time the city has won but the Town is gearing up for a fourth attempt to establish itself. Part of the Island is already incorporated into the city and as such these residents get refuse collection, fire and police protection from the city. The rest of the Island has solid waste (garbage) collection and fire protection from another agency (Public Service District) the county provide police protection for these folks via the Sheriffs department, confused? I know I am. Of course if you drive far enough down Folly Road you get to the beach, which is a town in it's own right with it's own fire, police etc etc. It's pathetic.
Imagine what we could achieve if we all worked together, to the same objective, I blame Ronald Reagan, ironically, one of the greatest post war presidents, he probably did more to foster the idea that the federal government has a minimal role in running the country than anyone else. Prior to this we had "The United States" now it's more like "The Divided States" In the 1970's it probably would have been possible to implement a universal healthcare system, alas no more. Such is the distrust of the federal government now I fear we will never see a fair and affordable healthcare system in the US. Most people cite government inefficiency as one of the main reasons to avoid universal healthcare, in actuality Medicare and Medicaid are far more efficient than any private system spending only 3% of turnover on administration and marketing compared to over 30% in the private sector.
This ridiculous state of affairs will only continue to get worse while we have separatist politicians at a local level. South Carolina recently refused to apply for over $140m of federal money set aside for the improvement of schools and god knows we need it. But we shouldn't be surprised when it's now a serious political position to de-fund public schools completely! We have a fractured health system that allows people to register with as many doctors as they please thus allowing pill poppers to collect as many prescriptions as they like. We have a school system that allows children to be "home schooled" with virtually no oversight, or just drop out completely and no one notices. We have fire engines rolling past closer stations to service "their" people, have a traffic accident and you can have three different types of police turn up at the same time, don't like the no smoking ordinance in the bar? no worries, try the one next door, it's in another town, what a mess.
Rant Over.
There is an internal migration going on within the US, the citizens from the north have finally figured out that the weather up there is terrible, that the folks in the south speak the same language (after a fashion) and the winter isn't nine months long. This has led to a large degree of "Git the hell back to whur ye cum from." Personally I think it's a good thing, we could do with the fresh DNA, shit was getting a little weird around these here parts.
You see evidence of state before country everywhere which is ok I guess, provided it doesn't become counter productive, unfortunately such is the incredible level of distrust in the federal government it has long since passed the point of being counter productive. Added to that we have the on-going civil war. For my European readers I'll need to explain, in 1861 eleven southern states broke away from the rest of the union and declared their secession, forming The Confederate States of America. Rumor has it that the war ended in 1865 but no one seems to have told the locals down here. I live in Charleston which is actually where the war started so feelings are running pretty high. What they don't realize is that they're all yanks.
So we have a federal government that thinks it runs a country and we have 50 individual states that think they are countries, constantly challenging the government and resenting federal interference into state issues such as appalling education, shockingly bad health care provision, unsafe roads and blatant violations of the federal constitution. To make matters worse, each state is fractured to a ridiculous degree and as a result huge inefficiencies exist, here's an example. I work on James Island it has a population of around 40,000. There is currently no Town of James Island, it's been incorporated 3 times and has been taken to court three times by the City of Charleston which is trying to incorporate the island into the city, each time the city has won but the Town is gearing up for a fourth attempt to establish itself. Part of the Island is already incorporated into the city and as such these residents get refuse collection, fire and police protection from the city. The rest of the Island has solid waste (garbage) collection and fire protection from another agency (Public Service District) the county provide police protection for these folks via the Sheriffs department, confused? I know I am. Of course if you drive far enough down Folly Road you get to the beach, which is a town in it's own right with it's own fire, police etc etc. It's pathetic.
Imagine what we could achieve if we all worked together, to the same objective, I blame Ronald Reagan, ironically, one of the greatest post war presidents, he probably did more to foster the idea that the federal government has a minimal role in running the country than anyone else. Prior to this we had "The United States" now it's more like "The Divided States" In the 1970's it probably would have been possible to implement a universal healthcare system, alas no more. Such is the distrust of the federal government now I fear we will never see a fair and affordable healthcare system in the US. Most people cite government inefficiency as one of the main reasons to avoid universal healthcare, in actuality Medicare and Medicaid are far more efficient than any private system spending only 3% of turnover on administration and marketing compared to over 30% in the private sector.
This ridiculous state of affairs will only continue to get worse while we have separatist politicians at a local level. South Carolina recently refused to apply for over $140m of federal money set aside for the improvement of schools and god knows we need it. But we shouldn't be surprised when it's now a serious political position to de-fund public schools completely! We have a fractured health system that allows people to register with as many doctors as they please thus allowing pill poppers to collect as many prescriptions as they like. We have a school system that allows children to be "home schooled" with virtually no oversight, or just drop out completely and no one notices. We have fire engines rolling past closer stations to service "their" people, have a traffic accident and you can have three different types of police turn up at the same time, don't like the no smoking ordinance in the bar? no worries, try the one next door, it's in another town, what a mess.
Rant Over.
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