In response to Oxfam staff misconduct in Haiti

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-43043923


This is another case of why we should not give people too much power to abuse through having such hierarchical institutional structure and by creating too many (unnecessary) 'leadership' roles. If it had been front line staff facing the same allegations, they would have had disciplinary action or dismissed from the organization. But when the same allegations concern directors/chief officer/heads of operation, etc, these people are not brought to account for their actions. Plus the well-meaning staff brave enough to whistle blow have to face either recrimination or are just ignored.


I argue against organisations continuing with hierarchical pyramid structure that allows people at the top to behave poorly with low level of accountability. With a flatter structure, people act democratically. They can voice their views without fear of repercussion. They can demand more equal level of respect throughout the organization regardless of job title or responsibility. People with more experience, knowledge or in fact, intellectual ability can still 'progress' but that progress should focus on an opportunity to develop oneself and others rather that an opportunity to exploit powers, like we've seen here.


 

Maynard Keynes's 15-hour work week

Maynard Keynes's prediction of 15-hour work week, as with economists' prediction, fails to take into consideration the nature of man.If he was content with riding a horse at the speed of 20 miles an hour, a significant improvement from walking and running, then there would be no cars, trains or ships. If he was happy with driving a car, there would be no aeroplanes, allowing cross-continent travelling in under one day.

He wasn't happy having a normal meal in order to subsist - he would yearn for a michelin-starred 17-course menu. Normal garment wasn't good enough, he preferred brands, designers and 'styles'.

Education at primary level where you will know literacy and numeracy in order to live in a modern world wasn't enough for some, therefore the invention of secondary, tertiary, postgraduate education, doctorate and higher doctorate.

He wasn't happy achieving what he could achieve in a 3-hour day.  He either wanted to be ahead or was peer pressured to. If he belonged to an organisation, his employer would require maximum 'output' for their pay. They expect workers to be 'online' at home, during leave and be constantly updated of developments. The key is to not come of the treadmill as otherwise it would be a long way to catch up with others. If he was self-employed, he would be a little bit more lucky as he could choose whether to work less, earn less but enjoy life more or try to enjoy being on the treadmill like corporate workers.

It is human nature to want to be better than his neighbours, hence the league tables, rankings, competitions and playing the systems.

Pay equality

When universities decide to operate like businesses rather than non-profit organisation, what naturally follows is the ethos of workers is changed towards that of profit-oriented organisations.

Survey by Times Higher Education shows up to 10% pay rise for university bosses between 2011 and 2012, the privilege not extended to other workers. At the same time, manual workers at the lower end even became worse off due to the use of private sub-contracters where paid holidays are not permitted and sick leave is unpaid. Furthermore, to enable the lucrative pay packages for vice-chancellors, there has been 'innovative' approaches such as employing research and teaching workers under zero hour contract.

It is a shame that universities' claims of their successes in financial terms such as positive balance, secure financial position and commercialisation prospect should come at a high cost which is the livelihood of the communities in which they are situated and claim to be part of.

To solve energy cost problem

Energy prices rise again. So do energy company profits. A happy coincidence? Hardly. 

It seems to be this is a testament of how the market mechanism fails in the same way as what happened to the financial sector in 2008. Finance and banking companies draw out profits to pay their CEOs bonuses and shareholders dividends. There was and probably still is price fixing, collusion as well as other criminal activities. Can anyone draw a parallel between finance and energy markets? Nationalisation was a solution to many banking crises around the world. Time for UK energy nationalisation?

Politics of school playground

Do you see school playground politics playing out in your adult life? If you want to be part of the group, you have to conform or ex-communicate that singled out kid. In a person's lifetime, it's not rare to see the scenario play out numerous times in work amongst colleagues or between departments, at play with groups of friends and even in a family - the aunt who won't talk to that uncle and who's taking whose side, etc. For many people, it is more important to be in with the crowd than to be in the right. I notice that society teaches us less to be kind to others but more to 'achieve' and 'aim high' but it comes at a cost. Has it always been like this or has it worsen recently? I'm not sure.

I went to a children playgroup today. There are parents who will not consider others' but their own needs (to put it politely) and hence impressing upon their children that this is acceptable. Okay, this is not news but when the society develops tolerance towards graceless behaviours, the result is almost the same as an encouragement. I think this leads to a lot of wrongs in the world - the sufferings (through wars and conflicts), inequality (through self-serving policies and conducts and an unwillingness to change), cheating, corruption and so forth. We need the right virtues to be instilled in adults and children such as being respectful, considerate, selfless and kind. The problem is, unlike school grades, there isn't measurable key performance indicators for an achievement in these virtues. Nor is there material incentives for policy makers or educators to view this as a priority. As long as it is left aside, we will endlessly be dealing with social problems that money can't solve.

I am not all pessimistic though. I have experienced much genuine kindness in the past year when I was pregnant and after I have had a baby and I truly appreciate it. There is still hope after all.

Management needs to be careful about achieving targets at all costs

It is understandable that organisations should have performance indicators - measurable goals to work towards. However, by splitting and stacking the indicators further down the hierarchy, an organisation will likely favour managers who tend to focus on reporting up and alienate people who have genuine interest in the organisation goals. 

Being target-driven and people-driven are not mutually exclusive but most humans have natural tendency towards one style or the other. In theory, managers may choose to recruit staff who have a different approach and style from theirs to complement what they lack. In reality, they look for staff whose values are the same as theirs. This leads to the organisation being tipped over in one direction and when it leans too far in the target-oriented direction, customer and staff dissatisfaction will soon emerge.

Management needs to be careful about achieving targets at all costs. It is particularly harmful in hierarchical organisations where multi-levels of managers focus solely on driving their team to deliver against their individual targets with no regards for the overall organisation objectives. When people at the top focus on fragmented deliverables and reward managers whose sole priority is to achieve internal targets and thus creating a target-driving culture, often it is at a cost of losing sight of the big picture.

These middle managers tend to spend more time with their superiors or peers than with their customers or service users and talk more about strategies and policies than goods or service quality. They may claim to internal audiences who might be their next recruiter in a different department to have achieved their job objectives and make a move up their career ladder. However, it is often found that they concentrate their effort on short-term (and often personal) goals, tend to work to the job, have no interest in collaborating with other colleagues (especially where credit might be shared), focus purely on being on the right side of their superiors and fail to develop and promote staff under their charge.

Organisations need to make sure that their top executive, through their strategic goals and implementation plan, maintain the right balance in their decision making as well as making a conscious effort to recruit middle managers from both camps.

While there is housing crisis, houses are being demolished as a symbolic gesture. What can we learn?

In recent cases of houses which have been demolished where there were criminal cases that people would rather erase from history. One of a couple in Derbyshire, UK who set fire to their own home to set the husband's mistress up for arson but ended up killing all 6 of their children sleeping in the house at the time. The other is the Ohio, US abductor who had held women and a girl whom he had abducted captive inside of the house for a number of years.

Both cases are a demonstration of horrendous things human is capable of inflicting on others. People abhor at these events. In interviews with their respective neighbours and the general public, there seems to be a consensus that the properties deservedly need to be torn down. In view of housing shortage, however, could these houses be better used for something useful such as housing homeless people, or used as an office premises for charity? There will be an argument that the memories of the cruelty would remain with the properties. On the other hand, we know of buildings that have been kept despite the gruesome history behind them such as houses with association with the holocaust, combats during wars, prisons that have been converted into hotels (e.g. Malmaison, Oxford, Hotel Katajanokka, Helsinki, Jailhotel, Luzern).

In societies where people still sleep in the street because they have no job, cannot afford renting a place, let alone owning one, can we afford perfectly, structurally sound buildings being torn down while letting people sleep rough with no roof over their heads?

Human Exploitation

I went to view a property yesterday in Rusholme which is an area known for housing large Indian sub-continent immigrants and thus the main road running through it is nicknamed the 'Curry Mile' with hundreds of Indian restaurants and sweets shops lining the whole street. There used to be non-ethnic shops dotted around 12-13 years ago. These had long been overtaken by Indian catering businesses.

On arriving at the house, I was told by the estate agent that there are people living in the property. This doesn't deter me as from my experience viewing properties, it means that the owner or tenant can show buyers around and answer questions about the house or the area and they are often happy to do so. On this occasion, however, the estate agent was informed that the tenants are sleeping. This was 3pm when we got to the property. The estate agent asked reluctantly whether we want to still have a look at the bedrooms despite people sleeping in them at the time. The other viewer (a woman, also of Indian sub-continent descent but with native English accent) insisted on seeing them. I was hesitant and went inside to see the lounge, the kitchen and the bathroom. I decided not to see the rooms where people were sleeping.

It turned out that there must have been a minimum of 7 or 8 men sharing this 2-bed terraced house so there was no beds. Three or four men were lying the floor with blankets which seem to be used to designate each individual's 'bed'. I am not squeamish about the lack of beds which by my standard is not unusual, even in a cold country. Instead, the property was opened for us by another well-to-do man, again of Indian sub-continent descent driving a red Audi. I cannot say for certain that he was a 'handler' for these young men who work in Sanam restaurant (as gathered by the many plagues in the living room bearing Arabic writings with Sanam Sweet shop/restaurant name written on them in English) but it is quite curious as to what his role was, why he would not answer any of the viewer's questions and we were told that he was not the owner/vendor.

With living conditions such as this, one wonders what immigration status these men are in the U.K. under that they would accept sharing a tiny room of a couple of square meters with 3-4 other men and sharing one toilet with 6 or 7. Life cannot be very comfortable. I know that the notion of comfort can be relative but it still saddens me that people could be so exploited to allow one man a luxury of an expensive car which costs as much as the house that 7 or 8 others squat in and whose combined salary will not be enough to pay a market rate rent in a normal living condition, let alone to afford to buy it. And these men and their handler are probably of the same age and race.

The incident has certainly put me off buying this property which I had thought was occupied under normal circumstances. What will happen to these men when the property exchanges and the new owner wants them out? It has also put me off Indian sweets. The men probably need to make a living and they are probably pursuing their dreams of betting their lives. But they could very well be victims of human trafficking. By patronizing the trade, do you, by proxy, support the human exploitation?

Pension

Long ago before the times of pension funds, people used to save for the rainy days, or for their future, or for their old age or they would make their own investment of the savings they have.

The invention of pension funds, although in itself isn't a vehicle for gambling by investment bankers, large firms, inside traders, etc, created the possibility for them to leverage bigger sums of money to 'invest'.

Despite the so called governance structure and having established trustees for each fund, we have now learned that people in the financial world will be guaranteed to invent financial instruments to make their gambling appear legitimate.

As long as we defer the custody of our future welfare by investing in pensions, we will forever be in the hands of investment bankers who use our money to 'gamble' to make their own gain when in profit and get bailed out when making losses.

ออโรร่า

แม่มีความสุขมากที่สุดเลยที่ได้เห็นออโรร่ายิ้มให้แม่เป็นครั้งแรก แรก ๆ แม่ไม่คิดว่าแม่จะเป็นแม่ที่ดีให้กับหนูได้เพราะแม่คิดว่ามันยาก ต้องใช้ความอดทนสูง และต้องมีวินัยในตนเอง ซึ่งแม่ไม่มี แต่พอหนูโตขึ้นเรื่อย ๆ หนูทำให้เรื่องยากกลายเป็นเรื่องง่าย หนูยิ้ม หนูหัวเราะ หนูพูดคุย มันนำความสุขมาให้คนเป็นแม่อย่างไม่น่าเชื่อ และนอกจากนั้นหนูยังทำให้คนรอบข้างมีความสุขด้วย ทั้งพ่อคุณปู่คุณย่าคุณตาคุณยาย ทุกคนดีใจที่สุดที่หนูมาเกิด พอหนูโตขึ้นจะมีอีกหลายอย่างที่หนูต้องเรียนรู้และปฏิบัติตัวเพื่อเคารพผู้อื่นและรักคนรอบข้างซึ่งบางครั้งมันไม่ใช่เรื่องง่ายเพราะสังคมที่เราอยู่บางทีก็สอนให้คนคิดถึงแต่ตนเองเป็นหลัก แต่แม่เชื่อว่าออโรร่าจะเติบโตขึ้นเป็นคนดี มีความเมตตากรุณาต่อผู้อื่น เป็นที่รักของทุกคน