On 07/02/2012 18:33, Cynic wrote:
On Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:46:19 +0000, Steve Walker
wrote:

Why should that situation be anyone's problem apart from you, your
friends and your family?

When my wife was in a similar situation, it would certainly have
caused me just as much hardship as it did you *if* I had provided all
the necessary care personally. There were however plenty of friends
and family members who between them were able and willing to provide
the additional necessary care without significant detriment to
themselves.

The idea that complete strangers had any sort of duty to solve the
problem by paying for her care did not even cross my mind.

My wife's family is from Ireland, she has no family over here (her
parents moved here before she was born and have now died) and we
couldn't really expect her extended family to come and live here for a
very extended period. My parents are well into their seventies and
certainly couldn't help her up and down the stairs or grab her when she
moved and her balance went; or look after our three young kids for
extended periods over many, many months. All our friends are in full
time work or live many miles away. No, I am not making up a scenario
here, this is simply the case.

There are many situations that I can sympathise with, but at the end
of the day I have to take the attitude "tough luck" rather than shell
out to solve everyone else's problems. I'd love to be able to save
all the starving 3rd World children as well - but pragmatically that
is also "tough luck".

If the only people who could be her carers are in Ireland (or Africa
or India or China), then pragmatically there is a decision to be made
as to whether she needs to move to where she can be properly looked
after. Lots of people have difficult problems to overcome, and I do
not accept that the only solution available is to take more and more
money from the taxpayers.

Okay, so we should have moved to Ireland, where there were no jobs for
me and away from my parents who may need support from us soon enough.

I don't have any problem with paying to help those in need, although I
do object to supporting those who have never had any intention to try
and support themselves.

You obviously are very much of the "I'm alright Jack" ilk and are not
willing to provide support for others who are struggling through no
fault of their own and do not have the support networks to assist them.

I'm pretty right-wing myself and feel that far too much is paid out in
benefits to those who only ever take, but I do feel that society owes
care and help to those who are unable to help themselves through age,
illness or infirmity - or for those who are normally productive members
of society, but are temporarily unemployed.

SteveW

On 07/02/2012 18:36, Cynic wrote:
On Sat, 04 Feb 2012 02:21:27 +0000, Steve Walker
wrote:

On 01/02/2012 13:37, Cynic wrote:
On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:32:34 +0000, Steve Walker
wrote:

Wrong. Taking the property of an innocent man because you are acting on
*rumour* is still theft. In your scenario, the *thief* is still a thief,
even if by mistake, while my uncle was quite clearly an innocent victim.

Similarly, beating up an innocent person because you *think* he is a
thief is still GBH.

"Think" is not the right word and neither is "innocent". There's a big
difference between "suspecting" that someone has your stolen tools and
having actually seen him take them from your vehicle and make off with them!

There is also a similar difference between "suspecting" that someone
has committed GBH, and actually seeing him beating up a youngster in
the street.

In the theft case the "thief" may believe that he has the moral right
to take the tools, and in the second case the pugalist believes he has
the moral right to inflict GBH. Can you not see that the two
situations are exactly the same - a person acting outside the law
because he thinks he has the right to do so?

No they are not the same situations, despite the law being broken in
both cases.

In one someone is stealing an innocent person's tools of his trade. He
has no right to do so and no right to think that he can - even if he
thinks that they are his relative's tools, he has nothing to confirm
(even to himself) that that is the case.

In the other case, the victim of the theft, has actually seen the person
taking the tools and therefore there is no doubt about the guilt of the
thief, however he has no way to prove to the authorities that that is
the case and therefore no recompense or punishment will follow.

i.e. In one case, a person punished an innocent person by taking the
tools of his trade, while in the other a person punished a guilty person
for taking his tools, when the authorities were unwilling to commit any
resources to gathering sufficient evidence for a prosecution - and of
course even if they had, the thief would likely have had to pay a fine
to the state, while paying no recompence to his victim (who would likely
have had to lose even more money by taking time off for the court case!

SteveW

In article 4f31677c.93842656@localhost,
Cynic wrote:
So would you privatize it while making it compulsory?

That's how car insurance works, so I don't see why not.

I'm not sure that's a recommendation.

The snag with voluntary schemes is many will just take the risk it
won't happen to them.

In which case if it *does* happen to them, they will have to make
alternative arrangements along the lines I have already mentioned.

There are no doubt a high proportion of people who will decide that
they do not *need* such insurance because they have sufficient family
and friends who could step in as caraer should it become necessary.

Wish I had your confidence. I've a feeling there would be lots who would
end up relying on charity.

--
*Prepositions are not words to end sentences with *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

However - just try getting almost any Engineering employer to agree to
that. Despite the fact that it would cost them nothing at all. Employers
are frequently not flexible, not because of any difficulty, but because
management like to be able to look at who is in the office and do they
*look* busy and so be obviously *managing* their employees.

SteveW

They'll learn, given time. They'll just have to;!..

I know if a large local Taxi firm where when they have "overloads" like
Friday and Sat nights they can bring online home based workers who VPN
into their system for DATA and the "office" phone.

Works very well main reason is that the workers find it very attractive
working from home, they just don't have to go out to the office for a
few hours;!..
--
Tony Sayer

On Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:42:29 +0000, Steve Walker
wrote:

Two things would have saved my employment - a more flexible employer
(working reduced hours for reduced pay, but at least still working or
very flexible hours) ...snip

That's only possible if the employer can reasonably employ a person on
that basis. If your employer needed a person who could be relied upon
to get through a fixed amount of work per week, and/or who was needed
on-site during working hours, it would not have been something your
employer would have been *able* to agree to.

I am almost entirely an office based Engineer. I design things, write
specifications, check other peoples documentation, etc. At least 90% of
it could be done at home. Take the kids to school, return home, work,
have lunch, work, pick up kids - once kids are in bed work a bit
longer.

Sure - and *for you* it might work out OK. The problem facing
employers is that as soon as they permit one employee to work from
home, they are pretty much obliged to allow other employees to do the
same.

It is an unfortunate fact that whilst some people (and you may be one
of them) are able to discipline themselves to do the same amount of
work at home as they do in the office, the majority of people will not
do anything like the same amount of work unless it is something that
can be monitored pretty much continuously. Distractions abound, and
the temptation to indulge in other things whilst out of sight of
anyone else is great - and while they may promise themselves that they
will make up the time they just took off to watch a TV program or do a
bit of wallpapering or pop down the shops - it never seems to happen.

And I'm afraid that your type of work is a type that it is difficult
to monitor just how much time you really *did* spend on it, because
one specification may take you 5 hours to write, whilst another might
take you 8 hours even though they are of similar size.

In order to allow working from home for most jobs, it is necessary for
an employer to pay in accordance with actual work done rather than a
fixed salary - and that change leads to all sorts of problems for both
employer and employee. The biggest issue is that the only way to
measure "work done" in many cases is to look at "results achieved".
Which is tough luck on the salesman working from home who has spent a
solid 8 hours a day all week following up leads that didn't result in
a single sale, or on yourself who has spent a week writing a
particularly difficult specification that gets paid the same as a spec
that you can knock out in a day.

--
Cynic

On Wed, 8 Feb 2012 12:05:36 +0000, tony sayer
wrote:

However - just try getting almost any Engineering employer to agree to
that. Despite the fact that it would cost them nothing at all. Employers
are frequently not flexible, not because of any difficulty, but because
management like to be able to look at who is in the office and do they
*look* busy and so be obviously *managing* their employees.

SteveW

They'll learn, given time. They'll just have to;!..

I know if a large local Taxi firm where when they have "overloads" like
Friday and Sat nights they can bring online home based workers who VPN
into their system for DATA and the "office" phone.

Works very well main reason is that the workers find it very attractive
working from home, they just don't have to go out to the office for a
few hours;!..

It works because it is self-monitoring. Some jobs are like that. For
the majority of jobs however, the temptation to skive off work when
there is nobody around to see what you are doing will prove too great
for the majority of people, no matter how well-intentioned they set
out.

--
Cynic

On Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:38:25 +0000, Steve Walker
wrote:

Okay, so we should have moved to Ireland, where there were no jobs for
me and away from my parents who may need support from us soon enough.

If needs must, you would have had to live separately most of the time
and see each other only on occassion. It's what many people have to
do - oil rig workers, soldiers etc.

I don't have any problem with paying to help those in need, although I
do object to supporting those who have never had any intention to try
and support themselves.

The difficulty when the support system is based on government edict is
in separating those who are genuinely in need from those who are not.
*You* may have had no reasonable options, but other people may well
take a government handout when there are other solutions open to them.
Sure, every applicant could be vetted - but that in itself takes a
great deal of time and manpower (=money), and there is still no
guarantee that people are not playing the system.

You obviously are very much of the "I'm alright Jack" ilk and are not
willing to provide support for others who are struggling through no
fault of their own and do not have the support networks to assist them.

I would love to be able to support all the unfortunate people in the
World. But I do not have the resources to do so, and so my charity is
focussed on the people I know rather than millions of complete
strangers.

In fact, government support is what *stops* people helping their
family and neighbours in many cases. Why should I help the struggling
single mother next door when the government is already taxing me to
destitution in order to provide all the help they tell me she needs?

I have noticed that countries that do not have such a benefits system
have communities that are closer and less anti-social than countries
in which the government is supposed to supply all the help anyone
falling on hard times needs.

I'm pretty right-wing myself and feel that far too much is paid out in
benefits to those who only ever take, but I do feel that society owes
care and help to those who are unable to help themselves through age,
illness or infirmity - or for those who are normally productive members
of society, but are temporarily unemployed.

As said, it is difficult to differentiate between the two - unless the
people you are helping are known to you personally so that you can
make a continuous assessment as to whether they are really in need or
whether they are taking advantage of your generosity.

--
Cynic

On 08/02/2012 19:00, Cynic wrote:

Sure - and *for you* it might work out OK. The problem facing
employers is that as soon as they permit one employee to work from
home, they are pretty much obliged to allow other employees to do the
same.

Um, no. Not even slightly. I work from home, a couple of other
colleagues do, the rest aren't allowed to.

It is an unfortunate fact that whilst some people (and you may be one
of them) are able to discipline themselves to do the same amount of
work at home as they do in the office, the majority of people will not
do anything like the same amount of work unless it is something that
can be monitored pretty much continuously.

People have found the opposite in many cases - the work/life boundary
gets blurred the other way round, and many people working at home put in
rather more time than they would at the office.

In order to allow working from home for most jobs, it is necessary for
an employer to pay in accordance with actual work done rather than a
fixed salary - and that change leads to all sorts of problems for both
employer and employee.

No. Experience says that doesn't need to happen. Performance is measured
in the same way as for a normal office worker, and apparent
underperformance dealt with in the same way.

The biggest issue is that the only way to
measure "work done" in many cases is to look at "results achieved".
Which is tough luck on the salesman working from home who has spent a
solid 8 hours a day all week following up leads that didn't result in
a single sale, or on yourself who has spent a week writing a
particularly difficult specification that gets paid the same as a spec
that you can knock out in a day.

Your premise is wrong, therefore your deduction is wrong too.

On Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:54:22 +0000, Steve Walker
wrote:

"Think" is not the right word and neither is "innocent". There's a big
difference between "suspecting" that someone has your stolen tools and
having actually seen him take them from your vehicle and make off with them!

There is also a similar difference between "suspecting" that someone
has committed GBH, and actually seeing him beating up a youngster in
the street.

In the theft case the "thief" may believe that he has the moral right
to take the tools, and in the second case the pugalist believes he has
the moral right to inflict GBH. Can you not see that the two
situations are exactly the same - a person acting outside the law
because he thinks he has the right to do so?

No they are not the same situations, despite the law being broken in
both cases.

In one someone is stealing an innocent person's tools of his trade. He
has no right to do so and no right to think that he can - even if he
thinks that they are his relative's tools, he has nothing to confirm
(even to himself) that that is the case.

In the other case, the victim of the theft, has actually seen the person
taking the tools and therefore there is no doubt about the guilt of the
thief, however he has no way to prove to the authorities that that is
the case and therefore no recompense or punishment will follow.

And what if he collars the wrong person in the same way that the thief
collared the wrong tools? By the time he got down from the roof, the
person he saw may be far away, but another youth who looks similar is
seen and mistaken for the perpetrator.

So if a person has no right to take goods that he thinks were stolen
from him, surely he also has no right to beat up a person who he
thinks he saw take them?

I read an amusing article today about a policeman who was chasing
himself. A CCTV operator had originally mistaken the plainclothes
policeman for a "person acting suspiciously". That info had been
passed to the policeman himself, who then attempted to find and catch
the suspicious individual by following information received from the
CCTV operator who was tracking the suspect. Eventually it was
realised what was happening and everyone had a laugh. But I
immediately thought to myself, what if an innocent person had happened
to walk into the area? The probability woul dbe that the innocent
person would be mistaken for the suspect, and an unpleasant time for
the innocent person would follow.

--
Cynic

On Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:29:31 +0000, Clive George
wrote:

Sure - and *for you* it might work out OK. The problem facing
employers is that as soon as they permit one employee to work from
home, they are pretty much obliged to allow other employees to do the
same.

Um, no. Not even slightly. I work from home, a couple of other
colleagues do, the rest aren't allowed to.


And you think that is not a very significant potential problem? How
would you feel if one of your collegues, who does a similar type of
job to yourself was permitted to work from home and you were not?

And what would your employer do if one of your
black/homosexual/female/Muslim collegues screams, "Discrimination"?
And/or the union gets involved?

It is an unfortunate fact that whilst some people (and you may be one
of them) are able to discipline themselves to do the same amount of
work at home as they do in the office, the majority of people will not
do anything like the same amount of work unless it is something that
can be monitored pretty much continuously.

People have found the opposite in many cases - the work/life boundary
gets blurred the other way round, and many people working at home put in
rather more time than they would at the office.

Unfortunately IME the people in the "less work" category are rather
more prevelant than those in the "more work" category. The majority
of UK employees will take all they can get away with - many even view
the maximum number of paid sick days as being a supplementary holiday
benefit.

In order to allow working from home for most jobs, it is necessary for
an employer to pay in accordance with actual work done rather than a
fixed salary - and that change leads to all sorts of problems for both
employer and employee.

No. Experience says that doesn't need to happen. Performance is measured
in the same way as for a normal office worker, and apparent
underperformance dealt with in the same way.

Whose experience?

The biggest issue is that the only way to
measure "work done" in many cases is to look at "results achieved".
Which is tough luck on the salesman working from home who has spent a
solid 8 hours a day all week following up leads that didn't result in
a single sale, or on yourself who has spent a week writing a
particularly difficult specification that gets paid the same as a spec
that you can knock out in a day.

Your premise is wrong, therefore your deduction is wrong too.

How many people do you employ and what experience in this field do you
have?

--
Cynic

On 09/02/2012 16:08, Cynic wrote:
On Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:29:31 +0000, Clive George
wrote:

Sure - and *for you* it might work out OK. The problem facing
employers is that as soon as they permit one employee to work from
home, they are pretty much obliged to allow other employees to do the
same.

Um, no. Not even slightly. I work from home, a couple of other
colleagues do, the rest aren't allowed to.


And you think that is not a very significant potential problem? How
would you feel if one of your collegues, who does a similar type of
job to yourself was permitted to work from home and you were not?

If it were reasonably explained, it would be fine. Those of us who work
at home don't live near any office - I'm about 200 miles from my "home"
office. If I had an office available near me I'd use it - working from
home does have disadvantages too.

And what would your employer do if one of your
black/homosexual/female/Muslim collegues screams, "Discrimination"?
And/or the union gets involved?

They'd have to demonstrate it's because of that that they're not allowed
to, and there's sufficient number of counterexamples to demonstrate
otherwise. Ie their complaint will go nowhere. I'm in a professional
business. There's no unions here.

It is an unfortunate fact that whilst some people (and you may be one
of them) are able to discipline themselves to do the same amount of
work at home as they do in the office, the majority of people will not
do anything like the same amount of work unless it is something that
can be monitored pretty much continuously.

People have found the opposite in many cases - the work/life boundary
gets blurred the other way round, and many people working at home put in
rather more time than they would at the office.

Unfortunately IME the people in the "less work" category are rather
more prevelant than those in the "more work" category. The majority
of UK employees will take all they can get away with - many even view
the maximum number of paid sick days as being a supplementary holiday
benefit.

Round here that attitude would get noticed, and we don't have much space
for dead weight. If somebody working at home was underperforming, it
would get noticed and dealt with, if necessary by revoking the right to
do so.

In order to allow working from home for most jobs, it is necessary for
an employer to pay in accordance with actual work done rather than a
fixed salary - and that change leads to all sorts of problems for both
employer and employee.

No. Experience says that doesn't need to happen. Performance is measured
in the same way as for a normal office worker, and apparent
underperformance dealt with in the same way.

Whose experience?

Mine, my employer. See above.

The biggest issue is that the only way to
measure "work done" in many cases is to look at "results achieved".
Which is tough luck on the salesman working from home who has spent a
solid 8 hours a day all week following up leads that didn't result in
a single sale, or on yourself who has spent a week writing a
particularly difficult specification that gets paid the same as a spec
that you can knock out in a day.

Your premise is wrong, therefore your deduction is wrong too.

How many people do you employ and what experience in this field do you
have?

I manage people, I work from home, I have colleagues who work from home,
I have friends who work from home. None of us are doing crappy jobs -
mostly IT related, and at the skilled end of that.

Get the right people and they'll work well at home or in an office. If
they're too crap to work well at home, I'm not sure how keen I am at
having them in an office either.

Now in case you're confused, I'm not saying everybody should be able to
work at home. I'm not even saying the majority ought to. I'm just
pointing out that your claims about the situation are wrong.

How many people do you employ and what experience in this field do you
have?

I manage people, I work from home, I have colleagues who work from home,
I have friends who work from home. None of us are doing crappy jobs -
mostly IT related, and at the skilled end of that.

Get the right people and they'll work well at home or in an office. If
they're too crap to work well at home, I'm not sure how keen I am at
having them in an office either.

Now in case you're confused, I'm not saying everybody should be able to
work at home. I'm not even saying the majority ought to. I'm just
pointing out that your claims about the situation are wrong.

Course a lot can now work whilst mobile which is IMHO a very useful
thing...
--
Tony Sayer

On Feb 7, 6:25*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:51:02 +0000, Andy Champ
wrote:

Can you not see that for a great many employers, paying an extra
salary every month to someone who does not actually do any work can be
just as devastating, and could easily result in bankruptcy for the
employer? *That would especially be the case if such a thing became
law, because for every genuine case there would bound to be several
chancers who did not*really* *have to stay at home as a carer.
IF such a thing became law? *Have you ever looked at the rights for
pregnant women?

Yes - and fathers as well now. *At least it is not completely
open-ended, which paying for an unproductive "carer" would have to be.

The law regarding maternity leave has resulted in many employers being
even more reluctant that they used to be to employ women between
certain ages.

Not that I think it would be a bad thing, from a sociological
perspective, to return to the old-fashioned system of having the
husband as the breadwinner and the wife staying at home taking care of
the domestic duties.

Lol! Aside from the fact that domestic duties are not nearly as
onerous as they once were, what advantages do you see in this system?



*Unfortunately the economy has changed to make it
impossible for a great proportion of families to be able to live on a
single income.

It is possible from a purely economic point of view - our society is
more than rich enough.

On Feb 7, 6:33*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:46:19 +0000, Steve Walker





wrote:
Why should that situation be anyone's problem apart from you, your
friends and your family?
When my wife was in a similar situation, it would certainly have
caused me just as much hardship as it did you *if* I had provided all
the necessary care personally. *There were however plenty of friends
and family members who between them were able and willing to provide
the additional necessary care without significant detriment to
themselves.
The idea that complete strangers had any sort of duty to solve the
problem by paying for her care did not even cross my mind.
My wife's family is from Ireland, she has no family over here (her
parents moved here before she was born and have now died) and we
couldn't really expect her extended family to come and live here for a
very extended period. My parents are well into their seventies and
certainly couldn't help her up and down the stairs or grab her when she
moved and her balance went; or look after our three young kids for
extended periods over many, many months. All our friends are in full
time work or live many miles away. No, I am not making up a scenario
here, this is simply the case.

There are many situations that I can sympathise with, but at the end
of the day I have to take the attitude "tough luck" rather than shell
out to solve everyone else's problems. *I'd love to be able to save
all the starving 3rd World children as well - but pragmatically that
is also "tough luck".

Indeed, you cannot be morally obligated to do what you cannot do,
although it is worth remembering that conditions in the third world
have often been aggravated by our own (i.e. the 'first world's')
actions, and are not just an inevitable product of nature.



If the only people who could be her carers are in Ireland (or Africa
or India or China), then pragmatically there is a decision to be made
as to whether she needs to move to where she can be properly looked
after.

But realistically, that is likely to mean the elderly being moved to a
place away from their families, communities, and culture. The fact
that you could suggest the idea as being a "pragmatic" solution to the
problem, fails to appreciate that part of the problem with 'care' is
that is has a psychological component that is quite distinct from
catering to biological needs.

Realistically, we could hook the elderly up to a machine, by inserting
a feeding tube and urethral and rectal catheters, with an overhead
nozzle providing occasional showers of soapy water and disinfectant,
and on the face of it this would be high-quality and effficient
biological care, and yet there seems to be something missing...



Lots of people have difficult problems to overcome, and I do
not accept that the only solution available is to take more and more
money from the taxpayers.

Indeed, but potentially that means more radical and fundamental
reorganisations of society.

On Feb 7, 8:42*pm, Steve Walker -
family.me.uk wrote:
On 07/02/2012 18:12, Cynic wrote:

On Sat, 04 Feb 2012 02:16:30 +0000, Steve Walker
*wrote:

Two things would have saved my employment - a more flexible employer
(working reduced hours for reduced pay, but at least still working or
very flexible hours) ...snip

That's only possible if the employer can reasonably employ a person on
that basis. *If your employer needed a person who could be relied upon
to get through a fixed amount of work per week, and/or who was needed
on-site during working hours, it would not have been something your
employer would have been *able* to agree to.

I am almost entirely an office based Engineer. I design things, write
specifications, check other peoples documentation, etc. At least 90% of
it could be done at home. Take the kids to school, return home, work,
have lunch, work, pick up kids *- once kids are in bed work a bit
longer. At the worst I could go into the office for a couple of short
days to allow for face to face contact and meetings. My level of work is
easily measured as there are detailed project plans, with deadlines,
expected times, etc. for each document required. Broadband will easily
allow me to VPN into the company network, although a USB stick would do.

However - just try getting almost any Engineering employer to agree to
that. Despite the fact that it would cost them nothing at all. Employers
are frequently not flexible, not because of any difficulty, but because
management like to be able to look at who is in the office and do they
*look* busy and so be obviously *managing* their employees.

It's because you gain more autonomy by working from home, and if you
have autonomy then you need to be trusted (rather than simply
monitored). A relationship of trust is always more efficient as a
whole, but for a profit-making enterprise determined to exploit you
and determined to survive in a competitive market, it does not matter
if the operation is 99% inefficient with your labour and theirs, so
long as that 1% of labour generates profits for them and gives them a
good standard of living by comparison to those they exploit.