The Gods of the Copybook Headings

Group Captain Mark Hobden

Telegraph:

Hobden was in command of No 3 Wing, RAF Regiment when, at Christmas in 1963, violence erupted between the Greek and Turkish communities. As festive tradition dictates, Hobden and his fellow officers were serving lunch to their airmen; then the order suddenly came through to relocate from the base at RAF Akrotiri to Nicosia. Within two hours, the entire wing, fully armed, was on the move.

Scenes From The Imperial Capital

How Bad Are Things in France?

This bad:

President Francois Hollande has been accused of selling off France's national heritage with an auction of hundreds of bottles of fine wine from the cellars of the Elysee Palace.

A total of 1,200 bottles, including some of the world's most prestigious labels, were due to go under the hammer from Thursday evening in a sale that has become symbolic of the cash-strapped government's austerity drive.

You'd almost think they'd lost a war.

 

Thursday Night - Canada at War

Loony Toons

Speaking of out of touch elitists:

The comments, from a member of the Prime Minister’s inner circle, come amid recent rifts between Mr Cameron and his party over Coalition policies.

The remarks were made by a senior figure in the Conservative Party who has strong social connections to the Prime Minister. “There’s really no problem,” the Conservative figure said about the parliamentary turmoil. “The MPs just have to do it because the associations tell them to, and the associations are all mad swivel-eyed loons.”

This is the sort of attitude that lead to the creation of the Reform Party. Plus ca change...

Scenes From The Imperial Capital

The Brother

Chris Selley:

I assume recent days have driven the point home: Doug Ford will say absolutely anything that comes into his head, without a moment’s thought to tact, let alone fact. In a recent interview with the Toronto Sun‘s Sue-Ann Levy, Mr. Ford declared his certainty that the Toronto Star timed its crack cocaine story in order to distract the media from Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne’s troubles. This is psychedelic nonsense: The Star story was frantically written on deadline after Gawker broke its version. But this is a man for whom life seems essentially to be performance art.

Yeah. That would be a problem. 

Apparently impulse control was not something that was emphasized in the Ford household. Between the fatso and big mouth the two men are a right-wing wrecking crew.

We're not suppose to say that. It's an ad hominem. A cheap one at that. We should discuss only the policies and the ideas of the Fords which are, for the most part, pretty good. If this was a university lecture hall I might even concede that point. But it isn't. This is municipal politics in the Imperial Capital. Reason and big time politics are at best nodding acquaintances. At the local level? Geez. 

As Eric Andrew-McGee notes (HT Quot'd) the Fords are objected to less for what they have done, and much more for who they are. Sure they're rich. That's generally a good thing among the Toronto elite and a bad thing among the ordinary Torontonian, who spends his days being priced out of a single family home. But culture trumps economics. The Fords have been rich as blazes for decades, yet they behave like arriviste white trash. So the parlour Bolsheviks along the Yonge line look down their noses at the Fords, while the schleps living out in Etobicoke regard Rob and Doug as local heroes made good.

Since very few people pay attention to municipal politics, the victor is often the fellow with the loudest mouth and the most garish tie. Getting noticed is half way to winning. This is why Toronto City Council meetings have the faint air of a circus run by high school sophomores. But as Chris Selley points out, the further up you move in the political food chain the more scrutiny you get. Conduct becoming of a municipal councillor will get a pol turfed from a provincial, to say nothing of a federal caucus. The chaps running the show at Queen's Park and Ottawa regard municipal politicians as one small step above people who serve on condo boards.

Having the right ideas and good work ethic isn't enough. Part of what a politician is selling is themselves. A Doug Ford who wins a seat at Queen's Park is a Doug Ford who will expect to sit in cabinet. The phrase the Honourable Douglas Ford is going to get stuck in a lot of throats, both right and left wing.

 

Wednesday Night - Cyrano

The Price of Freedom

WFP:

An al-Qaida letter obtained by The Associated Press suggests about $1 million was paid for the release of Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler in Niger four years ago.

Fowler, the highest-ranking UN official in Niger, and his colleague Louis Guay, were kidnapped and held for four months before being released in April 2009.

In a book he later published, Fowler said he did not know if a ransom was paid.

So how many died to save Robert Fowler?

 

Scenes From The Imperial Capital

Performance Issues

Tony wants accountability:

Treasury Board President Tony Clement is warning federal civil servants to start looking over their shoulders if they consistently under-perform.

Clement says that only 0.06% of civil servants are ever fired in Canada, far lower than in Australia or the United States.

[...]

"This will include mandatory performance objectives for all employees, a mid-year evaluation of each employee, annual written employee performance assessments at the end of each fiscal year and an action plan to support and guide employees to improve performance within established and clear timelines," he said.

You mean they don't do this already?

Performance reviews, and other HR mandated wastepaper, have been a staple of corporate life for decades. Their actual value added is somewhere between nil and negative. If you can't figure out if you're doing a good job, you're probably not a good employee. If your manager doesn't have the wit and intelligence to explain when you've screwed up, and give you some tips on how to shape up, then they're probably not a good manager. Creating an elaborate paper trail simply justifies the salaries of HR drones. 

What we can expect from Tony's initiative is the following:

a) a new layer of administration to implement and manage this program

b) fat contracts for consultants to advise on how to implement this program

c) in a few years time about .07% of civil servants will get the axe for screwing up

Tony's scheme rests on the assumption that the public sector should work like the private sector. It can't. Not anymore than a morbidly obese man can win a marathon.

You cannot run a government like a business. The goal of a business is ultimately profit. The goal of government is to govern. Private sector metrics are often a hash of objective measures and subjective guesswork, but at the end of the day there are clients and there are cash flows.

Governments do not have clients, though they occasionally humour citizens by calling them so. Instead they have supplicants, petitioners and inmates. The state seizes our income and may, at its discretion, deny us our life and liberty. Even the most sinister of modern large corporations does not wield that power over its clients. If I don't like what one souless corporation is doing, I can do business with another. The Canada Revenue Agency is not so open minded. The taxman is a jealous fellow.

With guaranteed revenues and a coerced "client" base, what possible rational metric could government use? I have to get my driver's license renewed. I have to go to a government run hospital. I probably have to send my kids to a government run school. Without choice there is no real way to tell whether someone is doing a good or a bad job. How could you tell? If ten hour wait times to see a nurse are the norm, then who's to say you're getting crappy service by waiting nine and a half?

This also leads us to an awkward question: Do we really want government to be competent?

On the one hand having an incompetent enforcer of bad laws is a great benefit, it renders the bad laws a dead letter and allows productive people to get on their way.

On the other hand having an incompetent enforcer of good laws is a terrible draw back. A slow witted slob failing to enforce an obscure quota is likely a good thing. A slow witted fat slob failing to make sure murderous thugs stay behind bars is a bad thing.

The government which governs least governs best, yet even in those happy circumstances it still needs to govern. There isn't really a metric for that.

 

 

Tuesday Night - Singin' in the Rain

Supporting Economic Empowerment in Ethiopia

I think I might have missed that section of the BNA that empowers the feds to do this:

Senator Salma Ataullahjan, on behalf of the Honourable Julian Fantino, Minister of International Cooperation, announced support today for the Women Entrepreneurship Development Program in Ethiopia. Empowering women to contribute to, and benefit from, economic growth, is aligned with Canada's Sustainable Economic Growth Strategy. Senator Ataullahjan made the announcement at the African Women Trade and Investment Opportunities Conference.

Scenes From The Imperial Capital

Patronage: Big & Small

In Ottawa:

The order to sanitize an audit of Sen. Mike Duffy’s expenses came from two key Conservatives on the Senate’s internal economy committee: chair David Tkachuk and Carolyn Stewart Olsen, CTV News has learned.

The original version of the audit report said Duffy broke the rules when he declared a Prince Edward Cottage as his primary residence and noted that the senator refused to co-operate with independent auditors.

Last Friday, CTV’s Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife reported that those damning notes were removed from the public version of the report that was tabled in the Senate.

In Selkirk:

“Our government’s top priorities are creating jobs, economic growth and long-term prosperity,” said Mr. Bezan.  “The Government of Canada’s Youth Employment Strategy is helping youth develop the skills and gain the experience they need to get jobs now and prepare for the workforce of tomorrow.”

KL Consulting is receiving more than $88,000 from the Skills Link program to help youth overcome barriers to employment. Skills Link is part of the Government of Canada’s Youth Employment Strategy (YES).

Years ago as a teenager I signed up for one of these government youth employment programs. It was summer and I was looking for a job. I dutifully went to the government office, this was before the internet became a thing. I dutifully filled out all the appropriate paperwork, this was long before I realized the nature of how governments actually worked. As required I returned many times to this office. They did not find me any work. None of the people I knew who used this program found work. The only youth employment this program seemed to generate was for the university student administrators, each of whom seemed utterly bored every time I visited.

After about two weeks of this I decided to find work myself. It took me four hours to get a job packing boxes at a warehouse in nowhere Mississauga. That lasted about a week. Then it took me about a day to find my next job, which last about two weeks. It then took me three days to find a job that lasted the rest of the summer. These were short-term casual labour positions. You worked so long as there was work to be had.

The lesson was well and truly learned.

While the press release speaks of preparing youth for the job market of tomorrow, if you read a bit further we come across this little revelation:

With the help of a job plan, participants will develop a range of skills through work placements in sectors such as construction, retail or hospitality. This experience will help them transition into the labour market or return to school.

Apparently manning cash registers, laying bricks and cleaning hotel rooms will comprise the job market of tomorrow. Given the economic illiteracy of the Obama administration that's probably a good guess. But why does the government of Canada need to get involved? These programs provide only the most marginal of benefits to their communities, though the patronage possibilities are obvious and well known.

If youth are having a hard time finding work in Selkirk, it's probably because they're in Selkirk. It's a small town of about 10,000 souls. By all accounts it seems to be a very fine small town. It's about half an hour north of Winnipeg and has an unemployment rate of around 6%, slightly below the national average. The primary industries are a local steel mill and a mental health facility. Not always the best sources of work for young people. Unless you've got a car, allowing for a commute to the Peg, your employment options might very well be limited.

A government youth employment program will not solve any of these problems. 

While Canadians are outraged, and rightly so, over Nigel Wright cutting a $90k cheque for Mike Duffy's expenses, a bigger scandal is being ignored. Almost exactly the same amount is being spent on a make work project for consultants in southern Manitoba. Yet no journalists will write about the $88k wasted in Selkirk, and the millions of dollars wasted across this country every year in similar projects.

Mike Duffy claiming to live in PEI when he actually lives in Ottawa is a scandal. The PM's Chief of Staff possibly trying to purchase the silence of Mike Duffy is a scandal. That the MSM fails to report how taxpayers money is wasted on make work projects every year is the far greater scandal.