Feminist Icon: Leslie Knope

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Beyond bureaucracy – the urban ascetic perspective

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Beyond bureaucracy – the continuing search for wisdom

“Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible”-  Javier Pascual Salcedo (Author)

“If there is a way to delay an important decision, the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it” – One of Parkinson's laws 

“A committee can make a decision that is dumber than any of its members” - David B. Coblitz, (Author, Inventor)

Bureaucracy sucks, the problem is we need it If we are going to have large organisations. 
In reality it’s only the extra bureaucracy that sucks, bureaucrats however often feel that quality is improved by making extra bureaucracy.    

We’ve all been there, when some “more than my jobs worth” type insists that even though they know its crazy they have to subject you to some idiocy or indignity.  

Why do they do it? After all it’s not in the organisations best interest to antagonise their customers or hobble their own employees. 

Institutional and organisational blind spots abound, how do we change this?

Practical Wisdom

Barry Schwartz has some interesting thoughts over at TEDS

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The Madness of war- Taliban paid to escort allied force supply trucks.

Afghanistan, insurgent held country, miles of barren rocky terrain to cover however could we hope to get supply trains through unmolested?

Simple, pay the Taliban to escort the trucks, no one in their right mind is going to mess with them.

Image from the guardian article

Supplying bases is outsourced to contractors both US and local.  It’s up to the individual companies to get the supplies through hostile terrain.

One problem, contractors aren’t allowed to carry anything bigger than an ak-47 (which is classed as small arms in Afghanistan). When the insurgents have a full arsenal of Kalashnikovs and RPG’s there is really only going to be one winner in a fire fight.  

 “For the most part, the security firms do as they must to survive. A veteran American manager in Afghanistan who has worked there as both a soldier and a private security contractor in the field told me, "What we are doing is paying warlords associated with the Taliban, because none of our security elements is able to deal with the threat."

He is an army veteran with years of Special Forces experience, and he is not happy about what is being done. He says that, at a minimum, American military forces should try to learn more about who is getting paid off. "Most escorting is done by the Taliban," an Afghan private security official told me. He is a Pashto and former mujahideen commander who has his finger on the pulse of the military situation and the security industry. And he works with one of the trucking companies carrying US supplies. "Now the government is so weak," he added, "everyone is paying the Taliban."

To Afghan trucking officials, this is barely even something to worry about. One woman I met was an extraordinary entrepreneur who had built up a trucking business in this male-dominated field. She told me the security company she had hired dealt directly with Taliban leaders in the south. Paying the Taliban leaders meant they would send along an escort to ensure that no other insurgents would attack. In fact, she said, they just needed two armed Taliban vehicles. "Two Taliban is enough," she told me. "One in the front and one in the back." She shrugged. "You cannot work otherwise. Otherwise it is not possible."   “-Aram Roston THE NATION

Hey with this kind of joined up thinking the war will be over in no time ( deep.. deep ..sigh!)

This is an example both of the blindness of bureaucracy and the stupidity of outsourcing something as essential as military supply to local market competition (Surely the security of the convoys at least, should be mission critical?)

Without even getting into a discussion about the war you have the situation here where you increase supply to get ready for a push to drive back an enemy force that results in you bankrolling that same enemy force to make sure they in turn are well supplied for the fight.

There is a full article on this over at the guardian.

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...Becasue the Universe Doesn't Want Me to Drive

Have you ever had the feeling that the Universe is conspiring against you? Me too. Specifically, my driving test experience this week has convinced me that the Universe wants me to remain a pedestrian.

Until fairly recently, I haven't had the need to learn to drive. I grew up just outside York and could easily get into the city without the need to drive. Then, I went to University in Liverpool and, even if I had a car, would probably never use it because, if I was going to spend money on anything, it'd be beer rather than petrol!

My wife, however, was sick of being my taxi service and bought me driving lessons. My last lesson was on Monday and my test was today. Unfortunately, on my way back from my final lesson, my instructors car went insane. Basically, the computer started sending out weird messages to different parts of the car and it started to apply the brakes at intervals. As you can imagine, it was taken to the garage for repairs where they found loose connectors and fourteen separate software faults. The garage said it'd take a day or so to be repaired.

So we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

In the end it was clear that the car wasn't going to be ready in time for my test, so my instructor spend a day finding another car and insuring it. So today I went for a lesson in the replacement car, a nine year old petrol Peugeot 206, rather than the car I'd had lessons in, a brand new diesel Peugeot 207.

The lesson went as well as expected, given I'd never driven the car before, and I went to my test.

It's been seven years since I took an exam and I'd forgot what it felt like to be waiting for the test to begin. I was ridiculously nervous; partly because it was a test but mostly because I'd had two hours of practice in the car I was about to drive.

The examiner collected me and we went out to the car. He instantly noticed that the car wasn't my instructors usual car and went back inside to talk to her about it. I was left outside to sweat and after a couple of minutes my instructor and examiner came out to the car.

It turns out that this particular model had been recalled because of a faulty break-line, a fault my instructor had, in 2001, had checked. Unfortunately, the paperwork wasn't in the car. Why would it be? The fault had been checked, the car had been used in test subsequently and had later been given to my instructors sister.

In the end, the examiner couldn't take me out because he couldn't be 100% sure that the fault had been fixed. I don't blame him because rules are, as they say, rules. It's just annoying that I'd worked myself up about it and in the end it was all for nothing.

The good news is that I'll get a free replacement test; I'm now waiting to see what the Universe decides to throw at me...

To add insult to injury, as we got to the test center, my instructor got a phone-call to say her car was ready to be picked up over an hour away.

SON OF A ....

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Challenge Of The Day: Put On A Gig

This is a pretty easy one surely. Put on a gig somewhere in the UK.

OK, we're not asking you to put on a gig really, this is pretend. So please, just imagine that you want to put on a gig. For a friend, or just for the fun of it, in a place that isn't normally a music venue.

It could be in your local bar - just a couple of local musicians playing acoustic in the corner. Or it could be a slightly bigger pub for your friend's 21st / 30th / 40th birthday party - a covers band of four people for instance. Or you've got ambitions - how about putting on a bigger act in one of those huge pubs which regularly has at least 300 people screaming at football on giant TV screens?

So just imagine the scenario. Now what?

Well the first thing to cross your mind would probably be 'I think I need permission' or perhaps 'I wonder if there's something about licensing music I need to know about'.

Today's challenge is: Find that information. Then let us know how you got on.

Was the information easily available? As a non-musician layperson who just wants to put on a fun party for a friend, was it clear? And after searching, are you any the wiser about what you are and aren't allowed to do, or even more confused?

Please leave comments and tweets letting us know what you found out and if you're on Twitter finding out stuff too use the hashtag #uklive

Have fun, we'd love to know how you got on. But please note, if you already had extensive experience in this field this experiment is not for you. We're trying to find out how easy it is for laypeople to put on an event involving music, not asking promoters to wade in with personal experience. We'll save that for another blog post.

So get searching!

Live music has recently been in the news. Here's a recent Guardian article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/oct/15/small-venues-struggle-live-music

As more and more people keep telling bands like us 'All the money's in live music now innit?' we'd like the same people to show us how that is true.

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Have you hugged an International student today?

In case you have not heard, I got accepted into my Master´s program here in Valencia. So with  very short notice, thanks to the aforementioned Bologna Process, I am back here in Spain with still a tourist ¨visa.¨ It had been a stressful few weeks in New York, trying to physically and mentally prepare to move across the ocean and begin studying (again). I really do not know what I packed in my suitcase, but that is okay because I will only be here for a little over two months before coming back to the States for Christmas to (finally) get my student visa.

But after a summer of waiting and then a week of rushing, I am back here. Pretty strange actually to hop off a red eye flight and take the metro to the same place I had lived four months ago and I was not expecting to be back so soon and under these circumstances. I know I have a lot of struggling ahead of me. I am taking Master´s classes in a language I am not fluent in, but luckily it is not Korean or the Basque language. It could be worse. Or could it? I don´t know about you, but moving to another country that has a different lifestyle, taking university classes after 2 years out of the classroom, taking those classes in a foreign language all the while trying to juggle the bureaucracy of visas, setting up your living space (I opened up my Spanish bank account today!) and just making sure you are eating can be pretty tough. I am not complaining though. I chose this.

I wish I could go back to college and really help all of the international students more. I did not realize what a struggle it is. The paperwork enough is overwhelming. I appreciate their effort a lot more now. Especially after my first day of class, which was five hours. Jeez,  it was hard to keep my concentration for that long. At least that are other foreign students so not everyone is speaking in lightning fast Spain Spanish.

It is good to be back. Now if I can just get rid of this cold.

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run-ins with the bureaucracy, ramen meh, and growing pains

I wrote what was supposed to be an entry for today earlier, but now that I read it, I'm not so sure if it's up to snuff. Maybe it's because it's late, perhaps it's also because I'm exhausted. This day has been long, I've walked more than I expected, and I'm actually ready for bed, come to think of it.

I got my empadronamiento fixed today, which is the third time I went back to that particular government office. (Empadronamiento is sort of a census thing, where people register so that the government knows where everyone lives.) I went back twice yesterday because the first time around, the owner of the flat didn't sign with the signature in his ID, and the second time, the woman at the counter wouldn't accept the form because according to her, "Esto es una porquería, no entiendo nada y esto es una agencia estatal, no somos un circo." (This is bullshit, I don't understand anything and this is a government agency, we're not a circus.) I wanted to tell her, "Woman, all governments are circuses, so shut the eff up." All she had to do was input the stuff into the computer... how hard is that? Does one need to plead illiteracy? But whatever, I didn't want to argue since she had already argued with the woman who told me that the form was okay as is.

Getting my foreign student card was slightly less annoying. I only had to wait about, oh, and hour and a half for my number to come up. Spain is an awesome place for dealings with bureaucracy and government clerks. It's #1 so far among all the places I've been to. Relieved to finally get all of that over with, I went for a walk. A really long one. I got to a metro station that I've never been to before and it was a long-ish way home.

I had some supposedly Japanese ramen, which was meh, and spent the afternoon watching series because we didn't have wifi. I later went out and got food and water, going by the bakery that sells those really spicy veggie empanadas. I got two cans of claras (beer with lemon), went home, and had all that for dinner.

And so that was my day. Tomorrow, I do laundry.

..........

One more thing I did today was delete text messages from my phone. I saved a couple and deleted everything else. I really don't understand why, not completely, but I feel as if I've been holding on to them for too long. I wasn't sure if I felt better deleting them, honestly, but the thought that came to mind was this: "Never be afraid to give up who you are for who you can become."

I think that's what I've been doing all along.

I'm having growing pains.

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Just another day in Italy...

"We should probably turn right here, dear..."

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No thumbprint, no money, bank tells armless man | Reuters

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