The triangulation starts here (see comments on previous post for some sort of explanation).
The picture has no relevance to the topic, it's just a close-up of the bricks in one of the buildings at Port Arthur - they made the bricks with sea water and the salt content made them vulnerable to the weather. I liked the pattern.
I was thinking, see. Have we ever had a PM called Kevin before? It just sort of struck me that amongst the Roberts and Bobs and Johns and Pauls we haven't ever gone bogan chic, if I can be so rude. PM Rudd has a nice sort of ring to it - in an On Our Selection sort of way - but Kevin? I am reminded of the more famous Kevins - this one for example. Well, it's got to happen first I suppose before we get all thing about his name.
There was a letter in the Courier Mail this morning from a bloke who runs a recruitment agency, wondering how he'll ever get a fair run in bidding for government work in a Rudd-led government, with Kevin's wife being Therese Rein, founder and CEO of Ingeus.
A fair point, I can't recall any other PM with a spouse who was in business. I don't have an answer to the question - it'd be a big ask for her to sell the business should we actually get a PM Kevin - but surely it's better to have a PM with a spouse who understands business from an owner's point of view, who's been there and done it so to speak?
Trip update: I took two books with me - The Natural Advantage of Nations and Jeremy Clarkson. Natural Advantage would put bricks to sleep. I got about 20 pages into it and put it away until the return flight. I was quite struck by the number of Australian examples, but I was more struck by the apparently unaddressed need for lots of editing. On one page Ken Henry, Secretary of the Treasury is lauded for talking about consumer sovereignty and on the bottom of the same page is a pretty weak damnation of the reliance on a single mechanism, the price signal, in a market economy. Now that's a slightly simplistic analysis of what's actually in the book, but if you are going to try to make a case in economic terms you can't have potentially contradictory arguments - and certainly not in such proximity.
There are lots of examples of successful innovations with the potential to lead to sustainability in economic, social and environmental terms but overall the tone is relentless without being intriguing. I would have thought such a book should draw you in, caress you to its way of thinking. I'll need to get back to it at some stage but I have been distracted. Not by Clarkson - which I'm whipping through a couple of stories a night - but by this. It was recommended to me and so far I like the approach. It is also based a lot on case studies, but the stories of each individual's goals, motivation, psychological and practical responses to issues which arose in the search for a new career and so on are well captured and analysed.
There was a letter in the Courier Mail this morning from a bloke who runs a recruitment agency, wondering how he'll ever get a fair run in bidding for government work in a Rudd-led government, with Kevin's wife being Therese Rein, founder and CEO of Ingeus.
A fair point, I can't recall any other PM with a spouse who was in business. I don't have an answer to the question - it'd be a big ask for her to sell the business should we actually get a PM Kevin - but surely it's better to have a PM with a spouse who understands business from an owner's point of view, who's been there and done it so to speak?
Trip update: I took two books with me - The Natural Advantage of Nations and Jeremy Clarkson. Natural Advantage would put bricks to sleep. I got about 20 pages into it and put it away until the return flight. I was quite struck by the number of Australian examples, but I was more struck by the apparently unaddressed need for lots of editing. On one page Ken Henry, Secretary of the Treasury is lauded for talking about consumer sovereignty and on the bottom of the same page is a pretty weak damnation of the reliance on a single mechanism, the price signal, in a market economy. Now that's a slightly simplistic analysis of what's actually in the book, but if you are going to try to make a case in economic terms you can't have potentially contradictory arguments - and certainly not in such proximity.
There are lots of examples of successful innovations with the potential to lead to sustainability in economic, social and environmental terms but overall the tone is relentless without being intriguing. I would have thought such a book should draw you in, caress you to its way of thinking. I'll need to get back to it at some stage but I have been distracted. Not by Clarkson - which I'm whipping through a couple of stories a night - but by this. It was recommended to me and so far I like the approach. It is also based a lot on case studies, but the stories of each individual's goals, motivation, psychological and practical responses to issues which arose in the search for a new career and so on are well captured and analysed.
And money? Well, it's a hit, don't give me that do goody-good bullshit.
A strong economy is good for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment