Outsourcing costs jobs right? It is bad for the economy; exporting jobs to low wage countries. Well maybe not. In an interesting economics paper John van Reenen of the LSE puts a different slant on it. His view is that the increased imports from China and India have led to job losses in areas of […]
Archives for May 2010
Getting Away with Murder
A Chinese man, Zhao Zuohai, who was sentenced to death and spent 11 years behind bars for murder has been acquitted and given £65,000 compensation. In 1999 a neighbour he had fought with disappeared and a headless body was found. Police assumed that the body was the neighbour’s and, under pressure to find the murderer, […]
Bad Behaviour
I read an interesting posting by Seth Godin. To quote him: “Bad behaviour and irrational decisions are almost always caused by fear. If you want to change the behaviour, address the fear.” The other week I spent some time with a business that runs a team of field service engineers. The guys who turn up […]
God Save the President
President Obama launched the SAVE award last year. The (nothing new) principle is that US government employees suggest ideas to save money. The first winner of the award was Nancy Fichtner whose idea for reusing medical supplies is expected to save $2 million p.a. So far President Obama has received nearly 40,000 ideas. This is […]
The Exception
All databases have exceptions and exception reports that need to be manually fixed. It is a law of nature. And exception reports get very messy. What is the priority? How do you know you worked everything? Will the report you didn’t work blow up in your face? Did you look for all the accounts that […]