Just a short note, because I think everyone should read this, but I really can't add anything to it:
Explaining the Curse of work (New Scientist).
It's wonderful. Finally, Science(tm) explains: Parkinson's Law (Work expands to fill the space avaialble); Why big decision-making groups are bad; Why Terry Pratchett and Chinese numerology chose 8 as the most evil number (I'm extrapolating here, but I think I have a good reason - read the article) - why small teams get more, high quality, work done.
Everyone stuck in a bureaucracy, or cynical about them, will get a good laugh out of it.
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
The idiocy that is Centrelink
This is going to be an ongoing series, you see if it doesn't.
Centrelink, as the Australian Federal Government agency which administers a range of services and programs that fall under the banner of "social services" has a nightmare on its hands trying to make them all work together, and deal with a population of clients who are more likely than most of the population to be stressed, frayed, frazzled, and with various medical, psychiatric and drug-related issues.
But that doesn't excuse the more ludicrous and blatantly unfair aspects of Centrelink policies and processes. And if they get handed down from the Government Departments responsible for the payments - DEEWR, say - I don't care. I'm still going to blame Centrelink.
This, then, is a nascent list of the Things That Are Wrong:
Further suggestions welcomed.
Centrelink, as the Australian Federal Government agency which administers a range of services and programs that fall under the banner of "social services" has a nightmare on its hands trying to make them all work together, and deal with a population of clients who are more likely than most of the population to be stressed, frayed, frazzled, and with various medical, psychiatric and drug-related issues.
But that doesn't excuse the more ludicrous and blatantly unfair aspects of Centrelink policies and processes. And if they get handed down from the Government Departments responsible for the payments - DEEWR, say - I don't care. I'm still going to blame Centrelink.
This, then, is a nascent list of the Things That Are Wrong:
- If you earn money while on a Centrelink payment, you lose a portion of that payment. Fair enough - this is intended to be a needs-based system. If your partner earns money, you lose payment, which is fair enough if you live together and share expenses. The problem is that while you are told exactly, to the cent, what you're allowed to earn, and how much you lose, across several thresholds, they don't publish the same information on your partner's income. Nada. You don't know how much they're allowed to earn before you start losing money, and you don't know how fast it happens. The only justification I can think is that they're concerned that people may turn down work because it will impact upon their partner's payment which is, of course, exactly what happens anyway.
- If you receive Ausstudy, which allows you to complete further schooling without having to work to support yourself at the same time (theoretically - just try it) you don't automatically qualify for a Health Care Card. WTF? An HCC gives you a range of discounts on things like public transport. So does a Student Card, okay. But that's hardly an excuse. An HCC gives you very cheap prescription drugs. A Student Card doesn't. Let's look at some of the conditions that don't incapacitate you from studying, aren't uncommon among younger people, and which are relieved or controlled by prescription medications: Diabetes. Asthma. Chronic pain (resulting from accidents, arthritis - quite possible while young, etc.) Various psychiatric conditions. Once-off bacterial or yeast infections. My partner finds that the contraceptive pill controls migraines which would otherwise cripple her a couple of times a month. If you have to pay $16 (minimum!) rather than ~$4 per script, it starts to add up a bit.
- Ausstudy recipients have only been eligible for rent assistance for about a year now. I'm not giving them credit for fixing that - it wasn't bloody good enough. Students sometimes have to live away from home due to distance (there's an extra allowance - which is pitiful) or due to family problems. I knew a girl who made social workers cry every time she had to justify her living-away-from-home status. She shouldn't have needed to.
- If you are on a Disability Support Pension, or are eligible for one but need to (re)prove it through medical reports, you will probably need to make several medical appointments in order to have the relevant professionals fill out the relevant paperwork. Some of this paperwork (yes, I've handled it during a previous life) advises you that you may, due to the time necessary (for a form), need to make a double appointment, and that this, regretably, cannot be claimed on Medicare. Not. Bloody. Good. Enough.
- You are expected to declare income earned up to the day you declare it, each fortnight. How the hell am I supposed to know? Unless, and sometimes not even then, you are on a cash-in-hand job or a regular but low-paying job and have already received your first pay-check, you don't. My partner works strange agency nursing hours and, although she has the pay rates for each time of the day and week, we can never work out exactly what she earns. I have just started a job with three different components, paid at different rates, dependent upon the time of day or week. Can I work it out? Can I hell! (And repeated requests to pay-roll have not resulted in an email containing details of just what those pay rates actually are, but that's a separate whinge).
- The other part of this is that while Centrelink pays you the evening of the day you put your form in, no other organisation that doesn't pay by cash, does. In my case, I have to wait 10 whole freaking days from the end of my pay period, to receiving income. Which means that I can, theoretically, be penalised on my Centrelink payment two weeks before I receive the income I just got penalised for. This does not bode well for things like, ooh, I don't know, rent.
- You declare income pre-tax. All of which, including the part you don't get because the government takes it, affects your Centrelink income. How is that fair? How does that encourage honesty?
- For some payments, you have to submit fortnightly forms in person. Which means travel, which is an expense that is most emphatically not directly related to job searching, and is also time out of your day (considerable amounts, when travel is added to the time spent standing in line) where you are not searching for jobs. Or, whatever.
- If you sign a contract for a permanent, full-time job that pays several thousand a week but which, unfortunately, doesn't start for four weeks and you won't get your first pay for another two weeks after that, which means six weeks from now... Centrelink can't cope. You need to live, so you need money, so you need the Centrelink income. But, on Newstart, you need to look for (doesn't necessarily mean apply for, which is something) ten jobs per fortnight. Which can theoretically mean that you have to turn down interviews and waste hundreds of hours because "Well, I've actually got a job, I just have to go through these hoops so that I don't get evicted and starve to death before it starts." There needs to be something in place here. In my case, I couldn't get paid for the shifts I did before Christmas because the HR department were on holiday and didn't create a payroll identity for me, so I lost Centrelink payment for income declared then, and that was a fortnight ago and I won't actually receive the money I worked for until this time next week!
- Each office has different arrangements for whether they take appointments pre-booked or walk-in for assessment interviews, which does not help.
Further suggestions welcomed.
Notes from the N95: v5
Another, quite short, collection of random notes from the (no longer) new smartphone, composed on the phone:
Amazingly, I've only just noticed this: when you add an email to an entry in the Address Book, you can't read it. What happens is that you move the highlight down to the email entry, and you see as much as will fit on screen, and a couple of dots to let you know there's more. It doesn't scroll, and if you try selecting, you get the options of send message, or edit. Which means that you have to "edit" in order to read. Which is highly annoying and more than a little suspect. Be careful not to change anything while you're in edit mode, won't you.
Why the hell do people insist upon using the most fragile method of doing things? The keypad of the N95 accomplishes a backlight by having the keys made out of a transparent plastic, and then coating them silver and leaving the characters bare so that the light shines through. Which would be fine, except that the coating is on the OUTSIDE, and it's already starting to rub off, after about six months of usage. Is this planned obsolescence or just incompetence?
There is a neat little "Search" application which sits on the home screen. It allows you to search the phone for specific applications, document types or across everything and, at least in later firmware updates, it has Google search as well. All fine and A Good Idea. Except that it is the single most sluggish, stuttering, laggardly application on the entire phone. It's so bad that I don't use it for searching the phone, and I installed Google's own search widget for that purpose. How? Does it try to index the entire phone when you start it, rather than transparently in the background whenever the phone's turned on? See T9 Nav for how to do content searches properly.
Speaking of badly designed plastic parts which suffer cosmetic damage easily: the camera surround is slightly proud of the phone's back. No problem there. But, the little switch that opens the lens cover is slightly proud of that, and that's just stupid. Easy to operate, yes, but in design terms it looks like an afterthought added by the work-experience kid and, yes, the silver coating is a third gone, revealing the tacky grey plastic underneath. For this, they charged $1200+ when it was new?
S60 can be themed. Which is cool. Unfortunately, my favourite theme designer,
PiZero, has a bad habit of breaking UI models with his replacement icons. In most graphical interfaces, folders are represented by a folder icon, or a hard drive, and applications are represented by a unique icon. If you want to get fancy with folders, you attach an icon for function or contents, but you attach it to the existing folder icon, you don't replace it completely and leave users totally confused over what's an application and what's a folder full of applications. Yet that is exactly what PiZero has a habit of doing. Repeatedly. If I didn't use T9 Nav, it'd get really annoying.
Well, there we are. Not, after all, a long list after owning and using it fairly intensively for as long as I have.
Amazingly, I've only just noticed this: when you add an email to an entry in the Address Book, you can't read it. What happens is that you move the highlight down to the email entry, and you see as much as will fit on screen, and a couple of dots to let you know there's more. It doesn't scroll, and if you try selecting, you get the options of send message, or edit. Which means that you have to "edit" in order to read. Which is highly annoying and more than a little suspect. Be careful not to change anything while you're in edit mode, won't you.
Why the hell do people insist upon using the most fragile method of doing things? The keypad of the N95 accomplishes a backlight by having the keys made out of a transparent plastic, and then coating them silver and leaving the characters bare so that the light shines through. Which would be fine, except that the coating is on the OUTSIDE, and it's already starting to rub off, after about six months of usage. Is this planned obsolescence or just incompetence?
There is a neat little "Search" application which sits on the home screen. It allows you to search the phone for specific applications, document types or across everything and, at least in later firmware updates, it has Google search as well. All fine and A Good Idea. Except that it is the single most sluggish, stuttering, laggardly application on the entire phone. It's so bad that I don't use it for searching the phone, and I installed Google's own search widget for that purpose. How? Does it try to index the entire phone when you start it, rather than transparently in the background whenever the phone's turned on? See T9 Nav for how to do content searches properly.
Speaking of badly designed plastic parts which suffer cosmetic damage easily: the camera surround is slightly proud of the phone's back. No problem there. But, the little switch that opens the lens cover is slightly proud of that, and that's just stupid. Easy to operate, yes, but in design terms it looks like an afterthought added by the work-experience kid and, yes, the silver coating is a third gone, revealing the tacky grey plastic underneath. For this, they charged $1200+ when it was new?
S60 can be themed. Which is cool. Unfortunately, my favourite theme designer,
PiZero, has a bad habit of breaking UI models with his replacement icons. In most graphical interfaces, folders are represented by a folder icon, or a hard drive, and applications are represented by a unique icon. If you want to get fancy with folders, you attach an icon for function or contents, but you attach it to the existing folder icon, you don't replace it completely and leave users totally confused over what's an application and what's a folder full of applications. Yet that is exactly what PiZero has a habit of doing. Repeatedly. If I didn't use T9 Nav, it'd get really annoying.
Well, there we are. Not, after all, a long list after owning and using it fairly intensively for as long as I have.
This does not give me confidence
For a few weeks now, my drinking water has tasted earthy/metallic. This is nothing new - the water coming out of our taps is so crap that I got a filter jug, something I would normally scorn as being an affectation, and have to regularly clean the faint red deposit off the sides of the unfiltered water part of it (hundred+ year old clay pipes). There are even times when water first thing in the morning is orange to the naked, bleary and sleepy eye.
But this was particularly bad and, in a beautiful moment of the sort of coincidence that sees people not shutting up about their children "developing" autism the day after getting vaccinations (which just goes to show how unobservant they were about their own child's developmental neurological disability), this came about just as fluoride was being added to the drinking water supply and making its way to homes.
Now, I come from Tasmania, which has had fluoridated water since before I was born, and Tasmanian drinking water was, when I left, better-tasting than any tap water I've discovered in Queensland so far. Plus, I also know all about fluoride being a naturally occurring chemical in water supplies, and that fluoridated water is not so much adding as regulating the fluoride content.
So I was skeptical of this being the cause of the taste, but hey, human error and too much added is always a possibility.
Well, now we have the solution and, frankly, it's more worrying than the thought that we might all have been dosed up with too much fluoride and can expect brown teeth or something.
It's water contamination that our treatment plant isn't equipped to handle (ABC News Online). I'll repeat that. Contamination that our water treatment plant isn't equipped to handle.
Apparently, runoff from recent rains - which has made the river brown from a month before Christmas until now, with no signs of this reducing - resulted in geosmin, a microbe-produced organic compound, being added in large amounts to dams with small amounts of water in them. And the treatment plant wasn't able to get rid of it.
I don't care if this wasn't actually a health problem and that the only consequence is an earthy smell and taste that the human body happens to be particularly sensitive to (why?), it's not a good sign for public health initiatives in general, is it?
If you are worried about this in water: The compounds break down in acidic conditions, so as soon as it hits your stomach you'll be fine. Unless, of course, the components are poisonous.
Link to the beautifully no-I'm-not-panic-mongering-at-ALL-titled ABC News Online article "SEQ's foul water flushed out"
But this was particularly bad and, in a beautiful moment of the sort of coincidence that sees people not shutting up about their children "developing" autism the day after getting vaccinations (which just goes to show how unobservant they were about their own child's developmental neurological disability), this came about just as fluoride was being added to the drinking water supply and making its way to homes.
Now, I come from Tasmania, which has had fluoridated water since before I was born, and Tasmanian drinking water was, when I left, better-tasting than any tap water I've discovered in Queensland so far. Plus, I also know all about fluoride being a naturally occurring chemical in water supplies, and that fluoridated water is not so much adding as regulating the fluoride content.
So I was skeptical of this being the cause of the taste, but hey, human error and too much added is always a possibility.
Well, now we have the solution and, frankly, it's more worrying than the thought that we might all have been dosed up with too much fluoride and can expect brown teeth or something.
It's water contamination that our treatment plant isn't equipped to handle (ABC News Online). I'll repeat that. Contamination that our water treatment plant isn't equipped to handle.
Apparently, runoff from recent rains - which has made the river brown from a month before Christmas until now, with no signs of this reducing - resulted in geosmin, a microbe-produced organic compound, being added in large amounts to dams with small amounts of water in them. And the treatment plant wasn't able to get rid of it.
I don't care if this wasn't actually a health problem and that the only consequence is an earthy smell and taste that the human body happens to be particularly sensitive to (why?), it's not a good sign for public health initiatives in general, is it?
If you are worried about this in water: The compounds break down in acidic conditions, so as soon as it hits your stomach you'll be fine. Unless, of course, the components are poisonous.
Link to the beautifully no-I'm-not-panic-mongering-at-ALL-titled ABC News Online article "SEQ's foul water flushed out"
Random beauty
I have just noticed something quite bizarre and incredible, while reading a blog entry with a compressed Archives list down one side. The entry itself is this one about anti-vaccination idiocy, on Respectful Insolence.
To simplify matters, I will attempt to recreate what I noticed here. It's simply the names of the months (with years, but they don't matter so I'll leave them out):
Quite, I'll assume, by accident, the names of the months, in order and with one or two exceptions, vary in length by a small but steady pattern from month to month. The effect will undoubtedly be different with a fixed-width font where each letter occupies the same screen/paper real-estate, but the numbers are, starting with January:
How about that?
To simplify matters, I will attempt to recreate what I noticed here. It's simply the names of the months (with years, but they don't matter so I'll leave them out):
- January
- February
- March
- April
- May
- June
- July
- August
- September
- October
- November
- December
- January
- February
- March
- April
- May
- June
- July
- August
- September
- October
- November
- December
- January
- February
- March
- April
- May
- June
- July
- August
- September
- October
- November
- December
- January
- February
- March
- April
- May
- June
- July
- August
- September
- October
- November
- December
Quite, I'll assume, by accident, the names of the months, in order and with one or two exceptions, vary in length by a small but steady pattern from month to month. The effect will undoubtedly be different with a fixed-width font where each letter occupies the same screen/paper real-estate, but the numbers are, starting with January:
- 7
- 8
- 5
- 5
- 4
- 4
- 6
- 9
- 7
- 8
- 8
How about that?
Blinkers, blinders and bloody-mindedness: road safety
Few things are more indicative of how we, as a species, just aren't built to inhabit complex, multi-cultural and diverse societies than the opinion poll.
The latest example, dealing with matters particularly close to my heart, is this piece of actually fairly good journalism from the Courier Mail: Car drivers cut motorbike riders little slack - research.
To summarise the background: Bikers are dying in greater numbers.
To summarise the poll findings: Car drivers think that bikers have it coming, because they "often witness them breaking the law or taking unnecessary risks".
The bikers' response: "Four out of five motorcyclists (78 per cent) think that car drivers believe they have more right to the roads than riders do ... and 90 per cent say drivers don't look out for them," said AAMI Corporate Affairs manager Mike Sopinski.
And:
Adrian Toscano, from the Motorcycle Riders Association of Queensland, said there were certainly elements of contempt between drivers of two and four-wheel vehicles.
"Every day riders come across people cutting them off, failing to give way, driving while talking on mobiles and even doing thing like eating breakfast, all while travelling at 60km/h," Mr Toscano said.
Let's go back and deconstruct the phrase "often witness them breaking the law or taking unnecessary risks":
As a motorcyclist, I regularly see other riders behaving in a way that I think is stupid, but they're outnumbered by riders who aren't. My perceptions are also different - I don't think that riding between lines of stationary traffic or on the verge is dangerous unless you're going too fast. In fact, it's often safer. I'm pretty sure that most experienced riders who aren't actually policemen will agree.
And then this:
""The wake-up-to-yourself campaign implied to other road users that all riders have a death wish and, as a result, should be treated with contempt," Mr Toscano said."
Which is exactly what I was saying at the time. Queensland is just about the only place in the world which has managed to product statistics showing that riders are at fault in more than half of multi-vehicle accidents, and the entire advertising campaign addressed those at-fault riders, ignoring the shared responsibility of other road users completely.
What's even sadder is that people can watch ads like that, assume that the government know what they're talking about, and leap effortlessly to the conclusion that riders are their own worst enemy, staying serenely confident of that while they forget to check their blind spot and merge sideways, forcing a bike to brake hard, swerve and get clipped by the car in the other lane.
I don't hate car drivers as a group: I just don't trust them as a group, and I recommend that everyone else has the same attitude. If you trust nobody, you'll be ready when they do something stupid, whether or not they have two wheels, four, or eighteen.
Link to Courier Mail article "Car drivers cut motorbike riders little slack - research
The latest example, dealing with matters particularly close to my heart, is this piece of actually fairly good journalism from the Courier Mail: Car drivers cut motorbike riders little slack - research.
To summarise the background: Bikers are dying in greater numbers.
To summarise the poll findings: Car drivers think that bikers have it coming, because they "often witness them breaking the law or taking unnecessary risks".
The bikers' response: "Four out of five motorcyclists (78 per cent) think that car drivers believe they have more right to the roads than riders do ... and 90 per cent say drivers don't look out for them," said AAMI Corporate Affairs manager Mike Sopinski.
And:
Adrian Toscano, from the Motorcycle Riders Association of Queensland, said there were certainly elements of contempt between drivers of two and four-wheel vehicles.
"Every day riders come across people cutting them off, failing to give way, driving while talking on mobiles and even doing thing like eating breakfast, all while travelling at 60km/h," Mr Toscano said.
Let's go back and deconstruct the phrase "often witness them breaking the law or taking unnecessary risks":
- Nobody, and I mean nobody, unless they are a trained observer who is paying attention and taking notes, and not even then, can accurately gauge "often". If you see twenty bikers and two of them are weaving through traffic at speed, the chances are you will say "often" about that 10%, becsause it sticks in your mind and the rest just vanish from memory. This is how stereotypes arise - the human mind likes to simplify life by picking up on nice solid warning signs like "4WD vehicle" instead of analysing all aspects of road behaviour in depth, and unfortunately this tendency gets carried over into all other aspects of life.
- "Breaking the law" is a phrase that gets sadly overused by people who see something they don't agree with. I give this no credence without more details attached to it.
- "Taking unnecessary risks": Such as? Unless you are a rider, or at the very least an above-average driver, such as an advanced driving instructor, I give no credence to the idea that the motorists can actually judge what this is.
As a motorcyclist, I regularly see other riders behaving in a way that I think is stupid, but they're outnumbered by riders who aren't. My perceptions are also different - I don't think that riding between lines of stationary traffic or on the verge is dangerous unless you're going too fast. In fact, it's often safer. I'm pretty sure that most experienced riders who aren't actually policemen will agree.
And then this:
""The wake-up-to-yourself campaign implied to other road users that all riders have a death wish and, as a result, should be treated with contempt," Mr Toscano said."
Which is exactly what I was saying at the time. Queensland is just about the only place in the world which has managed to product statistics showing that riders are at fault in more than half of multi-vehicle accidents, and the entire advertising campaign addressed those at-fault riders, ignoring the shared responsibility of other road users completely.
What's even sadder is that people can watch ads like that, assume that the government know what they're talking about, and leap effortlessly to the conclusion that riders are their own worst enemy, staying serenely confident of that while they forget to check their blind spot and merge sideways, forcing a bike to brake hard, swerve and get clipped by the car in the other lane.
I don't hate car drivers as a group: I just don't trust them as a group, and I recommend that everyone else has the same attitude. If you trust nobody, you'll be ready when they do something stupid, whether or not they have two wheels, four, or eighteen.
Link to Courier Mail article "Car drivers cut motorbike riders little slack - research
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