Another triumph for the bureaucratic approach.

Thinking about the news yesterday that the government wants to save money in education by squeezing the cleaning budget while at the same time creating new work for consultants with a financial bent.  It's usually the way.  Departmental bureaucrats can then claim brownie points for any savings and making the world a better place for people like them.

As the kid might say, "Gotta learn how these people operate".

Kamikaze Girls

Saw this movie on the TV the other night and was really taken with it.  The character Ichigo (Anna Tsuchiya) put me in mind of the Kid.  Slightly androgynous, aggressive, strong sense of right and wrong.  Loved the malapropisms.  Maybe she could play the Kid when all of this is made into a movie.

Up close and personalised. Episode 3

Just for once, it appears here first. Before anybody else sees it. You can find the comic in THE STORIES tab, under the heading, Up Close and Personalised.

There's also a wee little one called Going Green in THE STORIES tab, too. That one was a quick response to the news that our bit of The Organisation were the worst offenders as far as paper usage was concerned.  That's both printing paper and the other sort.  Note to self: Use the toilets elsewhere in the building. 

Facts? Have a drop more grog, Mr Franklin

Bugman's again.  Been thinking about the way we get swamped with data.  Especially in my line of work.  How everybody is after the "killer fact" that'll prove the case for the project or whatever they're working on.  So everybody wants research, or rather a piece of whatever research is going on.  More and more questions for the poor wretches that are the objects of study.  More and more raw data.  Lyotard was always overoptimistic I thought about the power of the "data banks" to deliver knowledge... what we needed was the imagination to make connections he reckoned.  I probably agree with the latter point, but it's imagination to sift what is a vast sea of incompleteness rather than a world of perfect information.

Up close and personalised. Episode 2

Here's the latest one. Given that I've got a bunch of work with scary deadlines, this is all very skin-of-the-teeth right now. But I'm happy with how its all going. I've managed to get it up on site, so I'll burble about it all at some other time.


You can find the comic in THE STORIES tab, under the heading, Up Close and Personalised.

Using comics to talk about corruption

One of my colleagues wondered if the Policy Police would face something like the recent news story where construction firms colluded to maintain the high value of their tenders.

This reminded me of the anime "Salaryman Kintraro". In some of the later episodes our hero ends up crossing a cartel that is doing this very kind of thing. So it's already out there in the comic world. I like Kintaro, he shows up my own moral cowardice in the face of the bureaucracy. There's something of him in the Kid. She knows what crooks look like, whereas Faren is far more accepting of this world, it is the "nature" that he finds himself in.

Anyway, this made me think that the state bureaucracy creates the conditions in which this kind of activity can thrive. The state sets out to save money by bureaucratising purchasing and forcing government departments to only buy from approved suppliers in a "framework".

This means that those on the inside are cushioned against competition, and there's plenty of work to be divvied up by those in the "club". So, as long as they can keep prices high, life is very sweet for these guys.

Firms can also be in different frameworks where they can offer different prices. So they try to steer you towards the more expensive one. Same work, same people, different price.

Hmmm. Maybe I'll fit something like this in somewhere.

Up Close And Personalised Episode 1

Looks like my ability to embed has come back. Don't know whether my emails into the darkness worked, or if it just magically fixed itself. But anyway, heres the beginning of the new saga:


That paragraph refers at least to the hosting before last. So in order to make life easier next time things disappear, you can find the comic in THE STORIES tab, under the heading, Up Close and Personalised.