Interesting Links for 06-04-2022

[andrewducker]

1. Photographer Reunites People He First Spotted On The Streets 40 Years Ago

(tags:history photos UK viaPatrickHadfield )

2. Why does the UK insist on everything going through middlemen?

(tags:UK organisation business money )

3. Government's LGBT+ business adviser quits over U-turn on trans conversion therapy

(tags:LGBT transgender bigotry UK conservatives )

4. Hollow knight x Dark souls 3 bosses

(tags:art games )

5. What makes Generation X different?

(tags:viaJennieRigg demographics )

6. UK government's 'Safe To Be Me' LGBT conference cancelled after boycott

(tags:LGBT transgender UK conservatives bigotry )

7. End the Streaming Struggle - search across multiple services at once with Plex

(tags:streaming )

8. A tour of Place - Reddit's latest work of art

(tags:art Reddit viaSwampers )

9. Here are the personality traits of the self-made millionaire

(tags:money psychology personality )

Comments

[cmcmck]

Love the photography item!

[channelpenguin]

5. So very very very true. In fact, so true that I (1971 vintage) can't imagine why or how it could be seen as weird!

2. Having been a contractor, my middlemen (agencies, or as I called them, "pimps") had one ultra important role FOR ME - invoice factoring. Huge investment banks (for example) pay WAY late. 90 days type late. Also they didn't want to bugger about with every individual contractor - easier to leave most of the admin with agencies. And not paying NI, holidays, sick pay etc.

Project-based work doesnt need continuous headcount. The carer example is different. There the advantages to the council are all the admin saved. It may actually make economic sense.

IR 35 now probably makes it 6 of one and half a dozen of the other in terms of pay / pay costs. But the reduced admin staff requirement and having substitution outsourced for the actual workers (not having to continually retain extra staff to cover illness and holidays) and reduced office space costs may make it make sense.

If the carer were a Ltd Co. they would (SHOULD) be on a par and the Co. should get paid same by three council, though. (Again with IR35, would almost certainly not mean more takehome for the carer, or not much more, and allowable expenses are also really rubbish now, which is shit).

[kerk_hiraeth]

Anyone else remember when the Tories were big on getting rid of quangos and ended up creating even more of them? *replace with Tories and being great with the economey, and great on family values and destroy... well you've probably got it by now...

kerk

[calimac]

You know, I can't help thinking of the infamous occasion before WW1 when the Liberal government was divided between building four battleships and building six. So they compromised on eight.

[anna_wing]

As an older member of Gen X, that list does sound vaguely plausible.

The self-made millionaires I have met who were genuinely self-made (as in slept for three days in a train station in Bangkok before finding a job on a ship and making his first seed capital by trading second-hand computer parts between Thailand and Kenya) have been rather pleasant, socially-non-self-aggrandising people of modest and charitable habits (except possibly, in that particular case, a tendency to impulse-buy hotels).

[aldabra]

Middlemen: it creates comfortable middle-class jobs for the mediocre children of the powerful. There's an intense demand for a) university education and b) jobs for people with university education to do, and governments start getting much less popular if downward mobility becomes prevalent enough to be noticed. The more managers, agencies, and consultants you can support per useful worker, the more people have a stake in your regime persisting.

So you increase the amount of regulation per employee to the point where it makes economic sense for organisations to outsource it. And then you've created a lobby for doubling down on this.

[arrctic]

2: Send your Gen X colleagues well-written emails.

Gen X grew up with email -- but before SMS or apps.

Their teachers stressed correct writing, too.

Poor grammar drives Gen X nuts.

yup. SMS is the bane of my existence.

[fub]

1. Seeing such recreated photos with people missing always makes me wonder what happened with them. It's slightly sad.