"When we raised issues sometimes we were told 'you're only here to pay the invoices and if they're signed and approved that's all you have to worry about'.
"But we were old school - and we were loyal and we were conscious of it being taxpayer money."
Which infers they were loyal to the taxpayer. Good for them.
But if they are old school, what is new school??
4 comments:
When it comes to motor vehicles it has been said my tastes are "Old School."
For me this means the technology,style,appeal resonate from another time, days of yore so to speak. Things were simpler, easy to find the problem and fix it. Not so with the modern technology in my garage today. I need to take my wheels to a rocket scientist to get fixed when things go wrong.
its my age I suspect, I dont like change.
"But we were old school - and we were loyal and we were conscious of it being taxpayer money." To me this suggests transparency.
In your context Lindsay "New School" could well be the new world of sophisticated technology which has put power and control in fewer hands and transparency has been replaced by convoluted systems which might as well be delivered in Swahili for all the sense they make to me. The computer age has delivered a cornucopia of opportunity for the criminal mind and opportunists with deception on their mind who seize the day.
twenty years ago Pahiatua (home) had a Mayor, four councilors and a Town Clerk who kept the books. Any problems were solved by a quick trip down town to their respective places of business and a yarn over the counter sorted stuff out.
Today our town is controlled by a CEO who is situated in Dannevirke and is surrounded by an army of acolytes which grows in number by the week.
Our elected Mayor and councilors are subservient to his authority which has been bestowed on him by central government. I have long believed our elected representatives, regardless of their best intentions, are but rubber stamps to an unelected authority. I doubt anyone really knows what goes on behind those doors of power and finding out all but impossible to the layman.
I started out thinking about setting the points on one of my cars and got side tracked.
I'll spell it out from personal experience. The new school is 'consensus' and 'collaboration' and 'stronger together' and 'all pulling in the same direction' and 'partnership' and 'leadership' and 'customer-focused'...and nobody giving a damn about the poor buggers who pay for it all.
Several years ago, when I was Payroll Manager for a Govt Dept, the CE verbally directed me to make an unlawful payment to a staff member.
I refused, referring him to the appropriate legislation.
He then advised me, that..."Acts of Parliament are only a guideline..." & if I was unable to work in the new environment, perhaps I should be looking for another job.
Fortunately, one of his underlings was "kind" enough to put the directive in writing, thereby covering me from undue Audit attention.
At the time, I had the feeling that we were from 2 different environments, & I was being left behind.
Sometimes its hard to define things like this but many of us know the difference because we pick up something that grates within us at a level below the surface. I find modern management in bigger corporations so often rubs me up the wrong way and what I think has changed is that today talk about ethics is just talk. I miss the good money of old but it eventually wasn't compensation enough for gritting my teeth and hating the disingenuous sliminess of the day to day grind. No one seems to own up to their mistakes any more, especially when they can blame someone lower in the food chain.
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