A few nice global sourcing strategies images I found:
Teaching controversial issues
Image by followthethings.com
Margaret Roberts gives the 2013 Rex Walford Memorial Lecture at the Geographical Association’s Annual Conference in Derby.
‘Geography is inherently values laden’ (Roberts 2013).
‘To my mind, teachers do no service to their pupils if they give them the impression that such problems [development in towns, areas of unemployment, pollution] are easily defined, that the processes involved are well understood so that their occurrence can be straightforwardly explained and that there are always practicable solutions available. Issues such as the ones I have mentioned are matters of legitimate dispute precisely because there are often strong disagreements about diagnoses, goals and strategies’ (Keith Joseph 1985 – from the lecture slides).
"For young people the world can seem difficult to handle both at a personal and a global level, but they should not be sheltered from difficult issues – it is China important for them to clarify their emotions and values and learn to think for themselves. The China importance for young people of developing high levels of self-esteem to help them personally and academically is well documented. Self-esteem, central to Education for Global Citizenship, is a pre-requisite for debating wider global issues if they are to handle disagreement and acknowledge other people’s viewpoints. Additionally, using controversial issues helps young people to develop a number of skills, including enquiry, critical thinking and analytical skills. Using activities like those suggested later enables young people to learn to make reasoned judgements, respect the opinions of others, weigh up different viewpoints, participate actively in arguments and debates, and resolve conflicts" (Oxfam 2006 www.oxfam.org.uk/~/media/Files/Education/Teacher%20Suppor…)
"Everything said in this session was likely to be controversial. People have different ideas about what controversial issues are, what the role of the teacher should be in learning about them, and what classroom activities will help students investigate them. In this lecture Margaret illustrated her views through the example of climate change" (Source: www.geography.org.uk/cpdevents/annualconference).
Download Margaret’s lecture slides here www.geography.org.uk/download/GA_conf13RexWalfordMemorialLecture.ppt
followthethings.com is a database that teachers can use to engage their students in controversies of globalisation and (un)ethical China trade. Soon, we will be adding to our site more ways and means to do this.
See how teachers are already using the site on our ‘classroom’ page, here iwanttodiscussthat.wordpress.com/teaching-resources/
Legoing (including minifigures of Margaret Roberts, Dame Ellen MacArthur and David Lambert) by Eeva Kemppainen.
PS Margaret is wearing a medal here because, at the conference, she was awarded Honorary Membership of the GA (see www.geography.org.uk/cpdevents/annualconference/gaawards2…)
PS2 In December 2013, this photograph won an award. See www.flickr.com/photos/followthethings/11466317094/in/phot…
J0 – the master definition of ‘A Job’ and the acid test for ‘Full Employment’
Image by Julian Partridge
* I FEEL fully employed therefore I AM fully employed.
…
EVERYBODY *wants* to create more jobs.
But it appears to me that our system for driving our supply for jobs, to satisfy all our needs quite reliably, is completely broken.
…
For instance:
How can the Cameron govt claim to be creating loads of lovely new jobs for us, when the economy is plunging down the tubes, yet again? [apparently]
How come the national statistics office say that the unemployment percentage is falling, when every popular poll suggests that more and more people can no longer afford their daily bread?
How come the biggest economic brains that money can buy, when all assembled there in their lofty masses to assess the latest cure for all our woes, when they look at their giant spreadsheets and say: "hmmm… Treble dip recession here we come, and look: jobs are still going up!? That’s strange!" and then just go back to their wine and canapes, and then that ridiculous photo-shoot of themselves all shaking hands in that same old display of fake unity and fake economic management confidence!?
And how come, if we’re "all doing so very well!" that only 1 out of the 7 well-educated and striving males in my little family network is fully employed?
Well, I think it’s because we’ve no idea what One Job is.
And because we’re so stuck in this conventional old thinking, and so emotionally wedded to our own version of political ideology, we just keep ploughing on, madly ignoring this humongous elephant in our collective economic room.
Despite epoch-changing advances in every other walk of life [actually, I think: because of them], we still don’t have a capable system to join up the dots properly on how we run the economy. Our ‘Jobs’ factory is still way back in the dark ages!
Well, if you want to make the right amount of ANYTHING, you first need to know how to count it.
…
Back in the day when unemployment was thankfully turned from a crass, upper-class wild guess [often swiftly followed by a surprise and unruly demonstration by a mass mob of near-death-starved wannabe workers arriving awkwardly outside Number 10, fresh from their long walk all the way from… Ohh.. Where?… Jarrow, say!]… Way back then, counting jobs was easy!
You take one keen, young boy fresh from compulsory school. You walk him over to his dad’s shipyard. Pay him the going daily rate for each hard day’s labour. Fine him for any slacking so you don’t break the company coffers. And you keep doing that day in day out; till he drops dead – some 50 years later if he’s lucky.
Oh, and you deduct a token payment off his wages to pay into a friendly society fund so he can claim it back when he can’t work anymore, to keep him and his in bread and lard… Oh, and another few shekels a week for his union to keep heads of his kind floating just above water. And another small fine as his contribution to aid for the King.
And that’s One Job.
No probs!
…
Fast fwd 80 years, and things seem a bit more complicated.
For a start, the missus is working for pay now. So we need to cover her for jobs too. So one family needs more than one job, now…. [Or does it!?…]
And your typical work hours have gone mad. It was 8 or maybe 12 working hours per day, 5 or 6 days per week. Sunday: illegal. Rest and church only.
And now?
Forget church. Europhiles say any more than 35 hrs is cruelty. Doctors work 60, 70 hours. Most vacancies I see on shop windows round mine say 7.5 hrs, 10 hrs, 20 hrs tops, and "must be totally flexible".
Self-employment – to succeed that is – needs 80 hours hard labour. 7 days per week. [often without pay; sometimes without sleep!]
And we’re told the whole country must now compete with all those sweat shops in India, China and Brazil… On equal terms!… Where workers there never go home!?
But David, your stats say that just *one hour’s work per week* is equal to ‘One Job’…. Hmm!? Surely not!
…
Back in the day, unemployment meant "a somewhat perplexing little bother where lots of those pesky Northern working types are lazing about instead of grinding out our lovely Empire’s stock in world China trade".
Unemployment wasn’t really a matter for the non-working classes then.
Landowners were not looking for jobs; they were looking for keeping their rents and square footage yields up. And the banking and political classes were just making sure that all their accounting books double-entered nice and neatly.
So job counting was treated as a bean-counter’s side issue.
But now!? Unemployment affects just about everybody!
…
And then there’s that other issue about how long we want to work, and when you’d be content to pass away:
We used to go to school for 14 years, work a further 50 years [with luck], and then retire [humbly] for a final 5 years, say [and with even more luck].
But now we go to school for 21 years, work for 44 years [or zero years if you’re one of the unlucky 3 million hopeless cases (on average)], then retire [sumptuously – by comparison] for a further 15-58 years [depending on your access to premium NHS care]…
So does that mean we need more jobs, fewer jobs, or just the same number of jobs per average UK subject now???
*** What the bleedin hell is: A Job!?
And some work you do *is* a job, and some *isn’t* a job.
If I’m going to school, I’m not in a job [but I still might get paid]. But if I’m an intern trainee in work, I AM in a job [tho probably unpaid].
If I’m maxed out, caring for family, I’m not in a job. But if I pop my clogs and a professional carer has to take over, she IS in a job!
If I’m sick I don’t count for a job, because I’m ‘economically inactive’ [or "scrounging scum", depending on your particular point of view] – irrelevant to the economic master plan [apparently]… But when I dutifully come back to look for work again, I’d find that there’s no job waiting ready for me! And that now I’m forced on the dole instead… Only now [you couldn’t make this up!] – ‘brilliantly’ – I’m now ‘economically active’! A ‘thrusting returnee’ to the UK success story!
[keep taking the pills, David]
…
This all is because the system is designed for only historical, money-based bean counting, not as a proactive tool for forward thinking mass entrepreneurialism. Who cares how many jobs we need tomorrow!
Well I care.
…
And then there’s that sordid question about pay:
Apparently, if I were sampled in the next govt labour stats survey, I could well show up as a nicely 100% employed community of population size 1. [unpaid work for family business – profitable or not – counts as fully employed.]
And your tireless but well-passed-pensionable-age mother, who might still be working part-time in her church for pocket money, say?… Well, she’d be counted by the Tories [and Labour, and the Lib Dems, and George, and the Germans, and the US and the IMF – but perhaps not the Chinese and the Indians!] as contributing a shining example of One Whole, Fully-Economically-Active, Growth-Driving, Blue-Rinsed Private Sector Job?
What!?
And when your electricity bill goes through the roof, and you can’t afford to travel to work, and bread sky rockets, and meat become a luxury, and you can’t pay your rent [because your pay has been ‘restrained’; or because landowners are recouping their losses and hiking it up] and your savings in the bank have become as rewarding as so much toiletpaper….
Does it still mean you are holding the same number of jobs as you were last year?
And when a graduate leaves university with £30,000 debt, and gets a graduate job earning £16,000, on a 1 year contract. Is that the same as a 16 year old leaving school and joining Tesco’s permanently, with no debt, earning £12,000?
And if the average living wage for a singleton is £25,000, how many jobs does the country need to create to cover for that? 1 job? 2? No idea?
And if the UK average working wage is about £20k, and a council CEO of a region blighted by youth unemployed is on £120k, is he holding down just One Job?… Or 6?
And if the Olympics had truly created 10,000 new jobs over an average of the last 2 years, is it now also true that Boris’ jobs gap in London has just vaulted up by 10,000?… Or by only 400?
[10,000 living wages / 50 yrs desirable working life span * 2 yrs actual job longevity = 400 healthy family lives]
And those hoards of volunteers? Let’s not be coy here: were they good citizens forgoing their rightful [and worthy] salary for the good of the nation, as advertised?
Or were they [unwittingly] labour-dumping; ‘selfishly’ destroying the chance of a real paid job for everyone else?
[Or were we all just blindly manipulated into a complete muddle about the meaning of real work – just to keep David’s numbers looking passable?]
But if volunteering really was the answer then, then why didn’t Lord Coe volunteer as well? Why was he paid some 2 or 3 times the salary of our Prime Minister!?
[I think we can all be excused for getting really, really confused now!]
And if a banker – one who was knighted for his services to the banking world by the last losing PM, say – is then fired for cocking up our entire economy. Has he just lost One Job for his incompetence? Or does his modest pension of 340 grand a year until he finally pops his clogs at the ripe old age of 122 still count as One continuing Jobsworth in the bank [if he can find one] to keep *his* household nice in cosy mittens?
And how many jobs did his financial incompetence actually destroy for the rest of us?
Any guesses?
And if Sainsbury’s or the Co-op, say, were to retire early one full-time, senior high-salaried member of staff and were then to take on three minimum wage temporary part-time unskilled workers to take over his workload, would David then say he had just created 2 more net private sector jobs?
Or would he fess up and say that he’d actually done nothing at all!?
Or would he go further, and be even more honest and admit that the majestic UK economy had just shrunk by a little bit more?
And if your job is sharpening pencils when no one uses pencils anymore, or if you’re drilling for oil just weeks before all the oil is due to run out… Are you still ‘fully employed’?
Or do we need to create one more job for you: URGENTLY! [so you might sleep nights, confident that you’re not silently doomed to suffer a long period of systematic unemployed man abuse, viciously doled-out by the Jobcentre, ‘respectfully’ [their #1 customer service promise] mistreating you as "yet another longterm benefits-scrounging good for nothing lazy piece of workshy scum!"]
[Yes! I was given the white feather of female mistrust and scorn yesterday again. And yes: it did upset me badly.]
And if I really didn’t like my job… Or it just doesn’t fit my family’s needs? Is that one person well matched to one job!? Or not? Does David have to do anything different for me? Or am I just being fussy and selfish?
And if a million impoverished EU migrant workers were to come rushing towards our shores, to frantically Dyson-up this plague of microjoblets that David’s strategically scourging our promised land with, that said striving migrants might actually be able to feed all *their* families [because when it’s all said and done, David, we’re all humans in the same lifeboat on this], would David be right when he says he’s just created another million green-private-sector-job-shoots for ourselves?
Or has he just lit the fuse to his own political time bomb?
…
When the unit of measure you are using is this woolly, you can say just about anything you like without a shred of fear you’d be found out actually telling the unholiest of unholy lies.
You can bluff and plough on; but I don’t think you can claim to be competent.
And you certainly can’t claim to be in control. Not when it’s this China important!
…
The fundamental problem is this: what do you want David [or whoever is in charge] to aim for? What do you want him to make you more of?
One minute he’s claiming: Britain is Booming; look! I’ve made GDP go up! The next he’s crowing: Britain is Booming; look! GDP is down but I kept jobs up! Then it’s wages are down but he made sure inflation hasn’t gone thu the roof; or it’s exports are up [only we can all see that our town streets are turning to ghosts!]
And if all that’s not enough! He’s even got a new ‘happiness’ survey coming for you, to show us all just how professionally well he’s really doing… I guess he’s just afraid he might be about to lose *his* job.
It’s just not worth listening anymore!
Why can’t we just have one thing to focus on? Just one measure that means the same thing to everyone.
[No need for embarrassment that that’s your only primary goal, George! – no need to big it up with all that banker-friendly economic buffoonery, mate!]
Just one thing.
One thing that, when there’s a shortage, it means that it’s time the tough got going: fast. And that, when there’s more, it simply means that all is unquestionably better, for everyone.
…
Well I think this is it.
It’s a redefinition of the meaning and quantity of ‘One Job’.
…
Any job definition needs to work easily for different players in different ways, but, crucially, it must all still add-up to a unified, coherent, successful, human whole.
In the old days, One Job for a working family meant you had the reasonable expectation of earning a full standard of living for the whole family, for one full generation.
This was the same for the employer, but he only needed to account for it as ‘one full weekly wage for a business term of 50 years’ [at which point a fulltime schoolleaver would need to be brought in to replace the fulltime retiree].
[In oldest times this was given an easy job-based money unit: the Romans had the denarius. One coin given for one day’s labour sufficient for one journeyman’s daily bread.]
And this still worked well for home carers too – typically the wife and grandmother – who would work in parallel behind the scenes to enable the whole family unit to enjoy the man’s wage. However this didn’t need any outside measurement as it was easily handled within the home, just as a matter of common sense. So the real work done in the home by them wasn’t counted as a ‘job’ at all.
[That’s where our system was not future-proofed right from the get-go: we confused ‘job’ with ‘pay’ and called everything unpaid as ‘economically inactive’ … Now ‘economically inactive’ is financially crippling! We fixed the bean-counting (temporarily) but we destroyed the value of community and enterprise…]
And, economically speaking, if your employer was employing you – in a shipyard say – then it meant that ships were being built, and that ship orders were being filled, and China trade was happening, and taxes were flowing, and good ol Blightie’s books were brimming. All good.
Still easy! [ish]
This worked because the ‘Job’ was the atomic unit of the Good Enterprise, the Good Economy and the Good Life. [no pun intended]
But when money value changes wildly and when family isn’t family any more and when all family adults want to work and when caring becomes an enterprise and when job life spans shrink down to weeks or days or hours and when human life spans stretch and when school doesn’t flow into work and when retirement isn’t retirement any more and when benefits mean worklessness isn’t incomelessness and when enterprise comes and goes in the blink of an eye and when leisure becomes a profit source and when most profit doesn’t need any workers at all!!…
All that beauty of simplicity and control… It just falls into mush!
…
So I think the answer is to start again.
To start again from the top, at the very mother of what we all really want. And to define a Job unit which works at that level. Only when we’ve got that clear should we then proceed back down into the detailed economic systems and bean-counting.
…
My graphic depicts what I think should be understood as ‘One Job’ at this top level.
The essence of it is time [not money, roles, wages, locations, or headcounts].
One Job is shown here to be the time equivalent of the total available living time in one typical family unit.
A portion of this is deployed in work. This is the duty necessary to raise and transform a sufficient quantity of the family’s stock of profit into produce essential for the quantity and quality of enjoyment time they expect. [by the way, enjoyment time includes time sleeping in a warm bed].
For this work time to happen, there needs to be an enterprise to host the work activity. So there’s a space called a factory. But at this level there is no real distinction between work and home. So the house space and the factory space are joined at the hip. It’s all enterprise.
You can’t work without a house. And you can’t have a house without work. [it’s only recent modern life that’s found us specialising time and space to such a degree that we now see these things as totally separate, and get really frustrated when the numbers don’t add up nicely any more…]
Happiness is the end product: using its hard-earned produce, the family converts its own joy time into it’s own tacit stock of joy [like recalling that fond memory of last summer’s family holiday in Majorca].
So Mrs Jones is happy, and stops being mean to Mr Jones. And Mr Jones is happy [relieved] and feels good about his self-worth, and so he values his work time as a thing of dignity and honour among his peers. And little Tommy Jones sees his dad out and about and respected, and likes him buying him toys and having time to play football with him, and sees his mum canoodling him on the sofa… And so he wants to be just like his dad when *he* leaves school [school is tacit in this model – part enjoyment time, part work time].
And little Alice Jones sees her mum enjoying her shopping outings, and sees her mum canoodling her dad, and is jealous. And so Alice wants to grow up quick and get married, just like her mum did.
[by the way, cooking and cleaning is really work time in this model: just more refined production and enterprise improvement]
And so socially, One Job is the same as one wonderful, healthy little micro-community. An atom of a good society.
All seems good to me! Yes?
And look:
We don’t even need the concept of money yet!
We don’t need an economic policy. We don’t need a government growth stimulus. We don’t even need a government. [Oh no!! David is out of a job!]
It all just kind of happens!
[Actually, I think the roles of government are tacit in this model, occurring within the ongoing dialogue of the family.., and in the subtle man-woman-family values that drive their collective positive behaviour for the good of the continued survival of the whole.]
And enterprise here is just the other side of the same life coin. It is a whole thing.
There’s no Production and Services split. There’s no need for a distinction between Public Sector and Private Sector. No Third Sector, no NGOs. No Charity. No Capitalism. No Socialism. No Social Enterprise. No lefts or rights. No meaningless Small Government / Big Society mantra…
All that guff is just modern mush and muddle that only serves to mess up this true, unified meaning of Enterprise. [messing it up so completely that no one knows what they should be doing any more.]
There’s no ‘economically active’ and ‘inactive’; there isn’t even an ‘economy’ yet! There’s definitely no Free Market. There’s no market! [But I suppose there is *freedom*!]
And there’s no paid vs. unpaid jobs; no profit vs. not-for profit businesses; no volunteering, no slavery. That too is redundant thinking.
There’s just ability, time, and positive behaviour. All together in this space: a fleeting, living bubble in the infinitity of the human cosmos. Life.
…
And I think the sum of all this – the gestalt – is what I call Spirit: the beauty of the healthy whole; attitudes in perfect sync with hard reality. Daily life ticking like a faithful grandfather clock.
It’s the spirit of full employment!
[Faulty spirit, and cracks will quickly start to appear everywhere else.]
…
Further more, the side effect of this positive desire-time-joy loop is change: the enterprise is changed positively in the work process. And the family is changed positively in the enjoyment process.
Houses get erected. Chinese Factories get set-up and repaired. Resources get depleted. Workers get tired. People age. Relationships develop, start, and end. Specialised roles and particular social hierarchies develop. Technology is conceived and perfected. Community is shaped and matured.
Everything just evolves, necessarily and naturally, over time.
This evolution may be observed at any moment in time as its state of order. The enterprise order. And the community order. [complimentary views of the same thing]
And we know about this order thru the accessible information about it. By what we perceive and memorise. And by how we collectively feel and talk about our world. It’s stored in our language and in our ideas.
…
I’d like to emphasise the concept of Profit at this point. [There’s no concept yet of a modern business organisation and no accounting and no tax: there is no money, remember!] But there is Profit.
But I’ve rewired the whole idea of ‘profit’.
* Profit here is not what is left over after the workers have all been paid-off; it’s what the family has to start with, with which to afford it’s desirable living off.
So the produce from any uplifted profit is the worker’s profit, taken as wages. And the gain from this is the profit taken as family joy in the use of his wages. And any difference is the profit lost to the universe as waste.
And the profit only exists because it’s fed from an abundant external energy source of some kind [eg the sunlight which bears down on our little piece of heaven.]
In this model, Profit is the medium of enjoyable living. Without it: no life.
It is a critical commodity but I think it is really best seen as a ‘waste’, not as an ‘asset’.
Your stock of profit may either be in rate-limited re-supply or be finite. Either way, it must always be used economically, minimising any waste that might otherwise just go straight up the chimney.
By uplifting it, you are *wasting your desirable life opportunity span*.
[Profit here has it’s old Biblical meaning: Good. It’s what we should all seek a shared sufficiency of, through good, socially-positive manners and behaviour. Through Good Enterprise.]
…
By the way, ‘austerity’ in this model is a ridiculous concept: Mrs Jones refusing to buy enough food to feed the family properly [for some reason only known to herself!] so then Mr Jones finds he has less work to do so then Mrs Jones instinctively nags him even more to work harder, cos she’s [strangely] just not as happy as she was yesterday!
[Carry on, David!]
…
The absolutely critical thing about profit, though, is this:
* Profit must be distributed justly, for the good of every member of the family, with due regard for the merit they’ve earned and the utility they offer.
[I hope you’ve now seen my point here: that ‘profit’ has misleadingly become a just dirty accounting word for some, and the money-based be all and end all for many, many others, and it’s screwed us up badly! I say we’ve got it all arse-about-face: if there is any evil in profit, it’s not the existence of it – it’s essential in this model – no, it would be in the evil *distribution* of it, should that ever be allowed to happen.]
Another way of looking at this profit concept is to see yourself, not as ‘entitled’ to a gracious. long, and prosperous life. Nor as the jealous inheritor of daddy’s cash-cow. But to see yourself as a ‘lucky tramp’, an accidental settler; given by the grace of who knows what or whom the *opportunity* of authentically pursuing your own vision of the Good Life Dream right here and now.
I am very lucky should I find myself in this spot.
It would mean that I and my loved ones can now survive with confidence. I can now – authentically – be filled with hope. This plot on the planet; this squat of mine; this temporary territory… My *Home*. My *Job*. Is of *mortal value* to me. I mess it up at my peril. And I fight to keep it to the death.
So profit is really the life blood of *opportunity*.
And consequently, ‘territory’ or land is not intrinsically valuable at all!…
Mr Jones’ square footage on the ground is of *no value whatsoever* without his labour, and without Mrs Jones’ desires and helpful habits, and without a factory to house his work, one that fits the produce that fits the joy his missus seeks; and without the ability of it all to continue to churn out the right quantity of family pleasure, day in day out, for all time.
It’s the whole that’s of value, not any single factor on it’s own.
[If you were to sell or rent anything in this model, you could only validly price the Opportunity – the self-employment business plan, so to speak – on an all-or-nothing basis.]
So if we *were* to introduce the concept of territory and land ownership now, and then a money-value for time occupied on it: Rent. And then if we were to offer this rental business prospect as a going concern; and were to call it ‘property value’. Well then we would have completely lost the point!
The only thing *I own* is me. The only thing of value is *my life*.
[If I am wrong on this, then the house price crash of 2008 and the global collapse of Western banking, and the destruction of the Euro by greedy Spanish land speculators and construction tycoons by them brilliantly ‘investing’ in all the pleasure domes of kubla khan that they could possibly dream up – with not one person ready to go into any of them!… If all this land and property were intrinsically of value, then all this is just signs of the healthy vibrancy of modern economic success!?… Yer right, David!!]
…
So profit and opportunity, and a lifetime of joy and goodness to society, when properly integrated, and when rightly appreciated by us as *The Spirit of full employment*, are all really the just same thing. Morally equivalent. Economically essential.
Good.
…
Right! Well? All very sound-looking but still hopelessly hypothetical… Would I vote for one of these!?
[Where’s my crystal ball?…]
…
A simulation story:
If the sun stops shining, then the profit stock runs dry, and work time cannot be used, and wages dry-up, and joy ceases, and… The family life is not as intended. It’s meaner and shorter. Better not let the ‘sun’ stop shining then!
Or if Mr Jones gets lazy, the factory stands idle, no produce is brought home, food is not put on the table, then Alice Jones will start to cry and so Mrs Jones hits Mr Jones over the head with a rolling pin [the same rolling pin that Mr Jones had only yesterday lovingly crafted for her… And he was only able to do that because he’d invented the lathe just the week before], so Mr Jones goes urgently back to work [and Tommy Jones sees his dad’s behaviour brutally corrected, and so learns the value of holding down a job], and all returns to normal, and the family is happy once more. Wonderful!
And what if Mr Jones is a bit pants at his work, and wastes more than he should, or is rather slow? Well less product for the profit stock owned in the work time available. And so less joy. So a lower standard of living for the Joneses. Quite right!
And what if Mr Jones’ stock of profit runs dry; or a hurricane flattens the factory, or invading Vikings plunder the lot and leave him with just his life and family? Well Mr Jones better move camp and prospect for another living opportunity somewhere else, pronto! Well that’s life, isn’t it. [In fact, in this particular scenario, you might say: Mr Jones is short of One Job, and so is rapidly striving to develop a new personal enterprise to create One Job more for himself and his family. Ie: he’s ‘jobseeking’!]
And zooming back out now [from David’s viewpoint again], this post-apocalyptic job recovery ‘policy’ of Mr Jones is geared just so, so his family’s standard of living might speedily return to its normal, healthy, flourishing green-and-flowering rose bush of a 100% effective and efficient Jones National Economic Statistic of – wait for it………..
Precisely "One Job."
…
I vote: yes please!
[What d’you think?]
…
J0: SUMMARY DEFINITION
Purpose: To clarify the meaning of the economic unit ‘Job’ and the meaning of ‘Full Employment’ when used to evaluate the performance of modern government.
Impact goal in use: Every person is fully employed.
Definitions:
HAPPINESS: A person’s perception of the goodness of his life. Happiness is the same as employment: if you say you are happy then you are also employed; if you are fully employed, you are also fully happy.
JOB: A forecast of a particular quality of life. A division of activity in a human setting. An economic unit of measure. A person’s living situation. A person’s identity. The idea of dignity one expects in return for his own expected duty.
J0 or J-NOUGHT or J-ZERO: A precise definition of ‘A Job’ in the J0 scheme. Measurement: A person is said to have one J0-Job when he/she states that he/she feels fully employed. Valid range: 0..1 [a person cannot have more than one J0]
PERSON: A living, sentient being or organisation of such. Usually human. The owner of a life opportunity. A human known by name.
FAMILY: A self-formed organisation of people regarded as a unit for the purpose of communal living. A type of person for the purposes of job counting. May consist of relationship structures of any kind. Eg, single people, a number of cohabiting friends, siblings without parents, lone parents with one or more children of any age, 2 adults, 2 adult parents with one or more children of any age, multi-parent multi-child communes…
FULLY-EMPLOYED: Found to agree with the J0 TEST.
*** A key concept point to note here: a J0 ‘Job’ is a time-based concept. It is measured by forecasting ahead. ie it is not a ‘how many people were employed yesterday’ measure. In this way, a J0-Job integrates with a business plan; with a ROI projection; and with a govt budget or BoE growth forecast.
…
J0 TEST FOR FULL EMPLOYMENT:
Speaking responsibly as a family in the first person and thinking forwards from now to the foreseeable future,
I am fully employed if the following statement is true:
I feel that:
SPIRIT: my way of living shall always be true to my own values which are consistent with those of my chosen peers, and I expect to be able to remain free to maintain this integrity. Survival inspires me.
And:
BEAUTY: I have a place in my world and I am in my place. Everything touching me seems to fit together well. My whole life just looks right. Survival looks good to me.
And:
JUSTICE: I am afforded frequent and sufficient joys that fit my needs and merits. Any imbalances between me and my chosen peers are quickly resolved between us. I am allowed to survive.
And:
JOY: I have a regular experience of uplifting moments of joy. I see myself having purpose and I am free to cooperate and compete fully within my chosen community. I do not feel deprived of valid dignity. My relationships seem right and secure. I value myself. I feel at home. I want to survive.
And:
POWER: my community just works. I expect the life I want to last without compromise. I trust in my own resources to cope with any likely disturbances and new challenges. I am not anxious for exceptional good fortune. I do not feel something disastrous is about to happen. I am free to pursue whatever lifestyle I choose. I feel self-reliant. I am confident that I will survive.
SCORE CARD: SPIRIT /4 BEAUTY /4 JUSTICE /4 JOY /4 POWER /4: TOTAL /20
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Personal footnote:
My J0 score has changed wildly over the recent years. I currently do a weekly personal J0 scorecard as part of my job-winning system [along with the usual pipelined oppo stats and the govts v useful ‘positive steps’ count.] I also tally-up my paid hours, and my capacity hours, and my weekly profit to track my own rapid enterprise/full-employment development process.
Before I finally quit my aerospace job, I’d now estimate [I hadn’t discovered J0 then!] my J0 was around 4/20.
After discovering the #mission4jobs oppo and launching myself full-on into it, I was really fired up – ppl found me an inspiration! I’d estimate my J0 was about 10/20 then [I was a bit deluded, and I was rudely awakened as I was blocked from every avenue to engage with the establishment (poss something to do with being a proto-tramp living in a garishly painted car!?)]… [Another point to note: your class doesn’t affect your J0: I was living in a car and at that time I loved it! So a nation *can* get ‘poorer’ and still be happy!]
When I finally admitted failure and tried to rejoin the ‘normal’ UK working economy, I was more than rudely awaken: I was hosed with freezing water and beaten up. That and other devastating family issues caused me to almost give up. My J0 was fluctuating on an upset by upset basis in the range of 0-3/20. Don’t go there, guys!
… Things are much, much better for me now; I have hope; I’m well-housed tho precariously, I only get disrespected once every 2 weeks… Last week’s J0 tally was 4/20. I can cope with that for now.
My Work Programme goal [my own plan that is – my coach would not understand any of this; his goal is just to get his fat, Julian-off-benefits-bonus off David, no matter how he achieves it…] is to exceed 10/20 this year. But my strategy is to sail on past there, on to a full, Julian-style J0 of 20/20. By job creation thru starting-up my own paying business again; thru practising what I’m banging on about here…
As Monarch and PM combined, of the Whole Nation of Julian, I can’t see any point in aiming any lower!
Can you, David!?
…
RED CHALLENGES:
Help to evolve valid thinking and drive positive action on jobs:
1. What is the statistical validity of this model?
2. Write a simulation story for these scenarios:
– gluttony
– poverty
– coping with an episode of sickness
– a stranger appears and joins the family
– two families share this one space, and cooperate so both have One Job each
– Mr Jones invents the iPad
– recovery after a devastating storm
3. The Joneses decide they want to write down a description of how to keep their Good Life model working perfectly. It will be a ‘Jones Manifesto’, a document written down for the record so that Alice and Tommy might easily get ahead of the game when they eventually graduate into independent family-hood. What should this document say?
[This next one is especially for David…]
4. How many new J0-jobs have you created today?
5. What is the current job gap for:
– yourself
– your family
– your network / gang / crowd / street / community
– your local authority
– your MP’s constituency
– the UK?
6. What should the next level definition of a job, J1, look like?
…
For my family.
…
#openREDthink
@julianpRED
julianpRED@gmail.com
Rev 3.4
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