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• Jet Airways Reverses Layoffs, Naresh Goyal Apologizes
  

  In another indication that capitalism as practiced in India is tempered by the socialist and democratic framework it operates in, Jet Airways founder and Chairman Naresh Goyal announced the company had reinstated all 1,900 employees who had been retrenched only yesterday. They would join duty on October 17th.

  Mr. Goyal apologized to the employees and indicated that the move might have been a hasty decision, among a clutch of options considered for reducing costs. He said the decision to reinstate the employees had been his own, made without consulting anyone. He also stressed that the earlier decision to layoff employees had not been related to the proposed alliance with Vijay Mallya's Kingfisher Airlines. He said a joint Jet-Kingfisher Alliance Council had been set up to explore cost reduction options, including route rationalization and shared costs.

  The layoffs had evoked negative reactions from various quarters, with the employees' union planning a Jet Airways boycott, and heated comments from Maharastrian politico Raj Thackeray. It had been followed by an announcement from Air India that 15,000 employees were being asked to proceed on 3-5 years leave without pay. The Indian airline industry had been grappling with the prospect of drastic shrinkage in travel arising out of high fuel costs and the general economic slowdown. The Indian government is being propositioned for a large bail-out package to avoid potential bankruptcies in the industry.

  The emotional announcement by Mr. Goyal came as a surprise, and his frankness was in stark contrast to typical bland corporate announcements. The future of the industry and Jet Airways may still be uncertain, but there's no gainsaying that Mr. Goyal has won the hearts of his employees for now.

• What Do You Do For A Living?
  

  So, what do you do for a living?
  
  Ah!! you're a homemaker...
  
  Yeah, that's the end of the conversation with me.
  
  Back in Delhi when I bumped into an old school acquaintance I decided to tell the truth that I was a writer and quite a lot of my stuff was published. Where? Skin mags!!
  
  The babe looked flustered and shocked and I was smug. It sounded better than stating a flaky - I am a homemaker
  
  Recently I blurted out the truth in a more creative fashion - I am retired and since I am a woman of means I don't need to work. Thanks to my husband I am lucky enough to be able to devote time to my passion and my family.
  
  The individual who asked me What do you do for a living? spluttered and was left speechless .
  
  Most people are unable to earn money from their passion. Most people are unable to devote time to their passion. Come to think of it, a majority of people don't even know what they are good at. They work because they have to, not because they want to.
  
  Few people are eager to go to work on a Monday morning. The few who do look forward to their work are generally self employed or enjoy great deal of autonomy at their work, others crib about their work environment , their bosses, colleagues and the list goes on.
  
  All that is discussed after I am politely ignored for leading an 'idle life' and I find myself wondering time and again whether my 'stress free life' ( yeah, even I had a boss yelling at me at one point) isn't better than dealing with the egoistical bosses and bitchy colleagues.
  
  When they compare their stressful lives with each others I remain quiet. My stress is different from theirs- I go sleepless at night because I write late into the night not because I have a presentation or assignment to finish. I get up at crack of dawn because I have tiffins to pack and chores to do and not because I have to drive from one end of the city to get another to work. Basically I am the mistress of my own time and of my mind.
  
  Sure, I have to deal with people who think I am a lazy babe without an identity; some even called me a doormat. Doormat and me? Just because I don't get a pay cheque at the end of the month?
  
  I'm already working but I don't have to prove my worth to anyone.
  
  The way I see it- when I am on my death bed I am not going to regret that I didn't have a nine to five job but reminisce more about relationships gone sour or dreams left unfulfilled.

   

  Related Article : What Do You Do By Mark

• The Benefits of Joblessness
  

  Now here's a surprise for you. I quote:

  The proportion of 16- to 24-year-olds without a job is higher than when Labour came to power in spite of government efforts to reduce unemployment among the young.......blamed the rise on the failure to raise the skills of many youngsters. The New Deal scheme to reduce youth unemployment by providing training, subsidised employment and voluntary work had also failed to maintain its initial success.

  What are the solutions? And this is where I disagree:

  The OECD said policies such as raising the age to which youngsters must remain training to 18 needed “fine tuning”. It called for increased support for free nursery education; a three-month limit for 16- and 17-year-olds to find work with part-time learning, after which they must return to full-time education or training; more involvement for trade unions in development of apprenticeship schemes; and an expectation that youngsters working under New Deal stay in a job for at least 26 weeks.

  See, this is an issue of taking a horse to water but cannot or being unable to make it drink. And here's the actual problem, and I further quote:

  One in five youngsters who found work under New Deal held a job for less than 13 weeks, leading to “short employment spells with benefit dependency”.

  What these gits do not understand is that for entry level jobs and basic jobs, the difference between the salary and benefits enjoyed is marginal, and in many cases, negative. So what's the point of me dressing up, going to work for a boss who treats me like a coprolite, doing soul destroying work and then ending up after working 10 hours with an amount which is lesser than what my friends earned by sitting at home smoking and drinking and bonking?

  Benefit dependency is the issue, link the continued employment to the continued benefit and you will see that economic incentives do work. If you do not work, you do not get the money. And all the kings horses and men, like this whiney article, says, will not make humpty dumpty go back to work again.

  Take a look at what Polly is celebrating. She is looking at an estate of 7300 people, and I quote: This vast estate, in much disrepair, had 7,300 residents but virtually no community life, voluntary or council-run. It did have crack houses, prostitution, rubbish tips and violent crime. It did have exceptional numbers of the old, the sick and single mothers.

  This is the problem, it was the state's mistakes, the centralised planning, the benefit dependency, the bad public service delivery and the like which landed the estate of Clapham Park in this mess. So Polly is basically saying that the state mucked up, and then the state tried to fix it, and then it again failed. Erm. yes, obviously it will fail, you silly girl, because it was not done by the residents, but to and for the residents by people who never stayed in there. And she is asking for more public money to fix it, keep it going and worse of all, to extend it to other estates and counties where the state has spectacularly failed. Dont you think you should stand back and let the citizens do it themselves?

  But here is the problem which goes back to the benefits issue. This state has made a vast swathe of the populace dependent upon benefits and is therefore unable to shift them off it. Take a look at this by-election coming up in Glasgow East. Trace the history of the constituency back and you will see that it has been managed by Labour going back to 1922. Ok? Now let me bring some interesting statistics to bear.

  1. From the Spectator:

  Nick Clegg drew gasps at a reception in Westminster by observing that there are parts of Glasgow where life expectancy is the same as the Gaza Strip and North Korea. If only this were so. Glasgow City, as a whole, has a male life expectancy of 71 years which is actually lower than the 72 years of both Gaza and Pyongyang. But this includes its lush suburbs. Those in the welfare ghettoes of Glasgow East can only dream of such longevity. The life expectancy of its sink estates is worth recording here. A boy born in Camlachie is expected to live to 64.5 — the same as