PRIME MINISTER: Good morning. We’ve just seen a demonstration there from all of those seized firearms and the very tight cooperation between the Australian Federal Police and the Victorian Police. As the Victorian police officer observed, the ECHO Operation would … read more
China has set the window to launch its Long March-5 Y2 carrier rocket between July 2 and 5, according to the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense. Carrying Shijian-18 communication satellite, the rocket was ver… read more
This week’s selection comes from Dr Janet Topp Fargion, Lead Curator of World and Traditional Music. This is an ‘ondjongo’ song sung by a group of Himba women, recorded in 1998 by French ethnomusicologist Emmanuelle Olivier (BL reference C1709). The recording was made within the French-Namibian project "Living Music and… read more
Two panda cubs in China’s Macao Special Administrative Region celebrated their first birthday Sunday when they turned one year old.
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Photo taken on June 25, 2017 shows mother panda “Xinxin” (R) and her cub “Kangkang” in Macao. [Photo/Xinhua] |
This is also the first time they have met the public together with their mother.
The twin brothers sat on the ground, eating their birthday cakes made of bamboos, while behind the glass windows, visitors watched them with joy and ecstasy.
Visitors sang songs and chanted Happy Birthday to Jianjian and Kangkang in Cantonese.
One of the panda care team members said Jianjian now weighs about 23 kg and Kangkang 22 kg. Kangkang, the younger brother, has gained much weight as he was only 53 grams at birth, he said.
The two are still in the baby stage and fed mainly on breast milk and milk powder. They are also starting to learn from their mother’s behavior such as picking up bamboos.
The brothers and their parents will meet the public in Macao every afternoon during the summer vacation.
read moreThere is little limit to what you can achieve in politics as long as you are happy for others to take the credit. Some people have considerable influence but are happy to let others take the starring roles and to decide and implement the new ideas. Some with influence are civil servants, some are consultants, some are serving politicians. Much of government is a slave to the ideas of old economists and other thinkers. Much of modern government is driven by consultants who come in to recommend courses of action, design media strategies, and then take on the role of helping implement the decisions. The public never knows who they are.
Some politicians define their roles by the media. This became an acute preoccupation with New Labour, and has continued with many in government since. Some politicians have the strange idea that they can manage the media. They get upset when their agenda is displaced by events or someone else’s agenda. Too much concentration on the media can divert their attention from the day job. Often the reason they are doing badly in the media is not media mismanagement, but mismanagement of a part of government which then attracts justified pubic anger. They need to spend more time trying to fix the real problem, and less time trying to fix the media.
Advisers advise, and politicians decide. The media reports decisions and reactions to them. That is the constitutional theory. Sometimes it works out like that. There are frequently other models.
Sometimes officials decide and politicians do not realise what is going on. Sometimes officials recommend strongly and politicians acquiesce. Sometimes politicians do query an approach but are told it is the only technical, legal, practical or safe way to proceed. It then takes a strong minded and well informed politician to insist on a different way of proceeding. Sometimes the media have their own agendas and want to make the politicians follow them.
There are government Ministers who take a Manifesto or political agenda and drive it through, using officials to improve and implement. There are other Ministers who are but actors and actresses voicing the lines of departmental officials, both within and outside government.
We see in the questions about who is to blame for the Tower inferno these same issues of responsibility, knowledge and advice in local government. Is an elected Councillor allowed to rely on the technical expertise of his Council’s Building Regulation Department and the Fire Department? Does he or she ever need to challenge their technical advice and decisions? If he is told of what they are doing does that make him to blame if it is wrong? Or is he to blame even if he was not informed and it was handled as a delegated matter? Should a Councillor approving expenditures to improve the thermal insulation and look of a building have to do enough research to satisfy himself of the safety, or can he rely on the professionals designing and procuring the building to do that? The Councillor wants to take the credit for the improvement, so should he therefore take the blame if it goes wrong?
These are difficult issues. I would be interested in your views. The danger is we make the role of the Councillor too difficult so no-one good will want to take it on. The other danger is we expect too little, and the Councillors’ collective power to challenge and to improve the work of professionals and officers lapses or fails to do its job. In the worst cases in the public sector no-one is to blame. They all become good at laying off the risk, because they can claim that no one person ever took the decision. It just happened.
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