This Weekend In Snookland...Catching Up On My Dean Reading.

DoesHardWritingEvenMatter
AnymoreVille


Listen.

Nobody around here is harder on Vaughn Palmer, especially when he pulls his punches, than me.

But, because it was pretty busy science geek week (we're recruiting two new faculty to our department, both of whom have big equipment as well as spousal issues, and I had a kid visiting from afar who I'm trying to convince to come and work in my own lab; oh ya, I'm also writing a grant and got a big paper off in front of it...All stuff that, apparently, the good Ms. Wente thinks is useless - How's that for a kinghell digression?), I didn't get to something that the Dean wrote early last week until this morning.

Which was his extremely well-researched, thorough, and no-holds-barred piece on how the Snooklandians low-balled the teachers into taking a strike vote:

...Applying the one-size-fits-all approach to public sector bargaining, the teachers should be in line for a settlement under the “cooperative gains” mandate and would thus be in line for an increase of up to four per cent over two years.

Instead, the government’s opening offer in current negotiations was a slap-in-the-face offer of one half of one per cent upon ratification of the next contract and a further one half of one per cent if offset by reductions in the sick leave provisions.

So settlements of up to four per cent for most other public-sector workers and one per cent for teachers, partly predicated on concessions? No wonder the union denounced the offer publicly and called a strike vote...


That is really just one small part of the column, which is really excellent. I highly recommend you go read it all, if you haven't already.

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So...

Here's the thing.

In the cacophony that the Snooklandian flack-hackery managed to wurlitzer up over fake average salaries, meaningless memos, and moronic cries of 'Why can't the teachers just tell us what they really want!' from, dare I suggest it, Lotuslandian proMedia pundits much lazier than Mr. Palmer, this critical point re: the low-balling has been lost amongst the noise.

Which, of course, is precisely what the flack-hackery counts on.

Which, of course(r), is exactly why Mr. Palmer, and others who are capable of it, have to write this hard every time out (and, in addition, have to make sure they don't forget the really good, hard stuff they've written three years from now).

Because that is the stuff that changes public opinion for all the right reasons.

OK?



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Something else I also just got caught up on this morning is a slightly oldish piece from Gay Telese (written in 1966!)...More on that later, maybe (and maybe not for the reason you might be thinking of if you've been stopping by for awhile now)....Gosh I love lazing around on Saturday mornings and letting the mind run...


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