Home office
Many people have welcomed the concept of a "new normal", particularly the idea of working from home. But there are significant risks with not having a "work presence".
This mode of work is already increasing in the US and EU as more new companies are springing up to service
clients from afar; from the "cloud".
What is to stop some companies from decentralising and wholly shifting to the "cloud"? Thereby locating themselves outside current legal restrictions e.g., national wage rules or taxation? Or claim whatever legal domain best suits their purposes?
Not even CEOs will be safe as "block-chain" methods of management and "collective management" arise. An example of a successful "self-managing" organisation is Morning Star in California – no bosses, no titles, and no hierarchal structure. It has 600 fulltime workers and 4000 seasonal workers. Revenue is $1b annually, mostly through processing tomatoes. So, it is not only small organisations that could benefit from a change of work perspectives.
You may cheer the freedom of working from home, but that very freedom may put your very "out-sourceable" job up for grabs. Maybe it is better to be seen and so have a voice in your future.
Mike Schmidt, Sunny Hills.
Beach fund
Referring to the "dirty beaches" sad saga for frustrated Auckland ratepayers: I do thank the NZ Herald for publishing opinions of disappointment flying in the face of our town's promotion. The mayor already only got about 14 per cent of votes at the last election. For me, a clear "You are fired" moment, as Gary Hollis requests.
The dilemma ratepayers face is the fact that Auckland is too big to fail and Mr Goff is too close to the Labour government. No political solution is in sight.
I advocate 5 per cent of the rates being administered by a trust account until a democratic majority-backed council is established. A thousand or more citizens supporting that "money talks" solution would alert the borrowing institutions and would be the only way in converging to a democratic town representation.
So far we are just cannon fodder.
Juergen Petersen, Pt Chevalier.
Scant scanning
The science of risk tells us that the Government must act now to make QR code scanning mandatory if the serious risk of a difficult-to-control Covid outbreak, arising from the new fast-spreading Covid variant, is to be avoided.
Should such an outbreak occur, current scanning levels (less than one in six of the 2.5 million registered Covid Tracer app users are using it daily) are inadequate to support contact tracing of the fast-spreading Covid variant. Significant national economic and health damage would occur.
Professor Gerald Wilde (late) was the father of modern-day risk homeostasis theory. Simply put, in high-risk situations where people feel comfortable (i.e. the NZ public with Covid today) you cannot rely on optional behaviours to reduce risk. Government "requests" for the public to scan in with the app will not work. Not because people are bad or lazy, but because they feel safe.
This is why we have laws against drink-driving and speeding. Scanning must be mandated if growing NZ community Covid risks with serious consequences are to be avoided.
Grant Avery, Upper Hutt.
As charged
In response to Neal Barclay's piece (NZ Herald, January 5), I can understand how one could explain the waste spilling of 28GWh of electricity as a safety precaution.
Meridian is a limited liability company, majority-owned by the NZ Government and, as such, is charged with doing the best it can for its shareholders. It is in the business of selling electricity, as much as it can and for the highest price it can achieve.
There is little incentive to start doing things such as redesigning the distribution "system" to facilitate the use of distributed solar alternatives, subsidising heat pump hot water systems, embracing ripple control as a core distribution service.
When energy companies have a primary goal of reducing reliance on fossil fuels and encouraging energy-thrifty technologies, then I will give some credence to such statements.
Maurice Robertson, Torbay.
Rate intervention
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, unemployment is high and residents are struggling with the high rent and the cost of living. Even the Ministers and Members of Parliament are not getting any increase in their remuneration. How on earth does the Hamilton City Council seek residents' approval for an 8.9 per cent rate increase?
In the previous 10-year plan, rates were supposed to increase by only 3.8 per cent. The proposed 8.9 per cent is made up of 4.4 per cent general rate plus 4.5 per cent to shoulder the cost of the Government's "three waters" reforms as well as some district plan costs.
If the Government understands the situation and stops remuneration increases to parliamentarians, why does it want to put the burden on residents?
How can the residents, tenants, pensioners, and the unemployed afford to pay a rate increase of 8.9 per cent?
Mano Manoharan, Hamilton.
