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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 30th, 2023

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  • But Dr Terrill said the easiest and cheapest solution was to implement congestion charge

    This is the kind of thinking that got us into this mess. If you want people to take PT then improve PT rather than making non-PT worse. Don’t punish people for suffering at the hands of a problem that decades of successive governments, the same ones that now want to charge them for it, have created, contributed to, or simply ignored. If someone has spent tens of thousands on something that costs thousands more to register, insure, fuel, and maintain, so they can sit in a stop-start grind for 60-90 min just to get to work, how bad must the alternatives be?

    The simple fact is every day heaps of people are trying to get to or from the same place at the same time. PT definitely helps, and would have to remain part of the solution in one form or another, but ultimately it still masks the same place, same time issue. I can’t help but think that getting away from the “CBD” mindset would remove so many issues. And shorter term, stop trying to force people back into the office. Less people needing to go anywhere at all, and those that do aren’t all converging on the same point. Winning.

    Of course you also have groups like CBD landlords, car manufacturers, fuel companies etc etc as well as govt budgets that have a vested interest in things not changing, and the safest political move is to just take more money from people who will grumble, but have no choice but to cough up. Rinse and repeat.

    Shitting on cars seems popular but imho that is lazy activism, the problem isn’t “cars”, it’s a bunch of things all contributing to them being necessary in situations where they shouldn’t be.









  • You’re spot on, however the pervasiveness of this kind of data collection and analysis seems to have really picked up in recent years.

    In my workplace a similar tool was put in place to keep an eye out for potential fraud, sensitive data being shared, that kind of thing, but at least one exec very quickly started asking questions about “enhancing” it, laughingly suggesting it could help identify flight risks in areas they’re looking to cut headcount in, so they could “remove barriers to their exit” rather than having to pay severance. (To quote the great philosopher Nelly, “I’m just kidding like Jason… unless you’re gonna do it”)

    Don’t forget too that this is just monitoring chats, there are plenty of other sources of data that could be used against you if so desired.

    IMHO the issue isn’t so much that people are using work-controlled platforms to say things that workplace doesn’t like (though that is an issue), it’s more the shift in the employer mindset that tools like this enable, and the huge imbalance it can create when it comes to salary negotiations, constructive dismissal, mass layoffs, union busting, etc.