No leadership
MARIA SLADE’S article on the damage to productivity misses the point. There are many managers in business but very few leaders. With a military background, I have specialised in quality in recent years and I have always argued that the greatest impediment to quality, which includes productivity and reduction of waste, is a lack of leadership. It is my experience that many managers are very poor leaders, and only serve their own interests, not those of their staff and the business. Even the Government demonstrates this priority towards self-interest, irrespective of party.
Many of these people are very skilled at playing the political games, taking credit for others’ work, and discrediting those they perceive as threats. Qualifications do not necessarily make good leaders, and a lack of them does not mean a poor leader.
‘‘What, precisely,’’ says FitzSimons, ‘‘are they guilty of? . . . Perhaps they were guilty of criminal negligence, or even mere negligence? . . . Or does the fault lie [with] a young nurse who could think her life was no longer worth living because she had put a call through to a royal ward? . . . I rest my case . . .’’
What about section 248 of the New Zealand Crimes Act 1961? Everyone is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding seven years who personates or represents himself or herself to be any person, living or dead, with intent to fraudulently obtain, for himself or any other person, a benefit.
The benefit sought in the present case, as any jury properly instructed would accept, was an increase in the advertising revenues of the radio station.
A similar law presumably exists in the UK and Australia. Plainly it is long past time for it to be given effect to. IT IS appalling that Will Anderson is trying to pass the buck on the ‘‘prank call’’ debacle by blaming ‘‘the kids’’. Michael Christian graduated from Australia Film, Television & Radio School in 2004. Even if it was just a one-year programme, which his LinkedIn profile doesn’t specify, he is around 27 years old. Mel Greig, according to an internet search, is 30 years old. Neither one of them qualify as ‘‘kids’’. While the outcome of their stupidity could not have been foreseen, it doesn’t change the fact that they are inadvertently responsible for the death of Jacintha Saldanha, and should be held accountable. violence which is inflicted on mothers and their unborn in abortion facilities. On this violence the committee is silent. The prolife movement is opposed to violence against women, their unborn children and to harassment and violence against abortionists or their families. The attack on the pro-life movement by Jackie Edmund from Family Planning is predictable. The Family Planning Association is the major abortion referral agency in New Zealand and promotes abortion. The pro-life movement is pro-women and pro-life, its members have a right to stand outside abortion facilities to offer women seeking an abortion assistance to keep their baby. Many women, abandoned by the father of their child, are coerced into seeking an abortion because there was no help, and are grateful someone cared to help them keep their baby. believe high population density leads to good, go live in Haiti for a while. YOUR CORRESPONDENT Mark McKenzie aptly dispelled the myth that a large population is necessary for prosperity ( Letters, December 9). A nation does not need a large population to prosper, as Singapore, Luxembourg, Denmark, the Nordic nations and 1950s New Zealand so amply demonstrate. Bad policy decisions, particularly Rogernomics and immigration, explain New Zealand’s abysmal economic performance, not our small population, remoteness or the global financial crisis. Those are excuses. A nation’s living standards are determined by its national income and the number of people sharing that national income. Nations A and B have an identical population of 4.4 million. A’s $30 billion export income gives it a national income of $170 billion and a per capita income of $38,000. Nation B is an export powerhouse. $100 billion of export income gives it a huge $300b national income and a per capita income of $70,000, or very high living standards. Nation A is where we are at; nation B is where we should be.