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Not a got up job? Rubbish!

I am dog tired and just on my way to bed after spending the last 4 days making 24 fruit cakes (56 kilos) and 600 food bars but I just wanted to share something with you.
I was standing at the kitchen bench tonight rolling out a mix of food bars. Julie had left the TV on in the lounge when she went out. Julia Gillard was being grilled by a TV journo and my mind got to thinking, as minds do, what I would say if she and I met and she asked me for my vote. Knowing that the whole two party political thing the world over is a got up job just to make us think we have a voice, various thoughts ran through my head. None of them complimentary and few of them polite about either political party in this or any other country. Crooks and shysters, corrupted con men almost to a man or woman, the lot of them, is my opinion.
I could hear her dismissive “Oh, you’re a conspiracy theorist!” retort and wondered how I would counter that. Not for her edification, no point there, but for anyone without a vested interest and unappraised of “the way things are” who overhead the retort. How would I get them to look at the fact that it’s all a charade.
I had just watched a bit of news while eating dinner and seen the floods in Pakistan, the US withdrawal of troops from Iraq, only to send them back to Afghanistan later. The war there. The countless lives lost or destroyed because of those two illegal wars. Yesterday I saw a representation of the number of IEDs exploded in Afghanistan over the course of the war and the fact that the US troops there are protecting the opium poppy crops rather than destroying them and the thousands of lives destroyed by drugs as a result of that.
I had come to the conclusion that all conditions, both good and bad, exist because someone wants them that way. Someone is making them the way they are.
Then it occurred to me. The Taliban cannot buy weapons without funds. You cannot tell me with all their intelligence and muscle, the US could not find out who is supplying the funds and who is supplying the arms to the Taliban. You cannot tell me if there was one person in high command, genuinely interested in putting an end to all of it, that he would not get a message to the banker and the arms manufacturer involved and threaten to break both his legs and the legs of every member of his family if another dollar of funds or another gun or round of ammunition made it to the Taliban. The funds and bullets would dry up so quickly the whole countryside would be quiet as a church graveyard at midnight within six months.
Not a got up job? Rubbish!
Conspiracies? Anyone who doesn’t believe in conspiracies is living in a fairyland that’s not of this world!
The biggest conspiracy of all is that there is no conspiracy!
During WWII the Nazis figured to add fluoride to the water to make the population more docile and less likely to resist\protest. Guess what? It worked.
Still have reservations? Go watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b6kf5PIzX4

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Social CRM, A Recycled Buzzword or Sustainable Busines Strategy?

This is a reply to Michael Brito’s article at http://www.site-reference.com/articles/General/Social-CRM-A-recycled-buzzword-or-a-sustainable-business-strategy.html
Excellent article Michael! First I’ve heard of the concept and you have done a good job of outlining some of the major challenges but I fear you have left out the bull in the china shop. I observe that the ability of the average person to communicate adequately is actually reducing over time. One could argue that the more data one has about the customer with whom one engages, the more likely one is to interact appropriately. If so, why is the divorce rate rising? Surely one knows most about the person with whom one spends the most time? If so, why the disconnect?
My take is that the whole social CRM concept is more applicable to interactions between senior management than it is between call centre staff and end users. Senior management are senior management in part because they are more intelligent and better communicators.
Another factor is the anonymity of many people’s actions on the internet. The anti-social persons are the most dangerous. One could argue that the most important indicators of an anti-social person’s lack of social responsibility are hidden behind their anonymity – you cannot identify them as the cause of their destructive posts.
Anyway, thanks for the post. Food for thought.