Home Accessibility Courses Twitter The Mouth Facebook Resources Site Map About Us Contact
 
For 2023 (and 2024 ...) - we are now fully retired from IT training.
We have made many, many friends over 25 years of teaching about Python, Tcl, Perl, PHP, Lua, Java, C and C++ - and MySQL, Linux and Solaris/SunOS too. Our training notes are now very much out of date, but due to upward compatability most of our examples remain operational and even relevant ad you are welcome to make us if them "as seen" and at your own risk.

Lisa and I (Graham) now live in what was our training centre in Melksham - happy to meet with former delegates here - but do check ahead before coming round. We are far from inactive - rather, enjoying the times that we are retired but still healthy enough in mind and body to be active!

I am also active in many other area and still look after a lot of web sites - you can find an index ((here))
Should the public sector compete with businesses? and other deep questions

If you find yourself thinking about something you saw six months ago, then it must have had an effect on you. And it's more than six months since I saw a sign in Cambridge advertising "free computer lessons".

Why does it keep coming back to me - this yellow sign, tied to some railing to promote some local college or other? Because I found that it crystalised an anger that at times The State uses my money and yours - taxpayers money - to provide a non-core service which competes on a very unfair basis with businesses. Yes - we need The State to defend the country, to provide law and order, to co-ordinate the elements that naturally need co-ordination and to provide a safety net for the health, wellbeing and fundamental education of us all.

All too often, it seems, The State, or its agents in more local government, step in and provide (or help to provide) something which is non-core and competes with businesses (sometimes involving themselves in areas which have previously been the remit of businesses), or over-regulate or over-specify. At times it's utterly frustrating to find that we're not able to provide a room for hire because some state organisation is already doing it for free doing it at the taxpayer's expense. And it's also frustrating to have to wade through half a tree of inane and duplicated terms and conditions - "you will provide suitable equipment", "you will CRB check your staff where appropriate", "you will provide appropriate seating" - all of which come simply come down in my eyes to "you will follow English law in the fulfillment of any contract".

So why do we end up with such a mountain of paperwork, and situations where the public sector has expanded to encroach into some very surprising areas? Part of it is job-justification and empire building. But another clue comes in my mailbox, where a local parish council is blustering about the closure of a local technical learning centre, and the bandwagon is joined by a local terrier for the elderly, who feels that his congretation should get preferrential and free treatment. But this is an understandable reaction, as such things have been provided free free at the point of use in the past, and have probably been great vote-winners for the people who provide them.

It would be very much easier, and very much more cost effective too, for us as a small business to be able to work with reduced paperwork, and not to have to compete with ourselves which - in effect - we're doing as we are the taxpayers that are funding all this "big government" stuff. But at the same time, I fear that a move in this direction planned under the current regime might turn our to be mostly cutting back on stuff, rather than redirecting it to more appropriate society and business channels - "We're going to stop doing X so you can do it if you want, but you won't really be able to do it as the financial infrastructure won't be there". a.k.a. "You can do this locally now, but we're capping the local organisations that would help seed it".




We respect the elderly.

Each in their own way has made a major contribution to society over the years, and through their middle ages nearly every one of them has been given responsibility for managing themselves, their own wellbeing and spending, and their own lives.

So why is it that we take away from them, at a certain age, the right to spend their money as they see fit? Why is it that we don't simply pay the money that society puts into the elderly directly to them and let them choose whether they want to spend it on a day out to Bath, or a nice meal at the Silk Mercer? Ah - another case of big government, I fear!

For sure - as we get elderly, we get more vulnerable. We need extra service and we won't have been able to make every decision earlier in life knowing what's going to happen later in our own particular lives, so there is a case for buffered / insured / state help in later years. And it's a sign of a caring society to provide it - but oh dear, we don't half overdo it sometimes, and it's little wonder that we have the radical local terrier described in the previous paragraphs - and others like him - demanding free this, free that, and preferential treatment here for his flock.

We have a society which many believe "owes" them a living / a life. I suppose that's natural; when we're very young, it's our parents who support us - to the hilt. In early childhood, contributions are purely symbolic, and it's easy (too easy) for parents to continue on asking for only minor contributions - or none at all - as the child grows to a teenager and even a young adult. This is the "couch potato", with parent cooking, washing clothes, bedmaking and all the rest. There's a rude shock, then, when the son or daughter gets to the point at which they can and should be taking major responsibilities for themself/ves. Some - many - do it naturally but all too many feel that "society owes them". And we end up with a "gimme" society.

I was struck when recruiting recently by the contrast between the two groups. Several applicants didn't approach us directly, but rather we got a call from mum, or a wife approaches us to ask if we've a job for her husband. Yet that's even better than the countless people who are out there, I understand, living off the various forms of government finance, perfectly capable of doing something / making arrangement which will let them finance themselves ... but who don't even have the gumption to apply. The incredible thing is that some of those who did apply have circumstances which actually mean that they've got far less slack / buffer time in which to work, but never the less have the enthusiasm and drive to have applied and indeed to have (in some cases) filled roles. And I'm proud to have a team that's enthusiastic, and well rounded outside our work too.




"What a useful piece of software. It would be so useful to me - can you sell me a copy?"

"No - I can't, I'm afraid; I work for a government organisation and we're not in the business of writing and selling software as that would be competing with private industry"

I'm not sure how true - or appocrafull - this story is, but it's the story that's told about Perl - the Practical Extraction and Reporting Language - that was initially written by Larry Wall when working for a US Government organisation. Larry had, I understand, to extract summary reports from large amounts of data, which was distributed between six machines on a network spread between the east and west coast of the USA - and with a "fast" (1200 baud, the rumour tells me) modem connection between them.

"But ... " thought - and said - Larry "I can give you a copy. After all, it was written with taxpayer funding and you're a taxpayer ... and there's nothing secret or classified about it". And thus was born (it is said) the Open Source movement.

Note that my sources on this story are somewhat hear-say, so you should consider it to be true in gist, not in detail!

Since its initial release in 1988, Perl has become a vital component used in many software solutions. The blog on which I publish these ramblings is written in Perl, and I've taught Perl to the staff of dozens hundreds of different organisations. And that's just me - I'm a very very minor cog indeed in the Perl World.

Perl is a fantisatic tool - but it's easy to use once you know it well, rather than being easy to learn; there's something of a seesaw decision to be made in this respect when you're specifyin a product and Larry chose ease of use. [about the image].

Although we're a small company in a small town in England, we find that we're providing a service in not only training people in Perl - (See our course range), but also in providing answers to people - not so much an FAQ, but an IAQ (Infrequently Answered Questions) where people find our web site in a search to find out about bless or SUPER or @_. Monday to Friday traffic is typically 3 to 4 times higher than Saturday and Sunday traffic (a conform that tells us that we are reaching commercial readers and not just automata!), yet even yesterday - A Saturday - we had double figures looking at each of the following


[link] Perl, $_ and @_

[link] Perl, STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR and DATA file handles

[link] Changing @INC to control where Perl loads its modules

[link] Perl's Substitute operator

[link] The ? - : operator

[link] Perl Regular Expression modifiers

[link] Turning seconds into days, hours, minutes and seconds

[link] The x operator in Perl

[link] Out of memory during array extend in Perl

[link] Last element in a Perl or Python list

[link] Perl - doing several things at the same time

I guess whether it's Perl, state's big business, or the amount of regulation it all comes down to that balance again - which way should the seesaw go? Thank you for reading; I'm afraid I'm going to disappoint you by not coming to any conclusions - but at least I may have triggered some thoughts.
(written 2010-09-26)

 
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
Z300 - Politics and Religion
  [216] Cheap purchase - votes paid for with selfish promises - (2005-02-15)
  [257] Politics gets nasty. Must be an election coming up. - (2005-03-25)
  [280] Spotted - the local MP - (2005-04-15)
  [289] MP for Devizes, Wiltshire - (2005-04-23)
  [301] General Election day, UK - (2005-05-05)
  [313] Making bona fide international marriages more difficult - (2005-05-16)
  [326] UK Tax payment totals and where the money is spent - (2005-05-27)
  [335] Sad priorities - (2005-06-03)
  [377] A Strengthened City - (2005-07-14)
  [384] Managing conflict and disappointment - (2005-07-20)
  [415] Campaign Drift and efficiency. - (2005-08-15)
  [469] Yesterday was Kiss and Ride - (2005-10-19)
  [505] Would you steal ... petrol? ... a training course? - (2005-11-26)
  [539] rich and famous - (2005-12-23)
  [602] MP face to face - (2006-02-12)
  [607] On being British - (2006-02-14)
  [671] Both ends of the animal - (2006-04-05)
  [674] Wiltshire to get an extra MP - (2006-04-07)
  [682] Iran has enriched uranium ... - (2006-04-12)
  [696] Is than an uphill or downhill task? - (2006-04-23)
  [750] Almost everyone loses - (2006-06-07)
  [780] Separation and Integration - (2006-06-27)
  [875] Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones - (2006-09-22)
  [967] Realistic on line shoot'em up - (2006-12-05)
  [1003] Room at the Inn, Guy at the station - (2006-12-21)
  [1060] What a relief from the tax office. - (2007-02-01)
  [1109] False imprisonment - a contrast from the news - (2007-03-15)
  [1135] Government pressure on me to shut up after I make the papers - (2007-04-05)
  [1175] Local elections - choosing who to vote for - (2007-05-03)
  [1247] An afternoon at a public enquiry - (2007-06-27)
  [1260] An inspirational business talk from one of our prospective MPs - (2007-07-06)
  [1350] FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) Western Region - (2007-09-13)
  [1386] New software product for warmblooded programmers - (2007-10-10)
  [1428] Travel Across Wiltshire - the game - (2007-11-11)
  [1526] Carers at work - court case changes - (2008-02-01)
  [1573] Budget tax increases hit vehicle market - (2008-03-14)
  [1579] Rome, and the faith of Rome - (2008-03-17)
  [1729] Back from the future - (2008-07-30)
  [1769] July child ponders on August children - (2008-08-23)
  [1872] Barack Obama wins US Predidency - (2008-11-05)
  [1881] Wiltshire Council says - part 1 - (2008-11-13)
  [1882] Wiltshire Council says - part 2 - (2008-11-14)
  [1987] One Cheer for Local Democracy - Asda in Melksham - (2009-01-11)
  [2012] The Wiltshire Police - (2009-01-29)
  [2028] Things people say on the phone - (2009-02-06)
  [2075] Supporting Parkinsons and Trains - (2009-03-11)
  [2178] Melksham Candidates for Wiltshire Unitary Election - (2009-05-12)
  [2206] Spot the odd one out - (2009-05-29)
  [2257] Ramblings on church and state linkage in Melksham - (2009-06-25)
  [2270] Wiltshire - a chance to improve life for everybody - (2009-07-05)
  [2279] Understanding the new local government structure in Wiltshire - (2009-07-11)
  [2288] Wiltshire Community Area Partnerships - (2009-07-15)
  [2353] All change - Wiltshire Parliamentary - (2009-08-13)
  [2640] How is your tax pound spent? - (2010-02-18)
  [2689] Can my dog eat potatoes? Doggie Dietary Research, and political sleaze! - (2010-03-23)
  [2712] A more informed decision than ever before - (2010-04-08)
  [2740] Melksham Hustings at George Ward School - (2010-04-26)
  [2752] Voting day - UK General Election - (2010-05-06)
  [2757] Bodicea, Lincoln, and our new MP - (2010-05-09)
  [2792] Should Government compete with private industry? - (2010-06-03)
  [2824] A pint of Black Rat, and a lazy barman - (2010-06-25)
  [2856] Two sides of the coin - (2010-07-06)
  [2864] Changing with weather and seasons - (2010-07-10)
  [2870] Old prices - what would the equivalent price have been in 1966? - (2010-07-14)
  [2948] Melksham shamefully makes the national headlines - (2010-09-07)
  [3051] Positively reforming the system - could it be done? - (2010-11-14)
  [3264] Alternative Vote (AV) - explaining and an example - (2011-04-25)
  [3313] What does our MP do on a Bank Holiday? - (2011-05-30)
  [3323] Is Melksham town centre dying? - (2011-06-11)
  [3325] The Olympic Torch, and Melksham House - (2011-06-14)
  [3438] Melksham to become a part of Trowbridge? - (2011-09-13)
  [3592] Are we one man, one vote? No, and we never have been. - (2012-01-26)
  [3676] Rising prices, changing habits and society - (2012-03-31)
  [3806] 2011 Census results - initial figures for Wiltshire. - (2012-07-17)
  [3845] Good cause giving - getting the charity beggars off the street - (2012-08-21)
  [3905] How should we choose our Wiltshire Police and Crime Commissioner? - (2012-10-27)
  [3921] On rememberance, on war, and on preventing the war cycle - (2012-11-11)
  [4079] Melksham Area - Unitary Council results, May 2013 - (2013-05-04)
  [4223] Democracy - alive and well with the beauty pagent starting up again - (2013-12-16)
  [4275] Eurpoean Elections, and other elections ahead. Some thoughts on campaigns and policies - (2014-05-08)
  [4286] Reaction in Radstock to new First bus prices - (2014-07-12)
  [4343] Politics and the railway the connects Wiltshire - (2014-12-06)
  [4354] Wiltshire Police - assuming someone is guilty just on the say-so of a member of the public? - (2014-12-16)
  [4476] Upcoming election - Chippenham Constituency - the major candidates compared - (2015-04-29)
  [4485] Misusing statistics? - the seedy side of election campaigning - (2015-05-04)
  [4489] Election results - what if we had a party list system? - (2015-05-08)
  [4548] Melksham - two small townships, or one big one? - (2015-10-22)
  [4597] Not standing as your local councillor - (2015-12-18)
  [4614] PC Plod - alive and scaremongering in Wiltshire? - (2016-01-04)
  [4625] Where does Wiltshire bus subsidy money come from? - (2016-01-19)
  [4720] Celebrating our diversity rather than discriminating for it - (2016-11-02)
  [4725] Writing Python 2 such that Python 3 is easy - (2016-11-06)
  [4729] The oldest part of Los Angeles - (2016-11-23)
  [4734] Thoughts on the new Blackmore Ward of Melksham Without Parish - (2017-02-22)
  [4735] Revisiting - should I stand for Melksham Without Parish Council in May? - (2017-02-24)

Q777 - Object Orientation and General technical topics - Technology Overviews
  [1513] Perl, PHP or Python? No - Perl AND PHP AND Python! - (2008-01-20)
  [1976] Where is this IP address, IPv4 and IPv6 - (2009-01-04)
  [2607] Answers on Ruby on Rails - (2010-01-30)

P050 - Perl - General
  [116] The next generation of programmer - (2004-11-13)
  [400] New in the shops - (2005-08-01)
  [743] How to debug a Perl program - (2006-06-04)
  [1750] Glorious (?) 12th August - what a Pe(a)rl! - (2008-08-12)
  [1897] Keeping on an even keel - (2008-11-21)
  [2228] Where do I start when writing a program? - (2009-06-11)
  [2242] So what is this thing called Perl that I keep harping on about? - (2009-06-15)
  [2374] Lead characters on Perl variable names - (2009-08-24)
  [2504] Learning to program in ... - (2009-11-15)
  [2736] Perl Course FAQ - (2010-04-23)
  [2783] The Perl Survey - (2010-05-27)
  [2825] Perl course - is it tailored to Linux, or Microsoft Windows? - (2010-06-25)
  [3093] How many toilet rolls - hotel inventory and useage - (2010-12-18)
  [3322] How much has Perl (and other languages) changed? - (2011-06-10)
  [3332] DNA to Amino Acid - a sample Perl script - (2011-06-24)
  [3407] Perl - a quick reminder and revision. Test yourself! - (2011-08-26)
  [3823] Know Python or PHP? Want to learn Perl too? - (2012-07-31)
  [3902] Shell - Grep - Sed - Awk - Perl - Python - which to use when? - (2012-10-22)
  [3911] How well do you know Perl and / or Python? - (2012-11-04)
  [4296] Polishing the Perl courses - updated training - (2014-09-17)
  [4301] Perl - still a very effective language indeed for extracting and reporting - (2014-09-20)


Back to
Perl - doing several things at the same time
Previous and next
or
Horse's mouth home
Forward to
Some more advanced Perl examples from a recent course
Some other Articles
Why do I need brackets in Ruby ... or Perl, Python, C or Java
Formatting your output - options available in Ruby
Learning to program - where to start if you have never programmed before
Some more advanced Perl examples from a recent course
Should the public sector compete with businesses? and other deep questions
Perl - doing several things at the same time
What does blessing a variable in Perl mean?
Well House Consultants - a potted history
Multiway branches in Perl - the given and when syntax
Cheap Country Hotel in Melksham, Wiltshire?
4759 posts, page by page
Link to page ... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96 at 50 posts per page


This is a page archived from The Horse's Mouth at http://www.wellho.net/horse/ - the diary and writings of Graham Ellis. Every attempt was made to provide current information at the time the page was written, but things do move forward in our business - new software releases, price changes, new techniques. Please check back via our main site for current courses, prices, versions, etc - any mention of a price in "The Horse's Mouth" cannot be taken as an offer to supply at that price.

Link to Ezine home page (for reading).
Link to Blogging home page (to add comments).

You can Add a comment or ranking to this page

© WELL HOUSE CONSULTANTS LTD., 2024: 48 Spa Road • Melksham, Wiltshire • United Kingdom • SN12 7NY
PH: 01144 1225 708225 • EMAIL: info@wellho.net • WEB: http://www.wellho.net • SKYPE: wellho

PAGE: http://www.wellho.net/mouth/2971_Sho ... tions.html • PAGE BUILT: Sun Oct 11 16:07:41 2020 • BUILD SYSTEM: JelliaJamb