Bureaucratic malaise – Scripturient

Collingwood’s 2026 Municipal Election, Part 2

How much more can you afford to pay in property taxes? Well, now think about paying more. A lot more. And paying a lot more every year. That’s what is forecast for the town just to keep up with rising costs, hiring more and more and more staff, and meeting the promises that politicians are making to get themselves elected. As noted in CollingwoodToday, the increase is meant to “keep up with all the plans and projects on the town’s books without dragging the town into significant debt.” But the report itself warns, “…if all currently identified projects proceeded within ……… click below for more ↓

How Not to Communicate by Email

2026-06-07 2026-06-07 Bureaucratic malaise / Language & Grammar / Publicity & Communications / Style & usage8 Comments

The average person, the MIT Communication Lab tells us, “receives ~120 emails/day and spends about 11hrs/week sorting through emails.” Matt Plummer, in a 2019 article titled, How to Spend Way Less Time on Email Every Day, adds, “The average professional spends 28% of the work day reading and answering email… that amounts to a staggering 2.6 hours spent and 120 messages received per day.” That’s a lot of content to work through every day, and a lot of time spent doing it. It behooves senders to make sure their emails are formatted and written to make the best use of ……… click below for more ↓

The Body Snatchers

2025-01-20 2025-01-20 Books & Reviews / Bureaucratic malaise / CollingwoodLeave a comment

I think it’s about time for another remake of the 1956 film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, this time instead of aliens taking over human bodies, we should have a far-right leader who creates a cult of personality that turns normal people into mindless, worshipping zombies he and his henchmen control. Oh, right: that’s not fiction. It’s actually happened: MAGA is the prominent contemporary example, but we can also turn to other rightwing parties emerging in democracies across the world, which themselves in thrall to the cults of personality created in Russia and China under Putin and Xi.* Wouldn’t that ……… click below for more ↓

The Very Model of Bureaucratic Inefficiency

2024-07-08 2024-07-08 Bureaucratic malaise / Civic engagement / Collingwood / Council / Ineptitude and bungling / Wacky WTF ideasLeave a comment

Here is the textbook model of bureaucratic inefficiency and council sluggishness that deserves a satirical Gilbert and Sullivan song of its own: Collingwood is conducting a “speed limit survey” through its user-hostile website. What’s inefficient about that, you ask… well, first consider the timeline. This survey is so complicated, so difficult to assemble, so challenging to put online it has taken the town three years to get all of the four vague questions online and ask residents what they think about the idea.* Yes, I am serious. In May 31, 2021 — THREE YEARS AGO! — Council requested “a staff ……… click below for more ↓