Word: bureaucratic
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...home educator is usually a formality. "The few who are knocked back," says Colleen Strange, Sydney-based founder of the Home Education Association, "haven't the slightest idea what they're doing." Registration comes up for renewal every year or two - when, in most parts of Australia, a bureaucrat will pay a visit to check that the child is making progress. It may be interesting to ponder how much you've retained of what you learned at school. Those who've forgotten umpteen mathematical formulas and the periodic table are generally none the worse for it. Though there's much...
...stops and Mexico begins," says Laredo mayor Betty Flores. "It's where the U.S. blends into Mexico." Both sides regard their sovereign governments as distant and dysfunctional. They are proud of their ability to take care of themselves, solve their problems faster and cheaper than any faraway bureaucrat. The Brownsville, Texas, fire trucks answer sirens on the other side; in Tijuana, Mexico, health clinics send shuttle buses every morning to meet people coming over for everything from dentistry to dialysis. The school district in Mission, Texas, among the state's poorest, sends its old furniture over the border to help...
...long been celebrated by Church conservatives as the architect of Pope John Paul II's doctrinal policy and vilified by progressives as the panzerkardinal who defended Catholic orthodoxy with the impenetrability of a tank. Yet Ratzinger's quotidian reality was essentially that of an exalted Catholic Church bureaucrat. Working the day shift at Church headquarters for 23 years meant studying and safeguarding the Gospels, not preaching it. On March 31, Ratzinger was in his Vatican office when the phone rang with bad news. John Paul's long and brave battle with failing health looked to be nearing...
...when truck drivers, factory hands and bakers are in a skirmish with their circadian rhythms, the 56-year-old cotton farmer from Moree, in northern New South Wales, is in bed whirling his mind through a problem. Estens might be crafting a game plan to outwit a Canberra bureaucrat or thinking of a way to motivate a juvenile criminal offender; he might be trying to understand the power structure in a small town or finessing a schmooze assault on a CEO target. This social entrepreneur finds the wee, small hours a bountiful period for clarifying ideas about his self-appointed...
...time the Dubbo meeting is over, Estens has generated a flurry of phone calls, report-backs and a soiree with a senior bureaucrat. It's been fruitful and a jolly party compared with some meetings Estens has had with public servants. "Like Colin Powell in the first Gulf War, I've threatened to use overwhelming force on some departments," says Estens. "Bureaucrats have trouble understanding my psychological game plan." To Estens' mind, the AES is "best practice indigenous employment policy" that politicians support - but which baldly reveals the failings of bureaucrats. He's scathing about the good-hearted, impotent officials...