Benchmarking

Benchmarking comes in two forms: internal and external.

Internal benchmarking is the process of comparing the current state of one's practice against historical performance. Internal benchmarking can also help create progressive goals towards longer term objectives as bottlenecks, unnecessary expenses, etc., are defined.

External benchmarking compares one's practice against the performance of others in the same industry and/or specialty. External benchmarking can offer a window into general competitor performance as a way of seeing how effectively others perform similar tasks. Through external benchmarking, practices can see not only how they stack up, but also where they specifically fall short.

source: Ezinearticle.com

Political Rulers

Justice has hitherto been blocked (so it is said) by the interests of the dominant elites who have always controlled the state. In older versions, this argument juxtaposed rich and poor, bourgeoisie and proletariat, imperialists and subject peoples. More recent theory has focused on the relationship of oppression: whites oppressing blacks, men oppressing women, and so on. And while much of this is melodramatic caricature, it does correspond to one central feature of politics from the days of Solon to the present.



That feature is that politics has been the business of the powerful: citizens, nobles, property owners, patriarchs - all has power and status. It was essential to the idea of the state, in all its forms, that it should be an association of independent disposers of their own resources. The rights of this elite were, over the centuries, generalized to become the modern rights of universal citizenship. but they first became operational as the status enjoyed by the powerful few. It was precisely because the state was composed of masterful characters that it could not turn into a despotism. Having projects of their own, powerful individuals of this kind had no inclination whatever to become the instruments of someone else' project. This is the sense in which despotism and politics are precisely opposed. . .



Kenneth Minogue

Politics

A very Short Introduction

Oxford 1995

Atypical Australia = Melbourne

Breaking the Stereotypes.

I clearly recall standing on Collins street. The scent I arrived with and possibly still glistened from, insecticide, in which the flight attendant sprayed the plane before arrival , watching the clanging trams and swirl of humanity, thinking good lord there’s a country here, it is as if I had privately discovered life on another planet or a parallel universe where life was unrecognizably similar but entirely different, i cant tell you how excited I was, in so much as I had accumulated in the expectation of Australia.

I had thought of it as a kind of alternative southern California, A sun burnt country. A place of unlimited sunshine and the simplicity of the beach lifestyle, A sort of Baywatch with cricket as I thought of it, but this was nothing like that, Melbourne had a settled and gracious air that was much more European than north American, and it rained, it rained the whole week which delighted me inordinately because it was so totally not what i had expected, what’s more and here we come to the real strife of thing I liked it, straight off, without quibble or doubt in a way I had never expected to.

Something about it just agreed with me. I supposed it helped that i had spent half my life in America and half in Briton because Australia was such a comfortable fusion of the two.It had a casualness and vivacity that felt distinguishly American but hang on a British framework. and with their optimism and informality Australians could pass at a glance as Americans but they drove on the left, drank tea played cricket, adorned their public places with statues of queen Victoria, dressed their children in the sort of school uniforms that only a Britannic people could wear without conspicuous regret, I felt extremely comfortable with this.

Almost at once I became acutely and in an odd way delightedly aware of how little I knew about the place, I didn’t know names of their newspapers, or beaches, or universities, or suburbs, knew nothing of their history or private achievements, couldn’t tell a policeman from a post man . I loved, still do, Australian voices, and the effortlessly dry direct way of viewing the world.



Bill Bryson
In a sunburned country

Two of the 6,000 Overseas students at Monash:
Mart and Alexander from Denmark

When you come to Melbourne you feel its fairly European in a sense. . .very multicultural, more than i expected it to be. Its really hard to find a sense of what Melbourne really is. . .its everything at the same time. . .
And one of the things that actually surprised me the most is the weather, in Australia, the view that i had was the whole country was hot and warm, and i was just looking forward to coming here for one long summer.

Australia Now - Program One -Postcard From Down Under
ABC radio Australia