I woke up this morning to hear that Mark Hurd – HP’s Toxic CEO resigns after a sexual harassment investigation.

[I] “realised there were instances in which I did not live up to the standards and principles of trust, respect and integrity that I have espoused at HP

Guess what Mark – you never did!

I suppose there’s a sense of vindication here, I always believed that Mark Hurd was not only the living contradiction of everything HP’s corporate values stood for, he was also the shining example of everything wrong with corporate America.

I would be jumping for joy if it wasn’t for the very real pain he caused for thousands of people, employees, former employees, families of employees, and local economies.

I’ve written everything I wanted to say about him in the following articles;

So, I’m pleased, really pleased, that he is gone, but, given that his predecessor, Carly Fiorina, was, and still is, an idiot, and, given the seemingly nefarious nature of big Corporate America, things don’t bode well for a successor.

Recommended Reading on this subject

Thanks to our friend at FuckYouMarkHurd.com, I noticed this book [note: affiliate link - I just like how they display ok.] which looks interesting. Sound’s like this could be the closest thing to being a “fly on the wall” witnessing all the shenanigans and sleazy going’s on behind the closed doors of HP’s boardroom over the past decade.

Anthony Bianco gets to heart of the ethical morass at HP that ended up damning the entire board that created it. Almost every American has an interest in how the country’s greatest corporations are run, and the character of the people entrusted with them. The story of Hewlett-Packard reflects power struggles that shape corporate America and is an alarming morality tale for our times.

I’m going to enjoy reading this one.

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The 2010 Australian Election has me thinking that there’s no way I’m simply voting above the line this time around. Leaving it up to the major parties is not what I consider a democratic, or responsible option. The problem though is how to determine who to vote for, below the line, before you’re confronted by the ballot slip in the cardboard booth on voting day. Until now that is.

Did you know that ALP and Democrat voters helped elect Steven Fielding of the Family First Party to the Senate in 2004?

This is one of the more interesting sites I’ve discovered in the course of the Australian 2010 election, and perhaps a shining example of how the internet is changing democracy.

Have a look at the Sydney Morning Herald article here then visit www.belowtheline.org.au

What I found very interesting was where the major parties have set ‘your’ preferences should you take the easy option and vote above the line. There’s no way that aligns with my preference at all.

Just imagine the impact we could have in the Australian 2010 election if we all voted below the line using this system? I bet the outcome would be a significantly better parliament, more robust and purposeful debate, and I’d be surprised if we didn’t rid ourselves of some of the factions that have developed over time as a result of party defined preferences.

If there ever was a time in Australian politics where we need a shake up of all the seats in the house of representatives it would have to be now. While it’s obvious that one of the two major parties will prevail I think that a new mix in the house will ensure that Government is about the Parliament as a whole, rather than the partisan stalemates we typically deal with.

I’m voting below the line, www.belowtheline.org.au makes it crazy not to.

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Australian Labor – Let’s move Australia forward, a slogan, one of the many we’re being bombarded with by both the current Government and the Opposition in the race to the Federal Election in August. A six week race full of meaningless platitudes, treating voters like imbeciles, rhetoric, and unfounded promises, which, if you consider what democracy means, would only be deliverable if we were electing a dictator, which we’re not.

Interestingly enough the NSW Labor Party’s slogan includes “A New Direction” which I presume must also be forward. The question is; forward to what?

An article in today’s Daily Telegraph entitled Kristina Keneally’s rail land grab gives a stark indication of what the reality of life under the Labor Party of Australia is like. As far as I’m concerned Federal Labour, State Labour, it’s the same bunch of vipers running the show. When you read the article you see that people are being removed from their land without choice, paid a pittance in terms of the real value of the land acquired, and then the NSW Labor Government intends to sell off any excess land to developers.

Given the history of the NSW Government under The Labor Party does anything smell fishy here?

The fact that this land grab is actually happening right now is made even more questionable in terms of Kristina Keneally’s earlier comments (March 12 2010) reported here.

“Compulsory acquisition might be part of the future,” she told Sky News.
“We won’t rule that in or out. But it would have to be done with appropriate guidelines, appropriate safeguards, appropriate rules around it.”

I don’t know about you but I’m looking for truth, integrity, and strong, committed, leadership from politicians – wishful thinking I know – so, if you are taxing me in any way, if you are taking two days pay of the five days a week I work, then you’d better act with integrity and in congruence with the message under which you were elected.

The point of all this is that I can’t make any distinction between State and Federal Labor, in fact is so much easier to see similarities. When I consider what it means to Move Australia Forward with Labor I can only determine what that means by looking back into the very recent past. Sorry, that seems like a direction I’d rather not take.

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The red pill or the blue pill?

July 17, 2010

The red pill or the blue pill question in The Matrix, a movie I really enjoy (the 1st one that is) represents, for me, the question, or continual enquiry, do you choose to see the world how you have been conditioned to think it is, or do you choose to see it how it actually [...]

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Kevin Rudd’s hard day at the office

June 25, 2010

Kevin Rudd found out the hard way this week that democracy moves in tough ways, particularly here in Australia. My opinion is that, regardless of what we think of the brutality of Rudd’s sacking, the Labor party factions saw the writing on the wall and made the move that the electorate would have given the [...]

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Twitter – How I built my Twitter Following

March 29, 2010

How I built my Twitter following is a subject that I really hadn’t considered in detail until a friend, and former colleague, asked me this question. I thought you might be a good person to ask how to go about building an audience for your blogs etc? I saw that you’ve got around 10,000 followers [...]

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Scribe SEO Plugin – taking the pain out of SEO copywriting

February 26, 2010

The Scribe SEO WordPress plugin appealed to me immediately. Let’s face it, optimizing copy for SEO has to be about as exciting as an episode of the Kardashian’s – painful, and excruciatingly boring. I have a reasonably good handle on SEO copywriting, but, with a business hell bent on world domination, a 20 month old [...]

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The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

February 23, 2010

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell first interested me when I was considering what exactly it is that makes something “go viral” or what it is when society suddenly changes direction. Obviously viral marketing is something we are keenly interested in with our business where we specialise in making our Customers business opportunities become reality. [...]

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Mark Hurd and HP, economic opportunism and greed, one year on.

January 30, 2010

Mark Hurd’s tenure as HP’s CEO continues to raise a passionate response. It’s almost one year since I wrote my original post about HP under Mark Hurd called HP Pay Cuts – an unfair act of economic opportunism and greed so with that, and approximately 1300 comments later, I think its fitting to round out [...]

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An easy explanation of Derivative Markets

November 23, 2009

I have been kicking this around for some time and I think I have finally narrowed it down to an explanation intelligible to all. “An Easily Understandable Explanation of Derivative Markets” Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit . She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, [...]

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