Go one, have another one. Who's counting?

How much would you spend on a new dress? Or for you girls out there, on a new car?
Now how much would you spend if you were only going to wear/drive it three times? What if you were only going to use it once?
Yes, of course if you were not going to derive much use out of it, you’re less likely to spend vast sums of money on it, correct?
So keeping that idea of frugal efficiency in the front of your mind, let’s look at drainage design. Yes, I know. I can hear you all saying, “But that’s the fourth article I’ve read this week on drainage...” But bear with me, I’m sure you’ll learn something new here:)

Let’s say you’re the mayor of an Israeli town, let’s call it Mazkeret-Yankele-on-the-Galilee, and the town is in need of a complete overhaul of its drainage system, which is simply lots of large, generally tubular pipes, underground, that carry away rainwater. And Israel, for most of the year is generally dry (and hot and sunny, which is wonderful). So what size should the pipes be? Yes, you think this should be a straight-forward question for the City Engineer, only I forgot to mention that in our scenario the City Engineer for Mazkeret-Yankele-on-the-Galilee happens to be your brother-in-law who, though a fully qualified engineer with a framed certificate in Latin, lorem ipsum, from one of the finest technical colleges of Swaziland hanging on his wall, just by chance missed that lecture on pipe sizes. So he’s passed the buck to you.

Clearly the bigger the pipe, the costlier it is. One short pipe alone could cost thousands of shekels, so if you decide on a 50cm diameter pipe, instead of a 40cm diameter pipe, then the cost of the entire project could jump by millions.

A problem, true? Which is why you’re not an engineer in real life. Or probably why you’re not mayor either.
How does the engineer go about it? Well he takes a look at precipitation tables. Or, in other words, rainfall figures. How much does it actually rain in Mazkeret-Yankele? you ask. (This is a brilliant question, well done, maybe you should run for mayor). And thanks to the sterling work of the Israel Meteorological Service and friends, we have such tables. Now what?
Well the engineer can design a network based on a size of pipe that will be capable of dealing with the rainfall that occurs in a typical year, and in some not-so-typical years too. But according to the tables, maybe once in every 25 years there will be a storm of such magnitude that the drains will not be able to cope. There’ll be flooding, mayhem and havoc. There’ll be flotsam and jetsam, and then’sam. There’ll be calls for resignations, and lawsuits, and homes wrecked. Which could all be avoided if the engineer chose a larger pipe. Only that would be more expensive.
This now becomes not an engineering issue but a political and municipal one. The size of pipe, and hence the total amount spent on a drainage system, boils down to a question of: How often is the town willing to put up with flooding - once every 25 years? or, if Mazkeret Yankele was awash with cash, once every 50 years?

Now I may be exaggerating but sometimes it appears as if the drainage systems of some Israeli cities work on the once-in-a-year principle. In other words, the council chose a size of pipe that is able to deal with all rainfall up to, but not including those heavy storms that occur... um... well every year, actually. Our drainage systems work superbly for most of the year (i.e. summer), but fail to cope when it rains. Last week, it rained in Tel Aviv and I literally had to wade across King George Street, which had become King George River.

The same principle can apply to roads too, but here Israeli town planners apparently lean to the other extreme. A town has to decide how wide each road should be: It should be wide enough to deal with the traffic that uses it, but there are busy times of day (rush hour) or year (Independence Day) when traffic is heavy, and other times (nighttime) when it’s dead quiet. So how many lanes should there be? One can see plenty of examples of three- and four-lane roads crossing the country, which for most of the day are empty. Here’s one in Tel Aviv (photo taken at 9am on a normal workday, January 2012):

Would it not be more sensible to design narrower roads with fewer lanes, freeing up more space for housing, parks, public areas? And improve the public transport system that would reduce the expected traffic flow during those peak hours of the day?

It’s not such a crazy idea. Have a look at the House of Commons in England. This is the chamber where 650 members of parliament meet, discuss, argue and pass legislation, but how many seats are there? About 408 (It’s difficult to be precise as there are no individual chairs, but rather long upholstered benches). When the chamber was originally built in 1860, and again when it was rebuilt after being bombed in the Second World War, the decision was made that it should be that size. Why? Because most of the time, the chamber is bare. Not many turn up for the debates. And when there is something special on, having elected representatives sitting in the aisles, or on each others’ laps, simply adds to the atmosphere:)

I predict (and my prediction is being given here free, for you, no purchase necessary) that at some time in the future, we will see road-narrowing in Israel.

We shall fight them on the beaches and in the counting houses

Could you lend me 100 shekels? Let’s make that 1000 shekels. No sorry, I mean, 14,000 shekels, and I promise never to pay it back.

Sounds like a good deal? No, I didn’t think so either, but you’ve already done it, and you just didn’t know it.

Let’s assume you are an ordinary (of course, I don’t mean ordinary, in many ways you are spectacular and incredible, which is why you’re reading my blog, and why we’ve been friends for all these years), I mean, let’s assume you are a regular Israeli taxpayer. Well then you have given (and will give) thousands of shekels to pay for others who have either misplaced their money, or thought it would be far funnier if they got you (yes you, no not him next to you, YOU) to cough up.
I am of course referring to public sector non-contributory pensions, but if I’d written that in the first line, you’d have gone off and watched Downton Abbey. True? True:)

Now many people get put off by the word “pension”, and I agree, it hardly sets the heart racing. And if we add on “non-contributory”, well, even I nearly dropped off to sleep just typing it.

In Hebrew the term used is pensia taktsivit (תקציבית (פנסיה which is a wonderful euphemism. It literally means budgetary pension, which of course makes no sense to anyone at all. If they called it by the English term “non-contributory” then you’d begin to understand the problem, and at the same time it would rankle all those public sector workers who are generally having a laugh at our expense.

Let’s pick for our example a 43 year old, Dror Mishtalem, who works as a logistics officer in the Israel Defense Forces. He’s clocked up over 20 years of service in the army, and he’s soon to retire. Yes, you heard that correctly: Soon. Apparently permanent staffers in Israel’s standing army oddly become old and decrepit at an incredibly young age.
So let’s say Dror hits the ancient age of 46, and the IDF packs him off home with a pension. A pension that is determined by the size of his salary at the time of his retirement, and could easily be 10,000 shekels a month, which is greater than the average take-home pay of the typical Israeli (average salary is about NIS 8,100). And it also goes up every year, in line with inflation, noch. Plus, Dror could easily live till the age of 83, so that’s a good 37 years of retirement ahead.
In short, we’re talking about a pension worth more than 4 million shekels.
Where does this money come from?
Did Dror put some money aside each month? No.
Did his employers, the IDF, put some cash away for this inevitability? Wrong again.
Did the government, in its usual avuncular spirit, and with honed wisdom of thinking ahead, set up a fund to cover this vast sum? Pull the other one.
Then who?
Yes, you.

I think you should sit down. That’s it, have a cup of tea, or better still a stiff drink.
You, an honest taxpayer, on an average salary, are paying thousands of shekels to keep former engineers, accountants, typists, clerks, drivers, pen-pushers, officers, and maybe a few soldiers, in comfortable retirement.
Of course I say retirement, but that’s also a misnomer, because actually these people often do not retire.
Imagine you are 46, still fit, agile, capable, and by no means middle aged, and you’ve just been “retired”. You’re not going to sit at home and knit matinee jackets for the grandchildren. (Don’t ask - I’m not sure what matinee jackets are either, but Agatha Christie stories always mention them). Indeed, many former IDF staffers find new jobs almost immediately upon leaving their old ones. I used to work for an engineering company where the CEO, his deputy and the head of each department were all former army employees. And to tell the truth, they were all capable, professional individuals, that got things done. So why does the IDF dispense with them so early? Why are we paying for these people to retire so absurdly early that, despite the cushy pension, they often find themselves other jobs, with no doubt good salaries too.

Of course that NIS 4 million I mentioned is just for one person. There are thousands more like him, and most of this pension benefit is “unfunded” i.e. there is no kitty with all the money in it, but rather each month, every month, you--the taxpayer--pay in money which goes straight out again to retired army personnel. It’s called pay-as-you-go. I like that. It describes the situation well. Imagine if all working-age people in Israel suddenly got up one day and stopped working or left the country. Then the thousands of army pensioners would find they have no pensions.

So how much do all these pensions cost? Well there’s a slight disagreement here. Guesses range from NIS 100 billion to over NIS 400 billion, depending on who you ask. The army, by the way, won’t allow anyone near to assess how much it’s costing. So I conservatively took the lowest estimate. And that means a NIS 14,000 contribution each from you and you and you, hence that snazzy opening above.
Don’t be bedazzled by the Defense Minister’s waffling on about security risks, Iranian nuclear threats, and Hamas plotting. The army needs that money because it’s the largest unfunded pension scheme in the country.
And we’re paying for it.

And now a word from our sponsors

This is a classic headline from an English newspaper. It must be very very old (even I can’t remember Freddie Starr), but the point, is: What a brilliant headline! It grabbed your attention, didn’t it? Admit it:)
But one must remember that that’s the game with newspapers, or the media in general. It’s not to inform, to educate, to spread the word, but rather it’s all about selling, grabbing attention, and drumming up custom.
I once worked in the print newspaper industry (there, now you can guess my age. A newspaper? What, a real one? Made of paper? where the ink comes off in your hands? Well, I must be, what, at least 75 years old?)
And it was a real experience. One learns what to put in a headline, and what not. “Pensions” for example. This is a non-starter. As the business editor, I naturally had an article on pensions now and again, and my challenge for that shift was to get it in the paper with some snazzy headline that grabs the attention, but avoids the p-word. Well I had fun trying.
The papers have their agenda. Usually it’s stirring things up, dramatisation, exaggeration, misreporting.
Often the reporters are lazy (I’m being kind here) and simply regurgitate some story, or article from a given source, without thought or reflection or even questioning.
When I was new to the industry, working at a leading newspaper in Israel, there was a run-of-the-mill industrial dispute story, and it stated that the workers were arguing for more than 10%. So I, naively, asked the reporter “10% of what?” He hesitated, obviously momentarily thrown by the audacity of a heavily-accented newcomer, and then replied “In Israel, we just say X%”.
Now I was stunned. By his ignorance, his lack of concern, and unprofessionalism.
I won’t start comparing to when I worked for the Financial Times in London, where the reporters there were first and foremost experts of their field, and secondly reporters.
Instead, to help you see through some of the sloppiness, here are some pointers.

Resignation: You may recall that back in the summer of 2008 Ehud Olmert announced his “resignation”. Now the papers had a field-day. Who wouldn’t, with the resignation of a sitting prime minister, and especially in the case of Olmert, who was constantly being badgered at the time from left, right and centre, by accusations of corruption, general mishandling of the Lebanon War, and generally being even more incompetent than he was when he was mayor of Jerusalem. Only Olmert, wily politician (and lawyer - double whammy) was really orchestrating the event. He was the one who called the press conferences and generally managed the direction of reporting. The following day he was still prime minister, and still head of his party. In effect, it wasn’t a resignation at all. It was an advance notice that, due to popular demand, he would not be heading his party at the time of the next election. But the press just went along with what was fed them.
Cuts: This is very common in Israel. “The cabinet today argued over cuts to the budget of more than 2 billion shekels”. But when you start reading the small print you see that it’s not a cut but a redistribution. They’re actually discussing a cut from one department, say education, so that another, say defence, gets more. At the end of the day, that’s not a cut. But the Israeli press for some reason can’t bring itself to say “Government decided to spend more on defense today, but cut spending elsewhere to pay for it”.
Reforms: This is an old one. Pay close attention next time the press in Israel report on a “reform”. Reform sounds dramatic, sweeping, well thought out, far-reaching. But really all they mean is “change”. As in "VAT goes up by 1%". That’s not a reform. Simply raising or lowering an existing tax is not a reform. Abolishing income tax and instead slapping taxes on frowning, or telling an unfunny joke, now that would be a reform.
***
Some follow-up on earlier blogs:

• In ‘Why didn’t the chicken cross the road?’ (Dec. 7), I described a ridiculously pedestrian-unfriendly junction just by Komemiyut station. Well that last lane, the one without a zebra crossing, now has traffic lights. They’re not working yet, but they’re there. (It’s still an unfriendly junction, though).
• In ‘Hugh. Pugh. Barney McGrew.’ (Oct. 26) I described the laughable misnaming of the bus stop near Arlozoroff train station. Well, the other day a bus pulled up near the station, though on the other side of the intersection, and from there the station’s not readily visible. The bus did not have one of those recorded announcers. So the driver announced “Rakevet Tsfon Merkaz Savidor’ (Train North Savidor Central) which seems like plenty of information. And a young fellow, obviously not from Tel Aviv, went up to the driver and asked ‘Is this Arlozoroff?’ (Answer yes). I rest my case!

Why didn't the chicken cross the road?

Easyjet, the nofrills airline, recently covered all its flight destinations in a celebratory issue of its inflight magazine. (Yes, I know what you’re thinking. A review of an airline’s inflight magazine? What depths has this blog sunk to?!! But wait, my, friends. We’re talking about a nofrill airline, with no inflight entertainment, no meal, no drinks, no old episodes of Ramzor, no dumbed-down, child-friendly inflight version of Kill Bill. What else has one to do but read the magazine?). Anyway, the front cover of this magazine depicted each and every one of Easyjet’s destinations, from Barcelona to Inverness to Copenhagen. And there I was searching for the iconic representation of Tel Aviv. Looking... looking... Nothing! OK, well maybe some icon of Jerusalem then. Looking.... looking.... Nothing! Guess what Easyjet had chosen as their symbol for Israel.
The Holon Design Museum.
And they’re no fools. The Design Museum is a state-of-the-art museum, designed by internationally acclaimed Ron Arad, opened in March 2010, to rave reviews.
And it’s not in Tel Aviv. Or Jerusalem. Or even Haifa or Rishon. It’s in Holon.
Yes Holon. The city that never sleeps. Sorry, got that slightly wrong. Holon, the city next door the city that never sleeps. Holon (or correctly Cholon, as in Hebrew it is written with the guttural chet חולון The name comes from the Hebrew word חול chol, meaning sand) has done wonders in recent years, ever so subtly creeping up all sorts of leagues. Under the mayorship of Moti Sasson, a Holonite born and bred, the city has been awarded 5 gold stars by the Council for a Beautiful Israel. (If you’re interested, check out the Council for a Beautiful Israel. You can’t miss it, it’s housed in a concrete eyesore in the middle of Tel Aviv’s Hayakon Park. Mmmmm, makes you think. Obviously the word “beautiful” doesn’t quite survive the translation)
Anyway, current mayor Moti Sasson has emphasised children in his revival of the city, and Holon can now boast a Cartoon Museum, a Digital Art Center, a Cinematheque, and a children’s theater, as well as plenty of parks and street art. Sasson himself, in the post since 1993 (which for an Israeli politician, is an achievement in itself) has been instrumental in many of the city’s changes. In 2010, he was named by Britain’s Monocle magazine as one of the 10 “freshest movers and shakers in urban politics worldwide.” Though the city is small (pop. 185,000) the mayor thinks big. As Sasson said, “It may sound bombastic, but we would like [Holon] to be the cultural center of the Middle East.”
Cultural center it may be, but a fine example of public transportation design it is not.
Let’s look at Holon’s brand new Komemiyut station.

As you can see from this wonderful shot, the station floats in a transport island. It is boxed in, slap in the centre of a monstrous intersection, with the site bounded by (going clockwise, from bottom left hand corner) a cemetery, a stadium, the edge of a residential district, and a municipal waste of space. The railroad itself runs neatly north to south down the center of the Ayalon Highway. The station naturally ends up under a bridge which carries the local highway over the Ayalon. So maybe the positioning of the station is a “given”, a fixed point. What surrounds the station isn’t. So let’s see what Mayor Sasson and his Middle Eastern cultural gurus have designed for the traveling public.

For a start no one can claim to work “right by the station”. There are no offices, no shops, no colleges, no institutions, in fact pretty much no buildings right by the station. As I say, it “floats”, as if it was plopped from above in the thick of a spaghetti junction.

Clearly there are people that live nearby. They can at least claim to “live right by the station”. So let’s follow Dorit Meshulam, one of those lucky few, as she winds her merry way home from the station.
She steps off the train, and climbs the 46 steps to the concourse. She leaves the station building (opened in September 2011, spick and span, toilets are impeccable). She turns right and walks 100 meters, crossing the entrance to the bicycle park (spacious, room for 56 bicycles) as she does so. At the lights she crosses a single lane, and continues. After 50 meters, she crosses a further 2 lanes (this is the slip road from the Ayalon Highway). She swivels to her left, and now waits for another set of lights to change. She crosses the 4 lanes to the island in the middle, and finally crosses a further 3 lanes. She is now on the northern side of the bridge. To get to her house--remember she lives in the nearest building to the station--she now needs only cross the northern slip road to the Ayalon. This is a slip road, leading off from the 4-lane traffic heading west at this point, so it’s a wide, fast road, and here we get to see the municipality’s sense of humour: THERE IS NO PEDESTRIAN CROSSING AT THIS POINT.

Well I think the message is clear there. Sure let’s build roads, let’s build railroads. Let’s pour billions of public money at Israel Railways. But where’s the access? Where’s the thought? What possible attention to detail has left the nearest living Holonites (I've ignored the late lamented Holonites who are actually nearer the station) cut off from a station that they can actually glimpse from their bedroom windows. They only have to walk almost 200 meters and cross 11 lanes of traffic and wait for four separate sets of traffic lights. Just to catch a train. That is, if they can get to the other side.

V'Ayn Kol Chadash Tachat Hashemesh

One naturally makes mistakes in a language that isn’t one's own. So I have, in my time, made the odd gaffe or two in Hebrew. Fairly new in the country back in the last millennium, I was asked what I did for a living. I’m a civil engineer, I wanted to say, mehandes ezrachi מהנדס אזרחי, only it came out mehandes atzbani מהנדס עצבני, a nervous engineer.
But learning the language of the country in which you have chosen to live is, I think, a prerequisite for making it your true home. And Hebrew, in my humble opinion, is a logical, well thought out, and relatively easy language to master. Some words, in particular, stand out, because they sound fun, or warm, or beautiful, or odd, or fascinating. Or because of their etymology, their history.
Bakbouk בקבוק, for example, which means bottle. It’s called that because when you pour a drink out of a bottle, doesn’t it make the sound “bakbookbakboobakbook....”?
Chukka lukka (pronounced chuck a lucker) צ’אקה לאקה is a fun word. OK, the purists may say, that’s not a real Hebrew word. Maybe it isn’t. But it sounds too odd to miss. And what does it mean? It’s the siren on a police car or ambulance.
Chashmal (sounds like hush mull, but beginning with a hard “ch” as if you were clearing your throat) חשמל. It’s a dead common word. It’s the word for electricity. But electricity wasn’t around when ancient Hebrew was being spoken. The word had to be created.

Where did the English word for electricity come from? Electron, which was the ancient Greeks' word for amber, that shiny burnt orange stone. The Greeks, as reported by Thales of Miletus, noticed that if you rub amber with fur it creates some frisson, a force that can attract hair (or balloons, if they had them back then), sometimes even a spark if you rubbed long and hard enough.
Is the word chasmal found in the bible? It is. Among other places, in Ezekiel Chapter 1, 4 and what did it mean then?: "And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire." 
So today's Hebrew word for electricity comes from the ancient word for amber, which in ancient Greek gave its name to today's English word for electricity. It's all connected!

The first school in the country that taught in modern Hebrew was… have a guess, go on, where? (answer later on) which began teaching all subjects in Hebrew in 1888, at the same time that Eliezer Ben Yehuda, the man responsible for taking biblical Hebrew and reviving it, was living in Jerusalem. In reinventing a fairly dead language (still breathing--though not getting out much and having fun--thanks to its use in Jewish prayers) Eliezer Ben Yehuda had to not only encourage others to use the language, but to think up new words fit for every day life in the late 19th/early 20th century.
When the staff at this school (it was in Rishon Lezion, did you guess it?) found that there was a word missing from the new language, they would write to Eliezer Ben Yehuda. For example, they wrote and said that there was no word for towel. (Apparently Noah and his family didn’t need one, neither did Moses as he led the children of Israel across the dry sea, and as for the Egyptians... well they didn’t require drying off either. Do you think there was some sort of conspiracy just to keep the word towel out of the bible?)
So Ben Yehuda had a think. And he took the word negev, from the Negev, that expanse of very dry land in the south of Israel, and from that he fashioned the word lenagev, to dry, and one step on, magevet, towel. Isn’t that brilliant?

I moved to Israel in 1995, and learned the language on an intensive course, common among immigrants, called an ulpan. And it just so happened that Ben Yehuda’s daughter, Dora, was still alive (just, she must have been over 90). So our ulpan invited her to come over and chat to some of us about growing up in that extraordinary family. We, the chosen few who were invited to the talk (the top two classes, I had to overcome my natural modesty just to add that detail) were in the room waiting for her to arrive. Waiting and waiting. Finally a teacher came in laughing, and told us why there was a delay.
They’d sent a taxi to go and pick Dora Ben Yehuda up. The taxi driver had got to the address, found this old lady standing on the corner, and bundled her into the cab. But only when they got to the ulpan did they discover that it wasn’t her. The taxi driver had simply pounced on an innocent old lady standing on the street. No wonder she’d struggled, he said.

And the revival works. It is an incredible story. As the acclaimed writer David Grossman once said, “If my son today were to meet our forefather Abraham, they could at least have a reasonable conversation with each other”.
lsrael is an extraordinary place, and Hebrew is an extraordinary language. We in Israel should congratulate ourselves that, just by saying boker tov in the morning, we are part of a remarkable achievement.

Should do better. See me after class

This summer was one of social protest, and our politicians, now refreshed and returned to the trough for the winter session of parliament, are keen to appear as if they are all part of this social revolution.
Meir Sheetrit, a member of Knesset who has never worked in the private sector in his life, came up with a brilliant idea. He proposed a law that would exempt young couples, and singles, from paying VAT on their first homes. (If it sounds a little odd to say "young couples and singles", well that's the odd wording of his proposal. I can just imagine he first wrote "young couples" until someone pointed out how that was discriminatory, so he added in "and singles"). Well that’s fabulous, and who knows how many thousands of votes that will... I mean how many thousands of young couples that will help get on the first rung of the property ladder. Respect Meir! Way to go!

Now you’ve been nodding and thinking “Well that is good news. It would really help.” If that’s the case, then I would suggest that you too consider becoming a politician, because our MKs - particularly life-long careerists like Sheetrit - are full of such knee-jerk reactions, but are too hurried/exhausted/stupid to actually investigate their own suggestions. All knees and no brains. [Not that I'm implying that you are..., heaven forbid.]

This bill, if you look at it, will result in the exact opposite of what it purportedly set out to achieve, in this case help potential homebuyers in a very expensive market.

A market consists of buyers and sellers (that is demand and supply). Currently our housing market is overheated; many thousands of people in the market are fighting over too few properties, or at least not enough in the areas of highest demand. Hence the high prices. And Sheetrit’s solution is to shave the cost for young homebuyers. Will this allow some couples, who currently are struggling to get enough funds together to buy a flat, put in a bid for a home? Yes, of course it would. That’s what the bill is there for. The result? Well, whereas before you may have had three couples bidding for a flat in downtown Petah Tikva, now you’ll have five couples (the extra two are those facing no VAT, thanks to Meir). Prices were high when three fought over the property. What will happen when five are in the game? Prices will go up. I predict (and this is all on my ownsome, with no monstrous BankofIsrael econometric model pumping out statistics for me) I predict, as I say, that if this bill gets passed, then house prices will go up, ceteris paribus. (STOP THERE! Latin alert! Yes, now some of you, who may not have had the benefits of a fine English education, may be flummoxed somewhat by Latin expressions. Don’t be. They are not there to perturb, per se. They serve a purpose. They can explain succinctly what it was you wanted to say. And in this case, I meant “all other things being equal”. In other words (id est) if nothing else changes that also affects housing, then this will result in higher house prices.)

And it doesn’t surprise me.

Knesset, that venerable, risible institution, is full of charlatans, and I mean that in a nice way. I mean they are amateurs. They discover a problem on Monday, suggest a solution on Tuesday, and pass a new law on it by Thursday. The following week, they discover that instead of helping, the new law has actually made things worse.

Here’s another example of a half-baked law by half-baked politicians. Back in 2000, the Knesset adopted an amendment to the Law on Employing Workers through Manpower Agencies. The change in the law stated that "A worker via a manpower agency shall not be employed by an employer for a period of more than nine months." The aim, supposedly, was to change the status of thousands of agency workers, very often employed for months if not years, sitting next to inhouse workers, possibly doing the same work, but for less pay, and on shakier grounds in terms of conditions, pensions or perks.
Only the result was clear for all to see. Employers were likely to dismiss workers just as the nine-month deadline approached. The implementation of the law was postponed FOUR times, and finally came into force in 2008. It has caused disruption, instability, and heartache for the very people it was intended to help. One case involving a manpower agency used by the Israel Antiquities Authority has reached the courts after 21 workers were dismissed, and then immediately replaced by other agency workers.

Maybe our politicians should do a little more homework. Parliamentary bills in England are routinely sent to everybody that might be affected—individuals, companies, unions, trade organizations, professional bodies—for their feedback and input, and this preparatory stage takes at least a year. The result? Laws that work, are respected, and stick around for ages.

Sheetrit's bill by the way was chucked out of Knesset this week by 44 votes to 32. There is hope yet. 

Hugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Yossi

Did you hear of the racehorse named Wanwan? Or his mate Tutu?
Here’s a little ditty about them:
11 was a racehorse
22 was 12
1111 race
22112
Which demonstrates nothing in particular, but introduces today’s topic of Names.
As Shakespeare put it over 400 years ago:
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Would Rapunzel agree? Would Puccini have written Nessun Dorma if that was so?
* * *
Let’s try an exercise. Have you ever been to Banyas? Or the Flour Cave? Yes to both maybe, if you’re in Israel and fairly well traveled (it’s only a small country). But have you ever been to Savidor Central? Now that may sound familiar.... it rings a bell... I'm sure I've heard it before... Give up, where is it?
Well, it’s Israel Railways' name for Arlozoroff station in Tel Aviv. Everyone else calls it Arlozoroff, it’s on Arlozoroff Street, it’s next to the bus station which the locals also call Arlozoroff. (Well even the bus station isn’t technically called Arlozoroff bus station. Egged, the major bus company, calls it Terminal 2000, as if anyone traveling there 11 years ago died on the journey.) In fact the only ones who don’t call the train station Arlozoroff are some oldtimers-- who still refer to it as Train North (רכבת צפון) to differentiate it from the other station down south, which makes it wonderfully confusing, as ‘North’ becomes an alternative name for ‘Central’--and Israel Railways, who insist on naming the station after Menachem Savidor, who I’m sure was a superb chairman of the railways over 40 years ago, but, in all due respect, is not known by anyone travelling to and from Tel Aviv today.

And the same goes for Hashalom Station, which is another very popular stop in Tel Aviv and which everyone else, other than the railway company, calls Azrieli, the name of the large office/shopping complex that sits atop the station. (I’ve been wondering how long it would take to get atop into a blog. You just don’t see that word around enough these days.)
Now the considerate Jerusalem council has placed large signs all over its city telling you the name of each suburb. This is incredibly helpful to the residents of Jerusalem, who uptill now had only vague ideas of where they lived, and were completely lost if they had to rely on the kindness of others to send them in the right direction after their customary wild drinking bout downtown lasting way into the early hours of the... well way past 9 in the evening, anyway. Now helpful passersby can rely on the useful signs when the drunkard in question asks “Could you point me the way home? I live in Rasco, thanks”.
Only there too one can be confused. Some of the signposts give you two names, the official one, Like So, and the other one (Like So). That’s because there are official names of areas, say Manchat, which no one uses, and the popular names, which in this case is Malcha. And given that the sign, as with every roadsign, is in Hebrew, English and Arabic, it makes for a busy board.

But I’m not pointing all this out just for the fun of it. (If I wanted to do something just for the fun of it, I'd be sitting in the Prime Minister's Office planning the athletes' village for when Israel hosts the Olympics). No, I'm pointing this name business out because it can be misleading, and it could certainly make a difference to people not familiar with the area.

Recently some buses in Tel Aviv were equipped with a recorded information system. As the bus pulls up at each stop, a well spoken lady announces over the loudspeaker the name of the street, the address, even, in some cases, “the courthouse” or some such useful tidbit of info. This is indeed an applaudable step, and well worth an extra vote or two for the mayor. Only what was the bus company thinking when it chose to name, and record, one such bus stop by its street name: “Al Parshat Drachim”? I doubt you could find three people in Tel Aviv who know where that is. And that’s not surprising, either. It’s not a terribly long or famous street. Oddly it has no buildings on it, no shops, no houses, no bars, no football stadium, not even a kiosk. In fact no one would ever have read an address containing Al Parshat Drachim. But Dan, the bus company, somehow thinks that that’s what will help those passengers who need to alight at this stop. And where exactly is this bus stop? It is the stop opposite Arlozoroff, sorry Savidor, sorry Terminal 2000,... er um.. I mean, you know, it’s the stop you want to get off to catch a bus or train at the major transport hub of the country’s largest metropolis. You’d think that a bus that announces “Arlozoroff train and bus station” would be more helpful. 

Go figure.