All posts tagged: bureaucratic

Holocaust survivors in France came home to stolen apartments, looted furniture and bureaucratic hurdles

Holocaust survivors in France came home to stolen apartments, looted furniture and bureaucratic hurdles

Published by Sam Flores

(The Conversation) — In 1945, an angry mob confronted Aba Mizreh and four of his sons outside their former home in Paris. The Jewish family had hidden in Lyon during World War II, only to learn that their apartment had been looted and rented in their absence. Despite an eviction notice, the new tenants refused to leave, leading to a street fight. Following the violent confrontation, Mizreh wrote to the French government. “Don’t I have the right, after having suffered so much, to get my property back?” he asked. “Haven’t I really paid enough for this war?” Mizreh, then 68, was just one of the 160,000 Holocaust survivors from Paris who struggled to rebuild their lives after the devastation of the Nazi occupation. Of his 11 children, five sons had fought for France and six of his children had been deported; at least two were murdered at Auschwitz. Now he simply wanted to return to the two-bedroom apartment that served as his home and furrier workshop in order to support his wife and orphaned grandchildren. …

The German Bureaucratic Dream Of “Society with Bound Capital”

The German Bureaucratic Dream Of “Society with Bound Capital”

Published by Jenni Sidey

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe They form a massive workforce, the last continuously growing sector of our society: civil servants. Approximately 5.5 million employees work in the public sector, and last year alone, 205,000 new civil servants were added. This is by no means a blind attack on the bureaucracy. Civil servants indispensable to our society work to maintain internal and external security and uphold the judiciary as guardians of law and order. Yet the question must be allowed. How can a civil service army grow by over 200,000 in a single year, even as artificial intelligence and digital automation could handle repetitive tasks? Across the country – it is an open secret that the public sector functions as a kind of safety net for slowly rising unemployment. Employees often tread on each other’s toes, paralyzed and bored by pseudo-tasks that the political apparatus spontaneously invents to feed its overflowing administration. They have created a fantasy world. A world where budgets not only never run dry but are continuously expanded—producing what could be called a destructive …

Special educational needs reform could be a bureaucratic nightmare – here’s how to put families first

Special educational needs reform could be a bureaucratic nightmare – here’s how to put families first

Published by skeptic

Plans to reform support for children with special educational needs in England have been delayed after the government announced its new policy would not be unveiled until 2026, rather than autumn 2025. However, there has already been some indication of what the government will do. The education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, recently promised to set “clear expectations for schools” on how they work together with pupils’ parents. She also outlined her intention to overhaul the process by which parents can make complaints. In a statement, Phillipson said: “To help us deliver the most effective set of reforms we can, I have taken the decision to have a further period of co-creation, testing our proposals with the people who matter most in this reform – the families – alongside teachers and other experts.” The additional wait for the schools white paper that will set out the policy will be disappointing to those who are keen to see change in the system. But it also creates an opportunity to ensure the government gets reform right. As an expert …