Dear Houellebecq,

There you go making assumptions again about people
you don't know. Dear oh me. I never claimed victim
status. I've never seen myself as a victim. Nor
perish the thought would I ever dream of bullying
anyone. I'm simply stating facts as they affected
me. The fact remains that I have known bullies all of
my life. I didn't say they were all bullying me.

As for my looks - I didn't mean to sound conceited.
Perhaps I didn't express it properly. What I meant by
that remark was - I was "different" in my appearance
from the norm. I stood out. Being head and shoulders
taller than anyone else for a start. But what the heck,
if you want to believe that I'm conceited - go right
ahead. If you want to believe that I'm a victim -
go right ahead. You've already made up your mind about
me anyway. As I have about you. so I guess that makes
us even. Why am I even bothering talking to you now.
Bye.

belly:"you and I will have seen more work place Bully's than most"

I'd reckon so, but I've rarely seen any get away with it for too long. In that industry there's simply not enough time for personalities to get too entangled. A decent project manager will also make sure that conflictual types get weeded out into jobs where they don't have to deal with people too much, if they don't do it for themselves.

I still think a great deal of what's called bullying comes from differences in personal styles rather than any purposeful effort to damage someone else. It's been exacerbated by the increased presence of women in workplaces that may have already evolved particular cultures which aren't especially compatible with a feminine sensibility.

On all these threads, the ones who are most vocal about bullying are the women. Most of the men tend to a much more blase view. I suspect that also holds true in workplaces generally and may be why some people say that their complaints are not taken seriously., especially when there is so much misinformed propaganda about bullying put about by well-meaning but inept groups of do-gooders.

It perfectly suits a passive-aggressive approach.

Here;s another classic example of bullying. In this case a man, the Chief executive of the New Zealand Employers & Manufacturers' Association, has been forced to rescind his perfectly reasonable remarks because some women pretended to be offended. You'll note that nobody provides any data to disprove his claim, which is soundly based, but there is much "mobbing" by women in high-profile positions.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/business/kiwi-employers-head-castigated-over-claims-women-take-more-sick-days-than-men/story-e6frez7r-1226080755986

"The head of the New Zealand Employers & Manufacturers' Association has publicly apologised after making comments on radio about women's menstruation and its effect on workplace productivity. "

and

"Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson described Thompson's comments as a ''brain explosion'' "

"Employment and Social Development Minister Paula Bennett said the comments were "archaic". "

and from Thompson himself:"
''When I take the interview in its entirety this morning, I don't think that it was wrong - we are a grown up country, we're debating issues and not hiding, not just saying (to me) you're a dinosaur, you're not PC, you're in the last century, in the dark ages...the response has been to attack me but a lot of it's been screwed around to not put in context.

''There's a lot of really glad people out there amongst the socialists and the Greens and so on and (CTU president) Helen Kelly who are very, very pleased to have an opportunity to make a lot of hay of it and they're spinning it for all it's worth. "

So we have a real fact that is genuinely important for policy making being hidden by an avalanche of self-serving bullying and personality politics.

I made the same point as Mr Thompson earlier, as did Goldman Sachs JBWere, who said that female productivity is some 50% less than men's.

How long can we continue policy-making based on an ideological insistence that black is white?

Dear Antiseptic,

There is no denying that this is a complex issue because
of the insidious nature of bullying. However, most
employers and employees know what real bullying is and
recognise the fact that real bullying does exist.
They're usually able to tell the difference between
those that are genuine cases - and those that are
merely work place conflicts. It's the real cases
that need to be seriously dealt with in the workplace
because not only of their impact on workers, but also
on productivity.

Most organisations have policies in place dealing with
the problem and most problems can usually be handled within the
organisation or within the departments in which they
occur. Of course there are exceptions to every rule -
as the following website shows:

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2011/s3183259.htm

Yes Lexi, I understand that Brodie Panlock existed, however the conversation has moved on. Perhaps if Ms Panlock had received better advice from parents and others she'd have left the job instead of taking her own life. Of course, the question that has never been asked about the case is whether she may have done something similar anyway. that would be too close to a genuinely useful inquiry and there are political points to be scored, eh?

Would you like to comment on the serious bullying I mentioned above? The man made a comment on the elephant in the room when it comes to female employability and he was shouted down amid accusations of misogyny and all sorts of alarums. As it happens, he was also right:

http://www.econ.berkeley.edu/~moretti/cycle17.pdf

"women have a much larger fraction of absences
with a 28-day pattern."

and

"The first row indicates that men in the sample have on average
8.2 days of absence each year, while women have 12.9 days. The resulting gender difference in absenteeism is 4.6 days. The second row shows our estimates of the number of days of cyclical absences. The unconditional gender difference is now 1.4 days (column 3). This difference is our best guess of the effect of menstrual episodes
on absenteeism for the average woman. Based on this difference, we conclude that about 30 percent of the gender difference in days of absenteeism is due to menstrual symptoms"

IOW, when he said: "hompson said if statistics had to be relied upon, those that showed who took the most sick leave should be looked at.

''Why do they take the most sick leave? Women do in general. Why? Because once a month they have sick problems, not all of them but some do,'' he said." he was right on the money, yet he faced calls for his resignation. What a disgrace the feminist mafia has become.

Do you support evidence-based policy, or do you simply ignore what you don't like?

It certainly appears that is the case in the NZ Government and trade union movement, don't you think?

BTW, Lexi, the Worksafe Victoria figures which show that less than 1% of complaints were founded in anything other than the complainant's sense of entitlement supercede the page you cited by some 4 months.

Do you think that the Victorian Government will act on this later evidence, or are they going to ignore stuff they don't like for political reasons too?