Does the world need a foul-mouthed chatbot?

By Nataliya Ilyushina

On November 4, X-owner, Elon Musk unveiled his new AI chatbot, Grok, a sarcastic ChatGPT alternative supposedly ‘modelled’ after The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, one of Musk’s favourite books.

The verb Grok means “to understand intuitively or by empathy, to establish rapport with”.

Science-fiction writer, Robert Heinlein first coined the term, which is now used by people in the computer science industry.

According to xAI, another company in Musk’s diversified technology portfolio, Grok “is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak, so please don’t use it if you hate humour”.

Grok is built on a large language model in much the same way as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and is being positioned as a potential rival.

Although Grok isn’t available to the general public yet, the beta version has been released to a small group of testers and some of X’s Premium+ subscribers.

However, Musk has said access would be granted according to the length of the Premium+ membership, which suggests new subscribers will have to wait.

If you’re impatient, a number of Grok’s ‘witty’ interjections have made their way to X feeds. What stands out the most is just how foul-mouthed the chatbot is programed to be.

Is there any benefit to having a chatbot of this nature, and why has Musk taken this approach?

Musk has tweeted a number of his interactions with Grok, which has provided no shortage of snarky responses. Several other early adopters have also shared their experiences.

While some of Grok’s answers seem as good as other chatbots’ outputs, some are poorer.

For example, one user reported Grok was unable to provide a news summary and analysis when asked about the United States’ off-year elections earlier this month. Instead, it went through recent tweets on the topic.

This may be because Grok is still an early beta product. It had reportedly been through about two months of training at the time it was launched.

Although Grok is meant to be modelled after Douglas Adams’ 1979 satirical novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, critics have been quick to point out there’s little similarity between the chatbot and the characters and humour that made Adams’ book a worldwide success.

Nevertheless, Grok stands out for a number of reasons. Its essence lies in perpetual satire and jest, which users are invited to relish.

It’s also willing to, as xAI puts it, “answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems”.

Early posts from users show it enthusiastically engaging in conversations about sex, drugs and religion, which other chatbots, such as Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s Bard, refuse to do.

While Grok’s slightly out-performs ChatGPT 3.5 on mathematical and multiple-choice knowledge tests, there don’t seem to be examples of how it would perform when asked to write a professional report or email, where humour would be inappropriate.

Grok has real-time and direct access to posts on X, along with standard training datasets.

In other words, its responses are based on the content of a platform that has been heavily criticised for enabling hate speech and being poorly moderated since Musk’s takeover last year.

Since AI chatbots are largely reflective of the quality of their training data (and additional human feedback training), Grok could end up adopting the myriad biases and problematic traits inherent in X’s content.

This would lead to safety risks, including the spread of harmful ideas and misinformation, a concern that’s commonly cited by experts calling for AI regulation.

While ChatGPT now has real-time access to the internet, it also trains on a separate dataset called Common Crawl. This allows developers to have more control over what goes in the chatbot’s ‘brain’.

According to xAI “a unique and fundamental advantage of Grok is that it has real-time knowledge of the world via the X platform”.

However, this could also mean much less filtering of the content that goes into and comes out of Grok.

Controversially, Grok was launched just days after the AI Safety Summit in the United Kingdom, where 27 countries signed a declaration seeking to mitigate the risks of AI.

Musk participated in the summit. In fact, just hours before his flight to the UK, he spoke about how AI might pose an existential risk to humanity if it becomes “accidentally anti-human”.

Yet, a few days later he has released an AI tool that disregards all the premises of safety engraved in the summit declaration.

He may not see it that way. In an interview, Musk said he bought X (then Twitter) to fight the “woke mind virus” and “extinctionists” who “view humanity as a plague on the surface of the Earth”.

Training Grok to be politically correct, he said, is the risk itself – and this is why he wanted to develop a chatbot that says what it thinks (or rather, what the average user thinks).

That would make Grok the AI chatbot version of the ‘average Joe’ on X.

It’s hard to say whether, in the grand scheme of things, the majority of people need or even want such a tool, but we should certainly consider the safety risks it may pose.

In the meantime, at least Grok has a more comprehensive answer to the meaning of life than “42”.

*Nataliya Ilyushina is a Research Fellow (Advanced), investigating decentralised autonomous organisations and automated decision-making and the impact they have on labour markets, skills and long-term staff wellbeing. She works in the Blockchain Innovation Hub at RMIT University.

This article first appeared on The Conversation website.

 

 

 

Myanmar bureaucrats defiant

While the territory held by Myanmar’s Military Government is shrinking, Public Servants still subject to the junta say they are in an increasingly dire situation.

Eighteen months have passed since the military seized power in a coup on 1 February 2021. In the days following, hundreds of thousands of doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers and other Government staff walked out on strike as part of the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM).

However, their resistance has come at a devastating personal cost. With no pay, no jobs and constant harassment from the military, CDM workers are struggling to survive.

They gave first-hand accounts of their worsening plight during an online meeting organised by Public Services International.

One Yangon hospital administrator said she had nothing to eat and nowhere to stay, “but I will never regret joining the CDM and will continue this revolution until we succeed".

Despite the risks she, along with other CDM participants, banged pots and pans in nightly protests on the streets, but with no income, she has been forced to sell belongings to feed her family.

The military junta has systematically targeted the healthcare sector in its crackdown against the CDM after hundreds of medics across Yangon and Mandalay joined the opposition movement.

Some 30 medical professionals were arrested in October and November, a nurse has been reported killed and three private Mandalay hospitals have had their licences revoked, leaving 800 staff jobless and patients without care.

The junta has further crippled the healthcare system by revoking the medical licences of 557 doctors participating in the CDM, exacerbating the pre-existing shortages in public healthcare since the coup.

Other workers said they had been kicked out of Government housing and refused pay rises in private jobs due to their CDM status.

Many have fled to rural areas, only to face threats from military informers in their new communities.

Those still in urban centres cannot move around freely, with international travel being a distant dream. The military has their National Identification Numbers and is using these to restrict their freedom of movement.

Yangon, 17 November 2023

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Korean computers fail again

The South Korean Government is facing a storm of criticism over another Public Service system failure that crippled computer networks, causing massive disruptions to bureaucracies across the country.

The Saeol Administrative Network, used by Public Servants to access Government-approved documents, became inaccessible on the morning of 17 November. Later that day, the Government's online portal, Government24, also went down.

It was two days before the Ministry of the Interior and Safety stated that both systems were restored, noting the failure could have been caused by some network equipment that was replaced recently.

This is the third time this year that Government computer networks have crashed: In March the judicial courts system shut down at the same time as the Supreme Court's Internet Registry Office; in June, an error occurred in the National Education Administrative Information System for elementary, middle and high schools.

Seoul, 21 November 2023

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UK anger over overseas remote work

United Kingdom Public Servants at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero are among those who can now apply to work overseas for a maximum of two weeks a year while visiting friends and family.

The senior Public Servants’ union, FDA, has repeatedly argued that many of its members have connections outside the UK and should be eligible for international remote working for the benefit of their family life.

The decision came after managers called for staff to be allowed to work overseas for personal reasons rather than having to take annual leave.

Former Conservative Party leader and prominent spokesperson for the right of the party, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, described the move as “absolutely stark raving bonkers…if the Civil Service chiefs think that is sensible, then we need a complete clear-out”.

London 20 November, 2023

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Nigerian officers want end to promotion exam

Senior Nigerian Public Servants are demanding that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu cancel the recent promotion examination for Directors.

It follows the results that show just 20 Directors out of 85 initially invited to sit for promotion examinations to the rank of Permanent Secretary had passed the exercise.

One of the Directors, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of victimisation, alleged that invaluable experience garnered over the decades was not taken into consideration.

“Apart from gender imbalance in this so-called examination that denied adequate female representation, there are other controversies that are now coming to light,” the official said.

Abuja, 20 November 2023

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Ireland’s last emergency laws may go

Ireland’s Minister for Public Expenditure, Paschal Donohoe says he is willing to engage with unions on their concerns over remaining emergency legislation from the financial crash of 15 years ago.

The Minister’s comments came after the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) wrote to the Government outlining its concerns.

Mr Donohoe said the ICTU had raised a number of issues about the remaining pieces of Fempi legislation “and I’m willing to engage in that as part of the normal process that we have with regard to the future of public pay”.

Fempi refers to the Financial Emergencies Measures in the Public Interest Act 2009, put in place following the 2008 financial crash. 

Dublin, 20 November 2023

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Namibia PS pay rise ‘affordable’

Namibia’s Cabinet Secretary, George Simataa said that following the successful end of pay and benefits talks with unions representing the country’s 107 000 Public Servants, the Government’s wage bill is expected to increase by $N1.7 billion ($A14 million) in the 2024-25 financial year.

Agreement had been reached on a flat increase of $N600 ($A47.72) per month for senior staff members on pay grades 15 and 14, while those below would receive a five per cent boost.

Mr Simataa said he had been assured by the Ministry of Finance and Public Enterprises that the sum was affordable.

“The figure is not outside the Budget, these are approved expenditures of the Government,” Mr Simataa said.

Windhoek, 20 November 2023

 

 

Beijing keeps lid on post-COVID dissatisfaction

By Xiang Gao 

The scars left by the Chinese Government’s COVID-19 policies are still visible today, despite the silencing of protests.

While there is no stomach to force change, nor is there any desire to return to the way things were. 

Up to late December 2022 a zero-COVID policy had been enforced nationwide since the initial 2019 pandemic outbreak in an effort to keep the case numbers as close to zero as possible.

To achieve this ambitioustarget, strict public health measures, including mass testing, lockdowns, and quarantines were adopted.

While implementing its zero-COVID policy, the Chinese Government reported lower case and mortality numbers than many Western countries.

However, while data is uncertain and often anecdotal, the abrupt end of zero-COVID may have cost as many as 1.41 million deaths between December 2022 and February this year.

The pandemic has had significant short and long-term impacts across the world.

Public health policies and technocratic elites have been challenged; bogus facts and conspiracy theories have proliferated; work-life patterns have been modified and economic models are being reconsidered.

In China, from strictly enforced zero-COVID to its sudden abandonment, the pandemic has had noteworthy and potentially long-lasting impacts.

The Chinese authorities received accolades for maintaining low case numbers in 2021-22 while COVID cases abroad skyrocketed.

Nevertheless, the continuation of harsh lockdowns and the zero-COVID policy, even after treatments became more efficacious and vaccines more available, was increasingly questioned through 2022.

Due to the frustrations that came with extreme lockdowns, protests erupted in some major Chinese cities in November of that year.

These protests were initially triggered by a deadly apartment fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang, where fire-fighting was significantly slowed by blocked entrances and locked doors set to comply with the local zero-COVID policy.

Arguably, this popular dissatisfaction led to zero-COVID’s abandonment, but the abrupt policy reversal shift has been widely criticised domestically because of the Government’s lack of preparation and inadequate response measures to deal with the sudden increase in cases and deaths.

The consequences of some public health measures also caused public anger and have been criticised as ill-conceived.

For example, while many other countries rolled out the vaccine among the older population first, the Chinese Government prioritised people aged 18-to-60 and only rolled out the vaccine for people 60 and above from March 2021.

As a result, many elderly residents had not received their first doses when COVID restrictions were abruptly lifted, resulting in loss of life.

The end of zero-COVID was also an immediate burden on the Chinese medical system, resulting in overloaded hospitals and treatment delays that were exacerbated by a shortage of healthy medical staff.

Adding to public frustration, the post-pandemic recovery of the Chinese economy has been slow to materialise.

As a result of extreme lockdowns, trade disputes, and other strategic concerns, many of China’s major trading partners, such as the United States and Europe, have diversified supply chains and reduced their dependence on Chinese exports.

Many foreign companies, such as Apple, have withdrawn some of their investment from the Chinese market due to the political uncertainty.

Domestically, indebted Local Governments, a dangerously leveraged property sector and falling house prices, a high unemployment rate (particularly among youth), and inflation have weakened consumption and slowed production and investment.

In response, the Government has sought to expand and reground its legitimacy.

Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke in June on the continuity and unity of the Chinese civilisation, which he said “fundamentally defined our own path that the Chinese nation must follow”.

Drawing on the “only continuing, uninterrupted civilisation in the world”, Mr Xi advocated for a “true appreciation” of the “necessity, cultural heritage and unique advantages” of taking the “Chinese path”.

This “civilisation legitimacy” may be particularly targeted at the younger generations who have experienced growing national wealth and strength on the one hand, and inequality and societal discontent on the other.

The search for civilisation legitimacy is further complemented by the President’s call for a “high-level of self-reliance and strength” domestically to support national development.

Such rhetoric, however, may not be enough to distract the people from the disruption caused by the Government’s COVID response.

Inequality and the widening wealth gap were also manifested in the lockdowns.

The widely publicised food shortage in Shanghai, for instance, was not evenly spread across the city’s population.

According to my correspondence with a few Shanghai residents during the 2022 lockdown, poorer neighbourhoods had to “purchase whatever poor-quality food was available” while wealthier communities “managed to organise steady, abundant, and nutritious food supplies through their own social and business connections”.

The awareness and frustration about inequality, in addition to the poor outlook for employment and housing, continues to brew in post-pandemic China, especially among the younger generations.

The long-term impact of the pandemic will depend upon whether the authorities can adequately addresses the economic and social problems that have been laid bare by the COVID years.

Included in these efforts will be a dose of Chinese patriotism and nationalism, fed by Chinese social media and directed at outside States and events.

At the same time, the dramatic expansion of various surveillance and control measures during the zero-COVID policy, and its continued use in the future, is likely to make Government control even more effective.

*Xiang Gao holds a PhD in Politics and International Relations from the University of Auckland, and an MA in International Relations, minored in American Studies, from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and Nanjing University.

This article was first published on the Australian Outlook page of the Australian Institute of International Affairs.

 

Christmas lay-offs likely at Stats NZ

A consultation document leaked to New Zealand news website, Stuff proposes significant cuts at Stats NZ with around 60 staff facing “substantive changes”. For the majority this is likely to mean dismissal.

A source within the Agency said staff felt the layoffs before Christmas were being done to appease the incoming conservative Government, still in coalition talks more than a month after the General Election.

Chief Executive of Stats NZ, Mark Sowden said the Agency had “started a journey to reimagine the way we collect and produce data”.

He pointed to the fact that work on the 2023 Census was winding down, while the 2028 Census would be more “integrated”.

“We have started a journey to reimagine the way we collect and produce data and statistics for generations to come, fully honouring our role and responsibilities as data stewards for Aotearoa New Zealand,” Mr Sowden (pictured) said.

Former State Services Commissioner, Iain Rennie said there would likely be some forms of redundancy across the public sector over the next 12-to-18 months but that it might be fewer than people expect.

“Ministries tend to work really hard to avoid making people redundant unless that's absolutely necessary,” Mr Rennie said.

“They use things like cancelling vacancies, using turnover, maybe voluntary redundancy opportunities, but I think it's likely there will be some forms of redundancy, we just don't know where, how much or over what period of time.”

In an attempt to make savings, Stats NZ has already frozen recruitment, reduced the travel budget by half, leased parts of its offices, extended the Christmas close down period to get staff leave down and cut funding for Christmas functions.

The cuts come in the wake of a report from the Agency that New Zealand’s annual net migration hit a record 118,800 in the year to September, driven by the arrival of more than 163,000 non-citizens.

However, New Zealanders were also leaving the country in droves, provisional data for the period shows.

There was a record net migration loss of 44,700 citizens, made up of 26,400 migrant arrivals and 71,200 migrant departures.

Population Indications Manager, Tehseen Islam said migrant departures of New Zealand citizens were just under record levels, and just over half of those leaving went to Australia.

Wellington, 15 November 2023

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UK Ministers ‘should have right to sack officers’

A newly-released report on United Kingdom Civil Service governance has recommended that Ministers should play a greater role in appointing and dismissing senior Civil Servants, with the Prime Minister given the final say on appointments of Directors General.

The long-awaited review from former Cabinet Minister, Baron Maude of Horsham, calls the current governance and accountability arrangements in the Civil Service “unclear, opaque and incomplete”.

It suggests Ministers should be able to sack senior officials if they consider it to be critical to the delivery of a policy priority.

The review, which was ordered by former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson in July 2022, also includes calls to split the jobs of Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service and to reorganise Government Departments.

London, 15 November 2023

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Call for more Japanese dads to take leave

Japan’s Ministry of Health has launched a new campaign to encourage more fathers to take paternity leave.

The campaign, devised by a panel of Ministry experts, involves an increase in child care leave allowances to covers 100 per cent of income — up from 80 per cent — if both parents each take 14 days of leave or more.

The 100 per cent allowance, however, would only be offered for up to 28 days, with the amount for any further leave being around 80 per cent of income.

The Ministry said it wanted to see 50 per cent of new fathers take child care leave by 2025 and 85 per cent by 2030. Currently that figure stand at 17.13 per cent.

Tokyo, 14 November 2023

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Vietnamese reluctant to recycle

A report by Vietnam’s Ministry for Natural Resources and Environment says a long-running waste-sorting plan for the nation’s largest city has failed because it is largely ignored by residents, Local Authorities and trash collectors.

The Ministry said the plan to classify garbage in Ho Chi Minh City was initially drafted in 1999, but it was not until 2015 that the city began efforts to impose garbage classification regulations in six districts.

“However, the plan soon fell into oblivion as authorities failed to convince citizens or trash collectors to separate waste into different categories,” the report said.

In 2018, another attempt was made, with Local Authorities planning to have all families separating waste efficiently by 2020, with fines imposed on those who failed to do so. However, no progress has been made until now.

Ho Ch Minh City, 14 November, 2023

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NZ inches closer to gender equality

The New Zealand Public Service gender pay gap has fallen to 7.1 per cent, the lowest on record, according to the Public Service Commission.

The figure, published as part of the Government’s latest workforce data, represents a 0.6 percentage point decline in the last year and a 5.1 point decline since the Public Service launched its gender pay gap action plan in 2018.

The country’s national gender pay gap is 8.6 per cent, dropping by one percentage point over the same period.  

National Secretary for the Public Service Association trade union, Duane Leo said the latest figure “shows how the Public Service can lead by example in closing pay gaps and promoting diversity”.

 Wellington, 18 November 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

US Presidential hopeful promises mass sackings

United States Republican Presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, has pledged to fire half of all Federal workers on his first day in the Oval Office if he’s elected.

The biotech entrepreneur tweeted that he would “instantly fire 50 per cent of Federal bureaucrats on day one”.

“Here’s how: If your SSN (social security number) ends in an odd number, you’re fired. That downsizes Government by half. Absolutely nothing will break as a result,” Mr Ramaswamy (pictured) wrote.

“It doesn’t violate Civil Service rules because mass layoffs are exempt.

“This avoids Civil Service protections: No bureaucrat can claim their firings were politically motivated. Further firings can be executed with a chisel, but step one needs to be an unrestrained chainsaw or else it just won’t happen.”

While Mr Ramaswamy received instant mockery from a number of sources, other commentators noted that of all the Presidential candidates he is closest to Republican front-runner, Donald Trump and he could play a role in a future Trump Administration.

For the moment, the ridicule is flowing think and fast with Vanity Fair special correspondent, Molly Jong-Fast simply writing: “You okay?”

Podcaster Keith Olbermann urged Mr Ramaswamy to check himself into a psychiatric facility, while Condé Nast Legal Affairs Editor, Luke Zaleski wrote: “Vivek is a hedge-fund guy who wants you to believe he is interested in public service so he can eliminate Government from public life and in effect mount a private sector takeover of the country.”

There are more than two million civilians working for the Federal Government, excluding uniformed military staff and Federal contractors, according to the Congressional Research Service.

About 6.5 million Americans are currently unemployed.

Mr Ramaswamy said in a position paper in September that “the administrative State is an unconstitutional, fourth branch of Government”.

“We will use executive authority to shut down the deep State,” he said in a speech that month.

Mr Ramaswamy has previously said he would cut the Federal workforce by half within his first year in power and by three-quarters by the end of his first term.

He has also said that he would close down the FBI, the Education Department, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Food and Nutrition Service, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Washington, 15 November 2023

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Finland’s students facing hard times

The Social Insurance Institution of Finland is likely to collect a record amount in overdue student loan repayments this year — possibly up to three times as much as last year.

The dramatic change is the result of recent amendments to the student support system on the one hand and the inflationary and high-interest-rate environment on the other.

Chair of the National Union of University Students in Finland, Lotta Leinonen said there were already examples students using loan money for day-to-day living — food, rent and clothes — rather than to assist their studies.

“Such difficulties can undermine the ability of students to focus on their studies, resulting in fewer students graduating in time,” Ms Leinonen said.

Helsinki, 14 November 2023

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Canadian Government spends millions on lawsuit

The Canadian Government has already spent more than $C7.8 million ($A8.7 million) in opposition of a class-action lawsuit brought by Black Federal Public Servants — an amount described by one activist as “shocking and disgraceful”.  

Executive Director of the non-profit Black Class Action Secretariat (BCAS), Nicholas Marcus Thompson said “it speaks volumes to the Government of Canada's approach".

The lawsuit was launched in December 2020 by the BCAS and seeks $C2.5 billion ($A2.8 billion) in compensation for workers dating back to 1970. 

Earlier this year, the Treasury Board found that the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the body empowered to investigate complaints of discrimination in Federally-regulated workplaces, had racially discriminated against its own employees.

Ottawa, 13 November 2023

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Irish Minister calls for new pay talks

Ireland’s public service unions have been invited to pay talks by the Government in a bid to strike a deal on a successor to the current Building Momentum agreement, which is due to expire within weeks.

Minister for Public Expenditure, Paschal Donohoe said he believed a deal was possible but that discussions would be difficult.

“I’ve been involved now in a number of different public-sector wage agreements and my anticipation is that this will be a particularly demanding agreement to get,” Mr Donohoe said.

However, Deputy General Secretary of the Services Industrial, Professional and Technical Union, which has responsibility for the public sector, John King said the union felt the Government had not moved on in its outlook from the deals done in the immediate aftermath of the financial crash of 15 years ago.

Dublin, 16 November 2023

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Cameroon ends Public Service contracting

The Cameroonian Government’s Inter-Ministerial Committee has decided to suspend the practice of using temporary staff in public hospitals, and will now work out a formula for integrating the workers into the Public Service.

The decision followed a wave of strikes earlier in the year as the more than 27,000 temporary employees claimed they had no pathway to permanent employment, even after many years of service.

Other problems remain, however, and discontent continues to simmer over what appears to be wage theft. Flore Bissene (34) an office manager at the Yaoundé Emergency Centre, said she receives a monthly salary of 69,000 CFA francs ($A176).

“From that, the central administration deducts social security contributions every month, yet I have been told I have no social security cover — so where did my money go?” Ms Bissene asked.

Yaoundé, 14 November 2023

South Africa restricts Government pay boosts

The South African Treasury has taken a new approach in an attempt to rein in the rising cost of Public Service salaries by giving pay increases only to workers on the front-line and in labour-intensive professions.

The Treasury has allocated R111.4 billion ($A9.4 billion) over the next three years to adjust the pay of Public Servants in the Departments and professions that it deems to be critical, such as education, health, police, defence and correctional services.

In previous years, all Public Servants, regardless of which Department they worked in, would be in line to receive a pay rise.

Trade unions and federations are divided on the new approach.

General Manager of the Public Servants’ Association (PSA), Reuben Maleka welcomed the allocation of additional money to front-line professions, but said overall, the measure would harm service delivery.

“These measures will have a negative effect on filling vacancies. Public Servants’ capacity is stretched to the limit and this impacts on their ability to render efficient services to citizens,” Mr Maleka (pictured) said.

Acting National Spokesperson for the Cosatu labour federation, Matthew Parks said he did not accept the Government narrative that the Public Service was over-staffed.

“In 1994, we had one million Public Servants for 34 million South Africans. Today, we have 1.2 million Public Servants, yet the population has nearly doubled to 62 million,” Mr Parks said.

Pretoria, 7 November 2023

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Officials unhappy with US stance on Israel

Officials in the United States Department of State are becoming increasingly restive over what they perceive as a de facto blank check from Washington for Israel to launch a massive military operation in Gaza, with the resulting loss of civilian lives.

 That anger became a groundswell of opposition to Secretary of State, Antony Blinken’s handling of negotiations with Israel, putting top officials of the Administration of President Joe Biden on the defensive both abroad and at home.

The surge in internal dissent poses one of the largest challenges to Mr Blinken’s tenure at the Department of State so far, some current and former officials assert.

“In 25 years working at the Department of State … I’ve never seen anything like this,” Aaron David Miller, a former Department expert on Arab-Israeli negotiations, said. “It’s as if the Administration is mediating its own internal Israel-Palestinian conflict.”

Washington, 7 November 2023

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UK’s neglected public services ‘crumbling’

United Kingdom public services are crumbling as a result of decades of under-investment, the Institute for Government and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy have warned.

In a new report, the two bodies put the blame on “successive Governments’ short-term policy-making, under-investment in capital across all public services for more than half a century".

The report reviewed the state of nine public services — general practice, hospitals, adult social care, children’s social care, neighbourhood services, schools, police, criminal courts and prisons.

It found that the under-investment had “a serious impact on the productivity of public services…teachers, nurses, doctors and social workers find it much harder to do their jobs in crumbling and cramped buildings, using old equipment".

London, 5 November 2023

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Migrants offered jobs in Irish bureaucracy

A change to Ireland’s immigration rules that allows non-European migrants to work as Public Servants has been announced by Minister for Public Expenditure, Paschal Donohoe.

Mr Donohoe said those who are granted ‘Stamp 4’ permission to remain in Ireland will be able to pursue Public Service roles in Government Departments.

Stamps with different numbering are placed on migrants’ passports when they receive permission to enter and stay in the country. To work or do business and access publicly-funded services while living in Ireland a person must hold a Stamp 4.

The expanded eligibility follows research undertaken by the Public Appointment Service and work carried out by an Interdepartmental working group to increase diversity across the Public Service and better reflect the society it serves.

Dublin, 5 November, 2023

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Indian State bans jewellery in exam room

In the latest attempt to crack down on cheating in India’s Public Service examinations, female students appearing for the Karnataka Public Service Commission test were asked to remove all jewellery, including earrings, chains and toe rings.

However, Muslim women were not required to remove their hijabs.

The development came days after some students were caught cheating in an earlier examination, which recruits candidates to fill posts in various boards and corporations.

Officials said students were caught attempting to use tiny Bluetooth communication devices hidden amongst their jewellery.

Bengaluru, 7 November 2023

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Manx workers settle on pay increase

Public Servants on the Isle of Man are to receive a six per cent pay rise covering this year and next following negotiations with the Prospect and Unite unions.

The award will apply to the rates of pay for all Public Service, manual and craft employees and staff from the Department of Education, Sport and Culture except teaching and lecturing staff.

It will apply to new starters, but not those who stopped working with the Government prior to 27 October.

This pay award also applies to Tynwald (Parliament) members.

Douglas, 6 November 2023