Hard News: All Change
96 Responses
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Jonty, in reply to
Great letter, Ben, which echoed my own thoughts on the result. Regarding MMP, the vile Hosking, who couldn't conceal his anger and disappointment at the result, is relentlessly bleating on about doing away with MMP. He began, fatuously, putting the boot in immediately after Jacinda's first speech as PM because it didn't include cabinet positions. How his surly arrogance is ignored by his bosses at TVNZ is beyond me.
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Ray Gilbert, in reply to
Hosking is also getting headlines in the Herald website including Breaking News banners earlier in the morning. Tha's the last straw for me TBH. When an news organisation considers the rantings of Hosking breaking and headline news over the content of a new govenrment coalition then I'm not interested. I've deleted my link and removed my app so I don't need to deal with any more BS from them in the future.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Zimmer(frame)Man
Whither the pensioners?
There's an iceberg* coming to take them all away
ha haaa
to a farm where life is beautiful all the time
ha haaa
Go with the floe...*A68A
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BenWilson, in reply to
How his surly arrogance is ignored by his bosses at TVNZ is beyond me.
It's not ignored. He is popular, so they play him, for ratings. I can't see it lasting, shrill outrage is not going to make his fan base giggle at the discomfort of his female co-hosts anywhere near as much as cocksure arrogance has.
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Seems to me a job that needs doing is to require that TVNZ ensure that presenters of, or reporters on, news programmes or programmes about current affairs, are seen to be impartial.
Here, I found you a code of practice you can cut and paste. Shouldn't take too long for whoever's Broadcasting Minister?
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Neil,
The water tax has gone.
Still cuts in immigration planned.
Pragmatism: +1, idealism: -1.
Seems odd, why punish people who want to come here but not multinationals taking advantage of free water.
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On one blog last night a number of members turned to watch Hosking because of the entertainment of his expected meltdown. He delivered! A Caricature of Hosking. Very very funny if you like that sort of humour.
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Stephen R, in reply to
On one blog last night a number of members turned to watch Hosking because of the entertainment of his expected meltdown. He delivered! A Caricature of Hosking. Very very funny if you like that sort of humour.
I went to see Waru last night, and the bit with the Mike-Hosking-Analog was such a horrible person that I wanted to punch him in the face. But then, the real Mike-Hosking is a sufficiently horrible that I just turn off the media device when I encounter him.
So, pretty close to true life then.
Incidentally, Waru is pretty fantastic. Powerful, and heart-rending and I enjoyed the 1 cut per story arc limitation (though I found myself distracted sometimes by wondering "how did they do that? Did they have someone with a steady-cam holding on tight to the front of the car?"). If you get the chance, go see it.
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
Looking at a photo of the National cabinet earlier this week I thought, “I despise almost every single one of these people.” It would be hard to find a bigger collection of liars and self-interested pricks who don’t give a damn about our country. Thank God that’s finally changed.
What makes me most ecstatic is that as a nation we won't have to listen to lies, denials and obfuscation any more.
I hope Jacinda moves from Let's Do this - to Let's Own this. What a refreshing change in Parliament that would be.
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I was leaving an early evening performance at the Tauranga Arts Festival last night (on until Oct 29, since you ask) when a stranger in front of me, a 30-something man in a suit who'd been looking at his phone, turned round and said "I don't know if it's good news or bad news for you but Jacinda Adern is prime minister". I would have put money on Winston jumping the other way, old cynic that he is. The things I've seen/heard/read him saying, such as: "Capitalism must regain its human face ...", fill me with - almost unbelievably - hope. Goodness knows what lies ahead, but yesterday and today seem like we're starting in the right place.
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
How his surly arrogance is ignored by his bosses at TVNZ is beyond me.
At the very moment I stopped caring about Hosking's bias and bloviation - which suddenly seemed ineffectual and almost enteratining - you want to get rid of him?!
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Russell Brown, in reply to
On one blog last night a number of members turned to watch Hosking because of the entertainment of his expected meltdown. He delivered! A Caricature of Hosking. Very very funny if you like that sort of humour.
I watched some of it this morning. It was priceless.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
The Greens leader just said “it’s time to move to a regulated market”. That’s not good, if it’s anything like the current alcohol market, with its promotional marketing practices. Cannabis has a high dependency rate, and it fucks some people totally up.
I think everyone knows not to do it like alcohol. Officially the referendum is on making personal use legal, so there'll be a fair bit of room to move.
We'll take lessons from Colorado – where state authorities have been quite alert to their emerging market and prepared to adjust the rules as required – but likely follow Canada's cautious approach to legalisation and regulation.
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Neil,
I’m not sure why Labour want to spend money on an inquiry into mental health. The money would be better off spent on the obvious needs – more staff and more housing suitable for the various needs of people with mental health issues.
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Like @TouchMyPoly I’m delighted at the prospect of three free years of Tertiary study. Anything that makes education more accessible is good with me. I look forward to having more peeps actually show up for class (yes I said that).
But we at Ivory Towers Inc. are still a little apprehensive.
Speaking selfishly, all the love has gone to teh studnets.
This should bother everyone:
“He said the tight budget could also force cuts in academic staff in fields where student numbers are declining, such as arts and education, although there could be staff increases in expanding courses such as engineering.”
Which came from here:
Cheapest university fees hit $6000 a year, via @nzherald http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11933635
Last year the “Market model” of HE bit hard. There is the possibility that while students wait for free fees it will bite harder. When permanent staff are made redundant, in important, but unpopular areas of study, NZ loses academic capital and capability. We lose the how, the experience and we are unable to bring in new ideas. I don’t work at the School of Ed. At AU but I sure as f**k would miss it if it wasn’t there.
In the long run this will affect us all. Broadly speaking, the chronic under funding of HE needs a fix that does not rely on student poverty, which is evidently unsustainable.
Consequently, I love the change in Govt. but am mindful of what I have wished for.
PS. No National Standards or Charter Schools FTW.
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Neil,
The biggest restraint Labour will face is not a lack of knowing what mental health services to offer but how to deal with a world wide shortage of mental health professionals.
It’s a well known problem. One can promise more mental heath services but getting the right people to implement that is going to be the hard part.
Even under current funding there are a large number of unfilled positions.
They need a plan for that not an inquiry.
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81stcolumn, in reply to
Where Psychology is concerned the NZPS need to grow up and step up.
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Neil, in reply to
It's such a large area. Stretching from the sort of thing you're referring to all the way to the continuing problems of deinstitutionalisation from decades ago. There's quite a number of now elderly chronic mentally unwell people who would have been better off in institutional care and need community support that is not there.
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Newshub got the Greens' portfolios:
Climate change and associate finance are both expected to go to Greens leader James Shaw.
The Greens will also have conservation, women and land information portfolios, and associate roles in environment, transport and health.
They will fill a newly created undersecretary role, focused on sexual and domestic violence.
Good stuff.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
And, how cool it is to start feeling proud to be a citizen of the shaky islands. Well done us for electing a reasonable government.
An Australian take from David Rowe.
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Prudence, in reply to
It's true there does need to be money spent on staffing and services which are woeful at present, but the inquiry is what those that were abused by the system want. They have asked for it. They deserve it.
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Caleb D'Anvers, in reply to
Last year the “Market model” of HE bit hard. There is the possibility that while students wait for free fees it will bite harder. When permanent staff are made redundant, in important, but unpopular areas of study, NZ loses academic capital and capability. We lose the how, the experience and we are unable to bring in new ideas
Yes. I actually think the new government would be better off essentially borrowing Corbyn’s tertiary fees policy and fast-tracking their elimination. A lot can go wrong very quickly during a lengthy transitional phase in funding arrangements.
I’ve been pretty shocked over the past year or so to hear about potential academic staffing cuts in long-established, highly regarded Arts departments due to falling enrollments. Aside from the clear (and no doubt deliberate) disincentive to take “non-commercial” courses that the high fees regime evidently creates, this also leads me to wonder what’s been going on under National at secondary level. Is the secondary curriculum directing students towards vocational or professional courses and away from the arts and humanities?
But, yeah. I very much understand the apprehension. In the UK, scrapping tertiary fees would only work for academics if the corresponding block teaching grants were immediately restored at a viable level so as to compensate for the loss of income. If universities’ ability to raise revenue via fees were taken away and not replaced by, at the very least, equivalent direct government funding, then the results could be bleak for academic staff. Then again, were the market model dismantled, there might be less pressure on universities to spend so much money on shiny new buildings and student services, so perhaps there'd be a change in emphasis.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
On that note, does everyone need to go to university? In recent years, it seems more and more people have been going to uni, not to expand their minds and discover the next E=MC2, but as little more than a passport to middle-class jobs. The decline in vocational options over the years in the Anglosphere has a large role to play in that.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
An Australian take from David Rowe.
Did you know that ‘Mean fog throes’ is
an anagram of Game of Thrones ?…or that, between GOT
& American Football protests
I can no longer hear
the simple instruction
"Bend the knee”
in the same way at yoga!Cultural entropy, or erosion.
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Some time ago we figured out that one of the key “influencers” with respect to Tertiary enrolments were school careers advisors; and yes, they were steering students towards what they felt were courses with jobs. At first sweep this is a rational argument, if you accept that a degree is merely a device necessary to obtain first destination employment and that there is such a thing as a life-long career pathway. On further interrogating it becomes clear that neither of these things are true. Degree level studies rarely provide pure vocational training (for good reason) and modern workers pursue multiple careers. Worse, many careers advisors (and employers) had no clear grasp of what modern degree studies look like. This meant that institutions had to put more into to informing careers advisors and marketing directly to parents/students with limited benefits all round.
The situation is already quite bleak. The Education Ministry estimated that enrolments in HE could drop by as much as 7%. That was before the election. The bulk of new student enrolments will take place in January 2018. Were I parent or student, why wouldn’t I wait for proposed free fees legislation to kick in? I worry that many will wait until mid 2018 or Jan 2019 to enrol. Last year the whole sector under enrolled by an unexpectedly large amount which coincided with a dip in overseas enrolments. The more forward-looking institutions sought to cut costs last year and there isn’t a lot of meat left on the bone. The Student Achievement Component (SAC) hasn’t increased along with operating costs for several years now, a problem that was largely overcome by recruiting extra students, a solution which is no longer viable. If they do lay people off next year, they will do it in “unpopular” subjects, those people will not be re-employed if and when the tide comes in. For many Arts subjects this is a disaster, in turn New Zealand risks losing much of its world leading capital in terms of policy. A big boost to the existing SAC component is needed but I doubt it has been budgeted for in this round.
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