Posts by giovanni tiso
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
"Fuck off you rich pricks and take your $700 million with you" is pretty much the elusive central tenant of the union's argument here, isn't it?
I doubt it. I am reminded of that rambling contribution by a NZ actor working in Sydney that somebody posted (on this thread?) a few days ago, which ended with a paean for our beautiful country and its incredibly talented actors. As opposed to all those other ugly countries with their talentless actors, one assumes.
And that's the dance of globalisation, isn't it? Studios will chase the best balance of tax incentives, local wages and conditions and production facilities to maximise their profits. Then when an industry takes root, as it has in New Zealand under the admirable guidance and savvy of Jackson et al., should a portion of the workforce get uppity, the studio will always use it as an opportunity to reassess its options.
From a union point of view the key will always be to correctly judge your strength and communicate your demands clearly to your membership, to other stakeholders and to the public. None of this seems to have happened, which is tragic and inexcusable. That said, I/S is also right that in the end it will have been Ireland's eagerness to offer even more incentives that is the endgame. Warner Bros can walk away with its reputation intact and having sent at the same time a strong signal to the unions in Ireland and elsewhere that they won't abide by certain behaviour. It's a win-win for them.
As for Jackson, what's his deal? Because if it involves a percentage of the profits that the films make (as opposed to percentage of the gross), then he stands to make a lot of money thanks to the Irish taxpayer. Knowing whether or not this is the case may be useful when parsing his public statements. (He didn't seem shy about suing New Line for what was rightfully his, and good on him.)
-
You will admit "unsafe " is an appalling choice of words. Especially from the guy who drives around my neighborhood in a black merc with big fuck off stereo headphones on.
-
See, this was a lovely post but with a title like that I could have sworn it would be about our filming industry and the Aussie unions.
-
It helps that your kindergarten cannot be moved to Ireland.
-
The acronyms: they aren't helping.
-
Space Weather reminds us that it is time again
for the Orionid Meteor showers - Oct 20 - 22.I've been looking for something to replace the Perseid-shaped hole in my life for the last thirteen years, you magnificent, magnificent man.
-
So that makes me wonder why it is constantly said that at least these new National Standards provide that benchmark. We already had that! We have ERO to investigate how well the school is performing for its community and what outside influences it has etc. If you're really worried that poor teachers are getting udner the radar, I would invest in ERO.
I agree. And one of ERO's findings about a school may be that teachers make insufficient use of student performance tools to inform their practice. However as far as I understand it few of these tools (STAR being an exception) correlated to a national norm, or did so inconsistently, providing neither schools nor ERO with the tools to assess the effectiveness of a school's teaching.
-
The idea that the Herald or the Dominion Post are impartial due to their being beholden "only" to commercial interests rather than a political party or another would be laughable if it wasn't a tiny bit sad.
-
Most teachers know their students' progress all too well.
But knowing your students' progress and knowing it in relation to a standardised national mean are two different things. And asking that the schools gather that information and report it to their community (whether through the board, or directly) doesn't have to be useless or evil. There are a lot of things wrong with the implementation of the standards, but not necessarily with the idea of the standards, if you wish to ascertain which schools may be under or over-performing in relation to the composition of their student population. If they're under-performing, I think the community needs to know, teachers and management need to know, hell even the ministry needs to know, so they can see how to correct that. If they're over-performing, it may be useful to know how it came about and if those methods can be replicated elsewhere. The standardised tools that are there at the moment are just to piece-meal for that kind of information to be of real use.
None of this has anything to do with reporting directly to parents and singling out their children as failures, or creating league tables. But that's due to how National politicised the issue and rushed its implementation, not to the idea of standards being bad per se.
-
And if the unemployment rate keeps it up, it might soon be in fact very appropriate to call it "a wage".