Posts by Rich Lock
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Do you honestly think radio will still be around in 20 years time ?
Well, I can think of one good reason why it still shoud be. I'd very much like to see how civil defence is going to communicate with large numbers of people after The Big One hits, except via airwaves. It's a little difficult to stream news off the internet when your provider's servers are buried under 5ft of rubble and your cable network looks like a pretzel on acid.
And radio survived the advent of televison (40-50 years ago) very well indeed, seeing as there are dozens more radio stations available now than there were back then. I suspect both TV and radio will still be going stong (albeit heavily mutated) in another 40-50 years.
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Getting into any "secret agenda" conspiracy theory that, by its very nature, cannot be disproved is neither.
Craig, The Secret Masters of the Universe riff is yours, not mine. I don't think there is a secret agenda. I'm of the opinion that these things just happen if you let them and don't take active steps to avoid them. Sort of like erosion. If you never bother to maintain the flood defences because you'd prefer to spend the money on a late-model Euro car and a flat-screen TV, then you're going to wake up one morning and find half your house in the sea.
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I'm a bit surprised that no-one has explicitly made an argument against the whole 'death of 1000 cuts' thing.
The pro-cuts group appears to be generally making the argument that the money could be better spent elsewhere, such as, for example, a hospital. Or possibly a refuge for disabled black lesbian single mothers.
The anti-group appears to be generally making an argument that the output is culturally significant.
But no-one seems to be advocating for a 'line in the sand', for want of a better metaphor.
Russell mentioned the old-style licence fee, which was terminated in 1990-something, and indicated that now this sort of thing is funded by the general tax pool (do I need to mention that we are being 'gifted' with a sucession of tax cuts at the moment?).
So we're being subjected to a little cut here, and a small chop there, and with each individual snip, the cultural landscape changes a bit. And then in 20 years time, we turn around, and we're stuck with 'classic hits fm', with the 'the greatest hits of the three tenors' on a seemingly infinite loop. Brought to you by Cialis.
At what point do people start saying 'no more'? Seems to me it's when we've boiled everything down into the lowest common denominator grey sludge in the name of 'choice' for the 'majority'.
I hate classical music. I hate opera. I hate ballet. I'm largely indifferent to hip-hop and modern dance. But I pay my taxes without complaint so that other people who love these things can benefit from something I think is culturally significant.
If we really need need both the opera house and the hotel for the one-legged black lesbian single mothers, and there isn't enough in the pot, then I'll guess I'll just have to grit my teeth and dig a little deeper in my pocket, although frankly I'd prefer it if the fat cat plutocrats were digging a little deeper for all of us.
Alternatively, we could fuse classical, pop, hip-hop and bogan into some sort of uber-music that will render all other genres obsolete.
Something like this, perhaps?
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Bravo, Dottore.
You have my vote.
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US remake [of] The Wicker Man
Great. Thanks a flippin' bunch for bringing that particular repressed memory back to the surface.
If anyone needs me, I'll me in the corner rocking and humming to myself.
Eagle vs. Shark...I truly wanted to like it.
coughwholesaleripoffofNapoleonDynamitecough.
I wonder if this is fallout from the historical accident in which New Zealand's liberal Left and neoconservative Right were the same people for a few topsy-turvy years...
And down here in Rand-McNally, people wear shoes on their feet, and hamburgers eat people?
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I think you're stereotyping private schools all into one box.
Which as my example proved, isn't fair. That was a school that wasn't cutting kids for not making the GPA, indeed it had created a niche for itself in the market of being a good place for some of those kids to go.
Ok, fair enough in relation to my conclusion - not all of them. But it's certainly my experience with the three public schools in my parents neighbourhood (one boys, one girls, one mixed. I went to one, my sister to another, and some family friends to the third).
And presumably the school in the example you gave needs revenue for all the reasons I outlined, and presumably makes it mostly by charging fees?
As you said:
it [has] created a niche for itself in the market
If I were of a free-market disposition, that would sound like a good example to support an argument that we should privatise everything, as The Free Market will provide. :)
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The allegation that all private schools exist to make money is ridiculous. Some newer establishments might make profits but most do not not have an owner
Paul, you are conflating 'money' with 'profit'. There is a distinction that needs to be made between the two.
My original quote was:
A private school obviously will teach for money. They are a money-making entity. That is what they do.
And I stand by that, at least to a point. As an entity, a school needs a revenue stream in order to, at the least, maintain and replace grounds, buildings and equipment as necessary.
How do they generate this revenue stream? Primarily by way of fees. What is the source of those fees? Parents.
Parents will go where they think their child will get the best results, and where they think the best facilities are. So the school needs to sell itself, both in terms of their results and their facilities.
This costs money, because good facilities and results cost a lot. Decent playing fields, up-to-date equipment in the computer lab, etc. Decent results cost, too, because generally they will be the result of small class sizes and decent teachers. To get small class sizes you need more teachers per no. of children. To get decent teachers you need to pay what the market dictates, which is probably above the average teaching salary.
So the school will be looking at ways to maximise the revenue stream, and minimise anything that impacts negatively on the bottom line. So, i'd stand by my assertion that private schools at least to a certain extent exist to make money.
And the reason this a bad thing is because anything that threatens the revenue stream tends to get treated like its leporous, such as for example bad students who might bring down the grade-point average. Private schools are going to go out of their way to maximise the numbers of quality students on their roll, and minimise the number of those who struggle, becase it is on their own best interest to do so to maximise the revenue stream.
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I'll conceed that my views on private schools may be somewhat skewed by my personal experience, being the privately-schooled toffee-nosed pommie posho that I am.
My personal experience was that as soon as you start to slide in terms of grades, or start showing that you might need a bit of help to keep up, the powers that be disown you faster than you can say 'standards matter'. They don't want anything to do with anything that might bring down their grade-point average, y'see.
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If this is going to be the de-facto Friday thread this week, can I just say: Faith No More - you flippin' rock.
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contributions from some of your team
Are we a team now? When's Haydn dropping my uniform round? Remember I need a snug fit, Haydn. I like the Laydeez to see what's on offer.
by private school, you mean a school that teaches for money"?
No: in my experience, great teachers — whoever their employers — teach because they love it, and almost the money they earn is incidental (invariably they can earn much bigger money in international schools around the world — those, for instance, which oil companies have to run in the tropics to attract staff).
And to seriously address just one of your points. I believe Islander's question was about the motivation of schools - i.e. the corporate entity. Not the motivation of individual teachers.
A private school obviously will teach for money. They are a money-making entity. That is what they do.
The teachers within it may (or may not) be excellent, but that's beside the point. And if they are excellent, there are dozens of reasons why they might choose private over public 'because they love it'. Not having to teach to an oversized class, for example, and so able to focus more on individual students. That might be quite rewarding, no?