Posts by Rich of Observationz
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You know how it's illegal for New Zealanders to make atomic bombs? Maybe Aussie should have a similar law banning its nationals from owning media empires.
More seriously we (as in every nation that purports to be a democracy) need media ownership laws. Nobody should be allowed to personally control more than 10% of a newspaper/TV station and any corporate should be restricted to one large circulation newspaper or one TV station.
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It would, of course, be possible to skew these stats. to make your school rank higher decile wise but then you would lose Govt. funding.
My understanding is that the high decile schools make up for that lack of funding by charging (arguably illegal) fees. These fees of course, deter impoverished kids from attending, which (besides enabling the school to build better rugby facilities) may be their main justification.
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The cover story (thanks Gio) is about where the whitebread people should send their kids, while your piece is about where they *don't*.
Nicely symmetrical, but they should headline the schools piece: Pasifica, Merci, mais non
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Hard News: Friday Music: When there were…, in reply to Nora Leggs,
Not sure anyone pictured would appreciate appearing on the internet in that state
Well, they should have told the photographer that. I mean, they were meant to be attuned to the planet and its future, like. Predicting the subsequent development of electronic naked people image distribution networks ought to have been a no-brainer.
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Hard News: Moving from frustration to disgust, in reply to WH,
what would Jesus do
Dunno, but I know what he would drive:
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Hard News: Moving from frustration to disgust, in reply to Rob S,
I know that in the UK the kind of young people who tended to get grants and scholarships for low income earners often had self employed parents with plenty of cash, but little of it declared. Or their parents were divorced and they lived with Mum, who nominally had no money, but they turned up at school on the new motorbike Dad had bought them.
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Hard News: Friday Music: When there were…, in reply to Danielle,
According to this rigorous reference (and to rumour when I was a teenager) Devo had success in playing the 'brown note' during the 70's.
Your toddler may be able confirm this.
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Hard News: Drunk Town, in reply to Keir Leslie,
I think you might be defining the difference between 'can' and 'may'.
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Hard News: Drunk Town, in reply to Russell Brown,
I'm guessing that people who live in places like Haast or Great Barrier don't get to go to hospital for being really really drunk, they (being rural NZers) often get horribly drunk and they mostly don't die. Maybe the availability of a hospital encourages people to present with 'trivial complaints' and an even more convenient triage facility would just exacerbate this?
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Hard News: Moving from frustration to disgust, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
If you look at the actual report, there are only 3167 schools in the whole sample, so 2000 schools represents a majority of schools, where one star pupil might get to Oxbridge some years. 1300 schools (over a third) haven't sent anyone there in three years. (My very well resourced and privileged state sixth form sent maybe two students the year I was there).
Which might matter less if Oxbridge graduates entered upon a quasi-monastic career of academic study, but they don't, they have a monopoly of the kind of career roles that control and influence society.
The best answer in my view would be to give private schools a quota of HE and Oxbridge places in proportion to their intake, make privately educated students pay full unsubsidized fees (as for international students) and convert Oxford and Cambridge into postgraduate-only institutions.
