Posts by mark taslov
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Obviously this is a cause of great significance, but it’s an important cause that has appointed Gloria Steinem as an honorary co-chair, how does this march relate to the LGBTQIA community?
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So I had a chat to a friend over the break about this, a teacher’s aide, and he was lamenting that the music class for the special needs students had been cut from 2 to 1 hours in 2016. The second hour has now reverted to that most difficult class for all concerned; sitting in silence. He blamed this on the Ministry of Education.
So I asked him why he couldn’t do something with the students for the second hour, given that he’s a seasoned musician and an accomplished painter (he gained an interview at Elam but it turned into a dispute when they insisted that his work was airbrushed – which it wasn’t, it was oil on canvas via brush – as a result of the exchange he gave up the idea of studying fine arts entirely, but that’s another story).
The music class is held by none other than Peter Jefferies, yes that Peter Jefferies, and by my friend’s account it’s absolutely superb, there’s a small covers band, students are given opportunities to join in on the instruments and helped along, it sounds fantastic, better than anything I could have imagined in a music class at school in the 80s where the best case was a singalong with the piano, the worst case was pretending to play special desks painted up to resemble piano keyboards and the common scenario was recorders; endless screechy recorders.
Although I offered a couple of suggestions as to how he might run an hour long creative workshop it was clear that my friend didn’t feel confident that he could come up with anything close to the status quo, derisively comparing what he might attempt to the consummate professionalism that is Peter Jefferies’ class, so I dropped the topic.
What really struck me, is that we absolutely do want these students exploring their creativity, but it does appear that the education system is so bereft of creativity itself that it lets the unharnessed talents of valuable human resources (who are not able to provide all the bells and whistles with the same level of expertise) go entirely to waste, ensuring 35 or so more hours a year of special needs students sitting in silence.
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Hard News: Taxpayers' Union: still…, in reply to izogi,
judged more on their work than on Twitter relationships
Absolutely. Exclusively on their work even. For me I guess it goes back to the Dirty Politics revelations. I did a reasonably thorough search yesterday and clearly didn’t come up with much, but that Williams’ taint is difficult enough to shake that any journalist or media group abetting him furthering his agenda – voluntarily or not – deserves full sunlight.
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Hard News: Taxpayers' Union: still…, in reply to Sacha,
I have no issue with journalists using twitter or similar to source stories
Well neither, and many journalists reveal their political leanings in the way they frame narratives - some quite unashamedly. Acknowledging these tendencies isn't altogether unhelpful as a reading aid.
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Hard News: Taxpayers' Union: still…, in reply to izogi,
Also Izogi, sorry for my slow editing there, I’m fairly sure I’d not completed my initial post when you responded, so the IRD link was not present. This may inform readings of the exchange: I’m a bit slow.
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Hard News: Taxpayers' Union: still…, in reply to izogi,
If it were just the photo, or if it were just the one Twitter account and she hadn’t also shoehorned Jordan William's opinion into that IRD write up I wouldn’t have shared the observation. For me it’s mainly about questioning how accountable an individual journalist is and whether obviating them of responsibility helps address this systemic issue?
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Hard News: Taxpayers' Union: still…, in reply to izogi,
but that doesn’t seem fair to me.
It doesn’t seem fair to you that I think she’d probably come off looking better? I’m no journalist so perception of my impartiality or lack of isn’t all that relevant.
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Hard News: Taxpayers' Union: still…, in reply to Sacha,
It’s her editors, to be fair. That piece of copypasta crap
She’d probably come off looking a little better if she wasn’t following both the Taxpayers’ Union and Jordan William’s Twitter accounts and hadn’t retweeted him a couple of months ago.
I don’t want to bash a single journalist, though. This is really systemic.
With due respect that does sound quite circular at a consumer level when there’s form.
there’s a culture in state services of people taking sick days when they’re not sick.
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Speaker: Shenzen's hire-bike explosion, in reply to Paul Campbell,
There is one sort of bike that is rented from a kiosk. That limits where you can bike to and from, it doesn’t seem very popular.
I think the novelty wore off a bit. The bikes were managed by different organizations under district government departments, which is a huge limitation. For example while the Yantian kiosk rentals surpassed 10 million in October 2012 (ten months of operation), other districts including the CBD were still not on the map – those coastal districts are mainly geared at tourists and as such use fluctuated with the seasons.
They were popular enough that you’d have to delay a trip to the market until some bikes were returned to the local kiosk, but the tech was occasionally faulty and even with the kiosks they still needed trucks for redistribution. Our main issue with the kiosks were those occasions when returning from the market with a bags of produce, spotting a limited number of berths and other riders heading for them and having to race to get our bikes in first rather than ride 200m down the road to the next drop off.
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Tuari Potiki’s quote has been bouncing around in my head since listening:
"There needs to be a catalyst for change it’s not just going to happen organically and it’s not going to happen because the politicians are suddenly gonna wake up and decide to change things. Unfortunately the way that significant change has occurred in New Zealand over the last 20 years, and I’m thinking about firstly the establishment of the mental health commission and all of the money that went into mental health – that was the back of a couple of tragedies."
One has to wonder how many dead police officers, how many suppliers, how many soldiers, how many Community Board members, how many s̶u̶i̶c̶i̶d̶e̶s̶ (sorry I know the topic is un-Kiwi), how many chronic pain sufferers and terminally ill, how many daughters and sons, how many fathers and mothers and how many children and infants might constitute a “tragedy” in New Zealand in 2017.