Posts by Yamis
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I, like, totally voted.
so good.
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Craig wrote:
"And what gets me, over and over again, is that it's a sentiment that is conservative in the very best sense. And it's the 'socialist' in this race who sounds like he means it."
Funny thing is, that as a teacher and knowing that my fellow teachers are left leaning (well, not all but the vast majority. If only teachers were allowed to vote, National would never get beyond 25% EVER) I can tell you that what he said regarding parenting is pretty much exactly what we say - all the fucking time.
The more parents buy into their basic responsibilities the easier our job becomes. Kids react in different ways to the crap parenting that surrounds them but by and large it is an immense help if they at least appear interested/concerned and form some kind of co-operative relationship with their child and teacher. That isn't conservative, that's commonfuckingsense.
I was at a decile 7 school a few years ago where we had a mock election. Around 100 teachers cast a vote and national got 20%, Labour around 60% and the Greens around 20%.
I did that pundit thingeemajingee and came out at 75% Green Party which pretty well homo-genises me with where I thought I was angling.
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One thing the Aussies consistently beat us at is media coverage and water-cooler discussion of women's sport. It's REALLY noticeable.
That doesn't really fit with the Australian netballers regular comments about how they are blown away by the level of interest and media coverage of netball in NZ when compared to the awful coverage they receive back home.
This is out of date but it sums things up fairly well.
http://www.smh.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2003/09/04/1062548969225.htmlHere's something a bit more extreme from a couple of years ago in the Melbourne Age: http://www.theage.com.au/news/sport/count-me-out-women-must-earn-coverage/2006/08/04/1154198332013.html
"WOMEN'S soccer is a joke. People walked across the street in order not to watch it in Adelaide last week. Women's cricket is not much better. Netball is OK, sometimes, when there is nothing else on. But women's basketball is not.
Gymnastics? Jumped-up school sport. Women's tennis? Don't get me started. Women runners, jumpers, throwers, cyclists and swimmers do their best, but it is, by definition, second-best. Women's triathlon is a yawn. Women's golf is nothing more than a set of gimmicks. Women's AFL is embarrassing. If women insist on playing sport at all, it should be beach volleyball."
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport
Have a gander for womens sports covered in the Guardian online.
There's one way, way down near the bottom on a female squash player.
I'd say a ratio of about 1 story on female athletes to 100 on male athletes.
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When did women start reading the sports section in large numbers? ;)
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John, you be right there.
I teach teenagers and many of them simply do not have a critical thinking component operating in their brain.
I could basically tell most of them who to vote for and they'd take my word for it and do it. While that might be true of a large section of adult society it's very true for a lot of these lads and ladesses.
Even the smart 13 and 14 year olds I teach just simply do not have enough life experience under their belt to get how the mickey mouse club should be run let alone the country.
Not to mention how they would be manipulated by scumbag politicians.
Keep it at 18. Voters should have to be either on their way out of high school or been out for a few months at least.
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And having said that, have a nice weekend folks. Going to Taupo tomorrow for a family birthday party, and we're staying somewhere with no radio, no television and a five mile walk if you're mad enough to want a newspaper.
Say "hi" to Samwise Gamgee for me.
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Can somebody help me out here?
National will:
· Reduce the minimum contributions demanded of employees. From April next year, the minimum contribution rate for employees in KiwiSaver will be 2% of gross salary. Employers will also be required to make minimum contributions of 2% of gross salary, for each of their employees who are KiwiSaver members.As a teacher my employee is the Ministry of Education. In other words the government (quite possibly the National Government in a few months so help me god).
Does anybody have any idea if they match whatever I put into it (up to say 4% like now) ? or if they will chuck in 2% and leave me to take my pick with how much I put in?
I've already worked out that 4% from me and my employee for the next 40 years will struggle to see us through retirement. 2% would be SFA ($90,000 total over 40 years at my current pay + interest).
This whole "freedom" thing to spend your money how you want is all well and good but I'd say NZers to a significant extent in the last decade or two have shown no ability whatsoever to be able to do this sensibly.
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How come I have to log in on this site constantly even after selecting the "remember me" button? I've tried the cookie, security things and made no difference.
Just throwing that out there.
The global economy shouldn't affect a couple of expansion teams in the US and Japan. It's not like they are trying to keep 6 teams afloat each. It would be their national teams and they have a damn site more money at their disposal than we do. New York Yankees pay roll for one season would keep ALL of NZ rugby going for about 10 years.
Also 18 teams might not be in until 2012 at the earliest so the economy may be picking up about then and we'll be onto soup with vegetables in it as opposed to boiled water.
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Yep, you definately see times where sides go for the try. But is it worth 'corrupting' the whole system over?
League doesn't have bonus points for tries and you are just as likely to see them in the last few minutes as any other minutes during the game.
If they want to make the game a bit more exciting in terms of running rugby then the ELVs have gone a fair bit of the way as you say.
The other obvious way is to simply make tries worth 6 points. That way 2 penalties would not beat an unconverted try as it does now.
If they did that they could scale back a bit. Maybe something weird like 1 point for a drop goal (3 points is ridiculous), 2 points for a penalty, 4 for a try and 1 for a conversion. Where you score your try shouldn't be such a crucial thing. We could take a leaf out of American football for that where it's 6 for a touchdown and the "extra point" is worth just that.