Posts by Span .
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Can I moan about how the cricket season feels infinite and I am therefore tending towards considering cutting the power supply to our house and hiding all the batteries?
Cos I'd really like to...
-
I'd be curious to know how many of those who leave school without qualifications go straight into jobs, and in fact may have left because of job offers that were more attractive to them than school.
That wedding pic really made me feel bad. And generally frustrated that this crap is happening in our world.
-
I've long thought if we are going to have a national dialogue about changing our flag then it should happen alongside a debate about our constitutional status, whether we should still be a monarchy, that Treaty thing, etc. Cos otherwise we'll just have to change the ruddy thing again if we ever manage to make any big alterations.
-
I heard the Salvation Army head honcho on Checkpoint yesterday saying that they would be happy to help with a National work for the dole scheme, shudder.
What concerns me about all this "let's get private enterprise involved" stuff is the way that responsibility for basic social (and economic) needs shifts from Government to Others. Others who are not democratically accountable. It all serves to undermine the point of having a government at all, of making collective decisions and carrying them out through a cohesive strategy that is coordinated across different agencies.
John Key, when pressed about how they would fund the invisible initiatives in his speech, said they would get rid of bureaucrats in Wellington. He just kept repeating this verbatim, no indication of which bureacrats, or how these initiatives would be coordinated without them. Or how indeed we would work out which initiatives we need (and whether they are working or failing) without MSD for example.
-
And don't a lot of the low decile primary schools already have the breakfast thing going on anyway? (Although of course more funding for schools, for breakfast or something else, is a Good Thing!)
-
Good point about those on minimum wage Che - it's something that worries me, that we focus so much on getting people into work, any work, that we don't really think about the working poor, which is a very real problem. Talk to anyone at a low decile school and they will tell you that many of the parents do work, some of them several shift jobs, but they just don't earn much doing it.
And of course these jobs tend to be in areas that were either agressively de-unionised in the 1990s or have expanded significantly during that period, so that the bulk of the workforce are without a history or sense of collectivity. And the crucial ability to bargain together to raise their pay and conditions.
-
Well none of this bodes well for the idea of the Herald website including blogs and forums does it?
On the CYFSWatch issue, my main concern has been the rights that the CYF workers have - both to a certain amount of privacy and to complaints being addressed in a just manner.
-
Ok, Bowie is on there already.
I always wonder why so many homophobes are Queen fans. That most enlightened of radio stations, Howracki, certainly thrash them extensively.
-
ok i officially suck at trying to do your funny html! sorry about that.
So Russell are you saying that the Government is succeeding in closing the gaps even after ditching Closing the Gaps?
-
what about Prince.... awfully tight pants going on there.
If we're going to talk about tight pants, don't forget David Bowie in Labyrinth.