Posts by Kumara Republic
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Access: Safe schools for everyone, in reply to Sacha,
exactly as intended.
Yet another case of survivorship bias dictating policy.
I dread the possibility of a special needs kid who falls through the cracks, and grows up to do an Adam Lanza. And were that to happen, those in positions of power would probably make the walls of Rome thicker and taller, instead of properly fixing the problem.
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Access: Safe schools for everyone, in reply to ,
That’s three different things.
Three different things that are known to be co-morbid in the psych community.
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Speaker: The government's Rules…, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
Good news: one of the central nepotists has jumped. Now if only the rest would follow, unless they have to be pushed.
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Just for fun, I compiled a Venn diagram of the NZ media landscape, with a few overseas examples included for comparison. Feel free to suggest corrections and additions.
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Hard News: On youthful indiscretions, in reply to Tinakori,
Did William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Henry Miller et al die in vain.
No, they didn't die in vain, because they never pretended to hold others to any moral standard. Whereas David Cameron pontificates to his fellow Britons about 'Broken Britain', conveniently forgetting it needs to start from the top.
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Speaker: The government's Rules…, in reply to Julie Fairey,
Ah yes, kicking Council any chance central govt gets. I never used to be remotely sympathetic to Council until I was on the inside. Now I see the tangled mess we have to deal with from central govt, currently exacerbated by central govt exiting work that really has to be done and so it falls to local govt to do it (with no resources from central govt) eg migration support apart from direct employment stuff.
There's an undercurrent of Livingstone vs Thatcher about the whole thing. Especially when NZ's biggest local bodies happen to have Red or Green-leaning mayors.
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From my experience, private schools don’t necessarily have the answer either, in spite of the supposedly smaller class sizes. My folks knew I was different, but they kept misdiagnosing it throughout my school life. They've finally understood, but they’re now retired and are unable to help much.
And it’s the same issue as far as support for underemployed autistic adults is concerned. Supported employment agencies like Workbridge and Emerge seem to have had too much staff turnover to be of meaningful help.
In the absence of Specialisterne and Aspiritech setting up a NZ branch, I’m very much coming to the conclusion that a trade apprenticeship approach is best for those who face barriers in the job market. What it needs now is a good supply of investment and political will. And the forthcoming ICT Graduate School completely misses the point.
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Hard News: NZME and you, in reply to BenWilson,
As an alternative, it seems fairer to me just to slap it on the current tax take as is, rather than invent arbitrary new taxes with new admin overheads that involve winding back the unlimited bandwidth clock to the bad old days. If it’s a common good it should be paid for out of the common tax pool.
Then how to guard it against hostile anti-intellectual forces and prevent it going the way of TVNZ6 & TVNZ7? The BBC and ABC are facing that very problem. That was one of the points raised by Dr Thompson in the report mentioned above when he canvassed funding options for a new public broadcaster.
At the Save TVNZ7 meeting before the channel's closure, he ruled out a return of the broadcasting fee on grounds of unworkability, and a voluntary ‘tip jar’ model wouldn’t have attracted enough revenue.
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Hard News: NZME and you, in reply to BenWilson,
I propose levying his communications. Jesus, could communication be one thing that doesn’t have the government’s finger right up it? They’re already scanning it all. Now we have to pay them for it too? Just to maintain something older that people who use it won’t pay for, and those that don’t use it have found another way for? Gah!
More on Dr Thompson’s proposals. His full paper is available at VUW.
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I suspect the real reason for the Rules Reduction Taskforce is sour grapes for most of the urban centres being held by red-green leaning mayors. Kind of a covert and pale imitation of Livingstone vs Thatcher in the UK.
