…batten down the hatches
If Winston Peters is on a bandwagon you can bet that it’s 100% pure populist nonsense. So it is with his pronouncement on the superannuation debacle. “It’s sustainable as is,” he thunders with accompanying rapturous applause from the blue-rinse brigade.
It is not sustainable.
Enter John Key:
“I’ll resign before I’ll tamper with New Zealand Super.”
I don’t know what drives Mr Key. I’d have thought that a man who’s made a bundle in international finance would be more interested in doing the right thing for the country and going down in history as a Prime Minister who made a difference than in being a slave to the trappings of power. But when we consider his election policies and his government’s subsequent actions it’s hard to escape the conclusion that he’s just like the rest of them.
Or that, economically speaking, he’s a wee bit slow on the uptake. Continue reading →
…but it’s a whole lot cheaper than ignorance
We’ve been bickering over NCEA for years, now it’s the turn of National Standards. We’re accustomed to politicians being short-sighted and opportunistic but wouldn’t it be nice if we could rely on teachers to be more in touch with the real world?
The whole gang of them—teachers, politicians, civil servants and parents—need to go back to the drawing board. Stop tweaking the damn system, stop worrying about themselves and just teach our kids to read and write and to do their sums.
The present system is not working. Fifty years ago I received a better deal from the education system than today’s children do. It wasn’t great but it more successfully accomplished the basic aims of primary and secondary education.
I was at school decades before the advent of computers and fancy teaching aids; I was a hopelessly lazy and immature student; I never did homework; my parents took no interest in my education and most of my teachers were less than inspirational. Nevertheless, having scraped through School Certificate and University Entrance by a whisker, I left school with an excellent general knowledge and I was able to read, write and count very well.
What lead to this remarkable accomplishment, I hear you cry?
Continue reading →
A little scepticism is healthy, but there comes a point when denial in the face of overwhelming evidence contrary to your crusade becomes straight out stupidity. As the Listener’s editorial reminded us this week:
“In February 2008, a UK columnist delightedly noted that Arctic sea ice was growing – no need to worry about climate change after all, folks. What he had discovered, however, was winter.”
Remember Senator James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma? He and his family built an igloo in Washington DC during last February’s cold snap and had a fine old time sneering at climate change science. The signs outside the snow house read Continue reading →
Basic food commodities are following oil’s exponential rise
It hasn’t made any impact on the news lately, but oil has been on a steady upward trend. That would have been big news if it hadn’t been for the peak a couple of years ago. It took a massive recession to deal to that and the current glitch in the recovery has slowed the rise again. It’s only temporary. Unless the world economy collapses again, expect US$200 a barrel by 2015.
Partly because of the cost of oil and partly because of increasing demand, other commodities are following suit. Continue reading →
Habitat loss, pollution, desertification, over-population…
It’s not just about climate change… Jonathan Schell is an insightful writer and scholar. A man of many accomplishments. He has elegantly summed up my generation’s legacy to our children’s children in this quote:
“Taken in its entirety, the increase in mankind’s strength has brought about a decisive, many-sided shift in the balance of strength between man and the earth.” “Nature, once a harsh and feared master, now lies in subjection and needs protection against man’s powers.”
“Yet because man, no matter what intellectual and technical heights he may scale, remains embedded in nature, the balance has shifted against him too, and the threat that he poses to the Earth is a threat to him as well.” Continue reading →
In your dreams John
Not at this rate
Since I last investigated our dreadful economic performance the plot has thickened. The table below is the most current comparison of GDP per capita for the richest 51 countries in the world. The figures in the following chart are taken from the CIA’s world factbook.
You can find us in the image quite easily. There’s a reason it’s quite long. We’re at the very bottom. Continue reading →
Goff still seeking the lost plot
Once upon a time in a galaxy far away there was a bloke called Phil Goff who looked like leadership material and talked a lot of sense. When the dreaded Czarina toddled off to a sinecure in New York with a sigh of relief, sensible Phil disappeared into a black hole and a disfunctional Goff imposter popped up.
The Phil doppelganger charges out of its lair every couple of days, savages the PM with toothless gums, and offers a knee-jerk negative reaction to every government move, regardless of whether or not the attack is justified. John Key could end world poverty, bring peace to the Middle East by next Friday, and re-invent cold fusion. Phil would proclaim it all the devil’s work. Continue reading →
