Linky Love - Volume 19

Sorry this is late. Real life gets in the way of geek life sometimes. Consider yourselves lucky you don't have to wait until I've finished The Deathly Hallows ;-)

Standard intro - Linky Love is basically a cobbling together of posts I've noticed around the traps that have set off little tiny sparkles inside my head, and which I would possibly write about or comment on if I didn't need to sleep, eat, work, that kind of stuff. I usually put Linky Love volumes up weekly. I hope you like it.

As always if you have a post of your own, or some else's, that you'd like to highlight, please feel free to add it in comments, or to discuss the above posts, or indeed most anything else.

Born on State Highway One - "Mankind has always dreamed of destroying the sun!" - Ryan writes about the politics of climate change denial, and the left-right division that seems to have sprung up.

eggs benedict and two flat whites - small country - big complex :-) - Sandy looks at the relaxed attitude many Kiwis seem to have to being behind the world in regard to ICT standards.

Feministe - LIBERALS want your CHILD to have SEX!! - A great post by Trailer Park Feminist debunking the conservative (American) arguments about young people, sex, and the "loose" attitudes of liberals.

In a strange land - Rugby and patriarchy - New blogger Deborah contributes a post on the dominance of rugby in NZ society and what she thinks that means for us.

Larvatus Prodeo - Egging Brendan - Gummo Trotsky covers the Australian controversy surrounding political vetoing of social science and humanities projects.

Long Ago and Not True Anyway - The Moral Equivalence of Fools - Terence explains, clearly and concisely, why communism and nazism are not equivalent.

Object Dart - Is anyone listening? - Che Tibby writes about the importance of communication in his (public sector) role, and explains what an, ahem, "knowledge-maven" is.

Pandagon - Since you're already down, you won't mind if I kick you, will you? - Sheelzebub reports on the plight of many Hurricane Katrina survivors, still living in FEMA trailers two years later. Surprise, surprise, it's not the rich folks.

The view from my window - Contemporary fiction - satsumasalad muses on what the publishing world seems to think appeals to female readers today.

WellUrban - Patchwork City - Tom has made a cool map using the 2006 census data for Wellington.

Previous volumes of Linky Love (1 - 18) can be found over here.

(Pic Via)

Cheating cheaters and their cheating ways

Jeremy has mentioned the kerfuffle about cheating at Canterbury in a footnote, and it seems to me that's about all it deserves - oblique mentions on ex-student politician blogs, like I'm about to do.

I sat on a university disciplinary committee for about two years. Most of the cases we dealt with were cheating, but almost all were on assignments rather than exams, and in fact I always had the impression that a lot of departments dealt with assignment cheating in-house so we probably saw a small proportion. Exam cheating went straight to the committee and I can only recall two cases, although I'm sure there were a few more. Not a big problem then, imho.

Some of the efforts cheaters would go to was extraordinary. I remember one very careful woman who managed to write out a whole lot of info on a piece of tissue - the labour involved was significant, even if she managed not to wreck it first time, and maybe she should have just spent the time studying.

The best case I ever sat on was for an auditing paper - a group of students had got together to cheat on an assignment worth 1% of the total internal assessment. The auditing lecturers were outraged and wanted these students expelled, but that wasn't exactly commensurate with the crime. I think they thought there ought to be some kind of strict liability for auditing students who cheat - one strike and you are out.

All up it looks like the Canta article was a joke, pure and simple, and that Canterbury University wasn't so much responding to it as putting in place precautions already in use elsewhere. The UCSA president (Belinda?) dealt with it well on Checkpoint, clearly showing it was a media beat-up without falling into the Winston Peters trap of abusing the media.

And that ought to be the end of that.

Blah Blah Budget

Well I didn't really write anything about the Budget. To be honest I found it all a bit blah.

Again with the not doing anything to reverse the 1991 benefit cuts, again with the not really doing anything except tinkering with funding in education and health. Four percent for school operation grants was a slap in the face, although it's been trumpeted by some as one of the significant parts of Michael Cullen's presentation - they seem ignorant of the fact that costs are running at higher than 4%, and support staff wages are so pitiful that even adding the full 4% on to their existing pay rates isn't going to give them the increases they deserve. I know I know, it's Better Than National, but it's not exactly vision stuff.

Maybe Kiwisaver is a bit of a Grand Scheme, but I have a sneaking suspicion it's just going to get wound up or fully privatised by a future National Government - particularly if they come in next year when it hasn't been aroundlong enough for people to feel attached to it. We do need to do something about our savings culture, but I'm not sure that a scheme that can be so easily converted to privatising superannuation is such a smart idea.

I heard John Tamihere talking on the radio the other day about the similar Super scheme that the 1972-1975 Labour Govt brought in - it was only in a short time before Muldoon was elected and scrapped it, giving people a one-off refund of their balance in the next tax year or something. I have no idea if that's true, and I'm too lazy to do any research (isn't that what readers are for? ;-) ) but given the way the polls are trending and the rhetoric from the Right about Kiwisaver, it seems like history may repeat itself.

I'm quite gloomy about the polls. I know it's not too late, and part of me would like to see Labour get a good kicking. But given that the boot would be on the end of John Key's leg, well that makes me not so keen.

Humph.

(Pic Via)

Abstinence or Bust!

Over at Pandagon, Amanda has applied herself to the weird reasoning that some anti-choice people seem to have, specifically that those who perform abortions are in it for the moolah.

It's a great post, and I strongly encourage you to read it. Amanda points out that most of those who perform abortions also deliver babies, and that, in the USA at least, they receive much more dosh for deliveries than for abortions. Amanda also argues that they are often foremost amongst those advocating wider access to contraception, to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place, which would be against their financial interests if they were all about making money off abortions.

It seems to me that those who promote abstinence-only sex ed, which seems to be my latest obsession, are fundamentally undermining the chances of reducing the number of abortions. Ampersand has a post at Alas on a US study showing the ineffectiveness of abstinence-only sex ed. The aforementioned Amanda has the graphs too, and more comment of her own. Idiot/Savant has a brief post on it too, including the killer quote:

...half of the sample given abstinence-only education displayed exactly the same
predilection for sex as those who had received conventional sex education in
which contraception was discussed.

I want to make it clear that I have no problem with abstinence, and I have no problem with promoting it as an option in sex ed programmes. It's a choice I respect. I hope servant is going to post about this soon, as he has indicated.

But what I don't respect is those who want to make abstinence the only "choice" available, by actively encouraging ignorance of sex, ignorance of our own bodies, and ignorance of how to stay safe when sexually active. Ignorance that has extremely negative consequences.

I have particularly noticed that abstinence is promoted to girls and young women, but not necessarily so agressively to those of the XY persuasion. To me this speaks volumes about the true motivations of many of those who seek to educate on abstinence alone. I believe it is fundamentally an anti-woman agenda, based on a belief that female bodies should be controlled by men - first their fathers and later their husbands. In my humble opinion, purity balls are a clear manifestation of this viewpoint.

Not only does it not work, it's also incredibly stupid. People are going to "sin"* and have sex when their prime motivation is not baby-making. If they don't know about contraception, or they think it's an even bigger sin to use it, then they are going to get pregnant from time to time. Trust me, I went to a Catholic girls school. Which sin are you more likely to commit - the one that's enjoyable (that would be the sex) or the one that you're a bit unsure about, it's embarassing to mention and the guy isn't keen on (that would be the contraception)?

And then they face difficult decisions about what to do about that unwanted pregnancy**. Decisions made harder by the labelling of children out of wedlock as products of sin, and abortion as "the ultimate child abuse". It is the XXer who faces the choice, the social judgement, and the taint of sin upon their soul.

If people truly want to bring the rate of abortions down then they need to front up to reality; people will have sex and if you don't encourage them to use contraception there will be unwanted pregnancies. If you believe that abortion is a sin (and I don't) then perhaps you're going to have to decide you're ok with preventing conception as the lesser of two evils. Because just trying to control women's bodies for them isn't going to do the trick.

* I want to make it clear here that I don't have much truck with ideas of sin. I think you can make moral and immoral choices, and you can do right or wrong. I understand the difference between good and evil. But my thoughts on this don't match the religious concept of sin.

** Not to mention the risks of STIs.

Linky Love - Volume 13

Standard intro - if you have a post of your own, or some else's, that you'd like to highlight please feel free to add it in comments, or to discuss the above posts, or indeed most anything else.

Alas, a blog - Roundup of posts about Gonzales v Carhart - Amp gives us all a link farm all about the recent Supreme Court decision in the US to undermine a woman's right to choose.

Aucklander at Large - Racial predisposition - a@l uncovers some weird theories about the Virginia Tech shooting on the Herald Readers' Views site. Winston Peters would be proud.

Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty - But we've got a world cup to win! - Maia writes about Sivivatu's discharge without conviction for domestic violence, and why that had more to do with his Silver Fern than anything else.

the gossip - Smashing stuff with the people's hammer - uncovering the radical union activist that is Spongebob Squarepants.

I Blame the Patriarchy - Some notes on revolution - Twisty puts the case that our society is a patriarchy and why it sucks so much.

Joe Hendren - Peaceful WTO protesters win $1 million compensation - Joe has the story that no doubt won't get anywhere near the coverage the original misrepresentations of the so-called "Battle of Seattle".

The Kiwi Herald - TV presenters to multitask - john puts a humourous spin on the lay-offs at TVNZ.

Larvatus Prodeo - Labor's "pragmatic" national industrial relations platform - Guy looks at Australian Labor's possible answer to John Howard's much loathed Workchoices. It looks like Kevin Rudd may have caught NZ (and British) Labour's Third Way disease...

Pandagon - The main downside is it's one more thing to dust - Amanda Marcotte gives her view on the Rapist #1 action figure furore, which is not what I had expected I must admit.

Parrot on Policy - Saving for Retirement: Sorry, too busy paying off debt - Policy Parrot writes about some of the barriers to retirement saving and some ideas to counter them. Good to see student debt on the list of barriers!

Policy Matters - Putting 'public' back into public policy - Grant Duncan discusses the different parties' approaches to these matters and asks for feedback on how we now conceptualise "publicness" in public policy.

Shakesville - Iraq's homosexual communities cries out for help - wkw reports on what sounds like a violent campaign against gays and lesbians, exacerbated by the US Occupation.

WellUrban - Whose lane is it anyway? Tom has an interesting post about public transport developments in Windyton.*

Your Dirty Answers - (no title) - Audra Williams with the pyjamas you never knew you needed. Paul from The Fundy Post, this is for you!

And don't forget, previous volumes of Linky Love (1 - 12) can be found in their own shiny category.

Proving your point through bludging

One thing that frustrates me immensely is the practice of criticising a system for allowing bludging that you yourself take advantage of.

Case in point, the frequent anecdotal attacks on the Student Loan Scheme (which I actually don't like) for "encouraging" students to draw down the living component and earn interest off it.*

For the sake of a few hundred dollars a year, a handful of people do this, but I suspect their motivation is more to wave two fingers in the general direction of a Government they hate rather than to actually make a really quite small return off taxpayers' money for their own use. And here's one such example of this almost completely pointless practice of acting immorally to somehow gain the moral high ground.

People like this give people like Bill English anecdotes to wave around in Parliament, despite the lack of hard data on abuse of the Student Loan Scheme. They perpetuate myths about the Scheme, including the one that you can still download big wads of cash and blow them on stupid things, because it seems impossible to most of the public that anyone* would have the financial discipline and sheer bloody-mindedness to draw down $150 of debt a week to put it in an interest bearing account and garner a few hundred dollars (if that) at the end of the year. Instead those who aren't familiar with the scheme assume that the old rules still apply, from early in the Scheme when you could phone up for dollops of electronic money and the loan booklets were full of pictures of surfboards and cars. And so public sympathy for students drops, and National and Act can continue largely unchallenged with their assertions that fees are not too high and allowances are not too rare.

Ultimately if Michael and his ilk want to do this then it's their choice, it's not illegal. But it's hardly the wisest of investment choices, and it's yet another example of how Rightwingedness seems to advocate greed as good.

* I remember when the Loan Scheme was still young enough to be around the $1B mark and the rumour all over the Shore was that rich kids parents' investment advisors were telling them all to borrow their fee money on the Scheme. The logic was that it would fall over because it was so highly unsustainable, and that way their kids would all get a free education. I have no idea if this was true, but I heard it enough times from different people (people completely unassociated with education campaigning) to wonder.
** In particular students, who are stereotyped as not being the most sensible of people when it comes to money. Actually I think this is an unfair characterisation, but it is a key part I believe of the fact that many people still think that you can borrow $1000s at a time on the Scheme, despite the fact that that hasn't been the case for a considerable number of years.

9 Billion is an awfully big number

And so the day has come to pass - NZ's students (and ex-students it should be noted) will owe over $9 Billion at some point today*.

I remember when I was a student activist and the balance was heading rapidly towards $3B and we just couldn't get our heads around the size of the debt. Now it is three times that.

My impression is that Labour is comfortable about it, and they think the electorate is comfortable about it too. There is a new consensus around tertiary education, as everyone in Parliament, except the Greens, seems to be of the opinion that tertiary study is a privilege, and one that must be paid for. This makes me sad.

If the electorate is now resigned to tertiary fees, this doesn't seem to hold true for restricting access to student allowances. Repeated surveys, over many years, have shown high levels of public support for a universal student allowance. It still seems bizarre to me, 11 years after I first became politically active because of these very issues, that students are the only group of NZers who can't access some level of income support if they need it. Instead they are judged on their parents' income, until the arbitrary age of 25, and must borrow to meet their living costs if their parents are considered too wealthy and they cannot meet their needs through other means.

According to NZUSA figures, around a quarter of students under 25 receive some level of allowance support, despite the fact that they can get a payment, of diminishing size, if their parents earn under $72,000. This tells me that the bulk of those studying are still the rich(ish), and that is a problem, for both our now and our future. It seems tertiary study and training are still not seen as an option for those outside the middle and upper classes, and that should worry us all.

Is it realistic to expect parents to support their adult children? Particularly as wage growth in the last twenty years has not met inflation and the size of mortgages and rents has increased dramatically? So many students take up the offer of a student loan, for living costs as well as fees, because they aren't getting support from their families and they simply cannot earn enough to live off and still study at the same time.

And of course there's the impact of the student loan after the degree or diploma is gathering dust in the back of a cupboard somewhere. Most of my friends are unlikely to buy a home anytime soon. That choice is constricted for many by significant student loans. Of the contemporaries I know who have been able to get on the mortgage treadmill it has often been due to a windfall - an inheritance, family support, the good luck of a lotto win. And of those who have repaid their loans, many have had to go overseas to do it.

The social impact of student loans is yet to be fully realised. Certainly the scheme is a lot better than when it was first created, but Labour** has not made the real moves necessary on fees and allowances to reduce the need to borrow in the first place. Until it does that $9 Billion will continue to multiply and become even less possible to address.

* NZUSA's handy debt counter hasn't quite ticked over to $9,000,000,000 yet, but it is very very nearly there. If I was really masochistic I could sit here and watch but alas there is work to be done.
** And again I keep thinking, "but National would be worse, so whatcha donna do?"

At least

It seems to me, as a NZ leftie, that really there aren't a lot of choices for me at the moment. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there aren't a lot of options I like, politically.

On the right hand I have National, Act, and the general Forces of Darkness who throng around concepts I find anathema. Ideas like low (or no) taxation, privatising state services, selling assets, cutting benefits, and generally advantaging the rich (and priviledged) over all others.

The left palm displays the Labour-led Government, which doesn't exactly set my leftie heart aflame with passion for their policies, or even their principles, but is better than National.

And that seems to be all there is. As far as Government leadership goes there's only National or Marginally Better Than National.

On international relations, I can wicker all I want about Helen Clark's senseless lunch attempt to get a free trade deal with George W* whilst delicately not mentioning the USA's human rights abuses. But I know that John Key and his ilk would probably lick the POTUSA's boots clean after the soup and enthusiastically ask him where he got all those fab ideas for dealing with prisoners by the time the entree was on the table. At least Clark didn't commit us to a stupid war in Iraq.**

On education, I can express my extreme frustration with Labour's approaches to tertiary, secondary, primary and early childhood, but at least I know they are not going to set up direct competition between state schools and encourage the profit motive ahead of all else. There is still a pretence (and possibly in some of the Labour caucus a genuine belief) that education shouldn't be about making money. Unlike another party I could name. At least Labour has significantly increased funding in this Vote and brought special education and kindergarten back into the state sector.

On health, I could vent my spleen about the way Labour-led administrations rely heavily on
the goodwill of those working in the system, but I know they won't gut the public provision of healthcare like National would. And they have given the nurses pay parity, which is A Good Thing, and one that National would certainly not have done.


On the parlous state of our police force, in particular it's attitude to women, the Labour-led government certainly hasn't been as fulsome in its condemnation as I would like, but at least Clark has actually said some critical things. What's the National view on the police? Judging by their membership in the blogosphere the general view in that party might be that this was all about a few rotten eggs and not systematic at all, no siree.

I could go on and on with examples, but you get the drift.***

What this situation means is that Clark and co can rest on their laurels to a certain extent. They know that whatever they do it is unlikely to be as bad as what National would do in the same situation, from the point of view of their supporters and those further to the left. Why bother trying when you've already got a substantial number of votes sewn up, purely because the other option is worse?

(I did warn you I was a bit grumpy and bitter at the moment.)

So what's a leftie to do?



* If Sheriff Howard got a bum deal then what chance have we got? Less chance than a koala in a forest fire methinks.
** Maybe our troops in Afghanistan, that forgotten war, put her off?
***Besides, it's quite hard to pin National down on their exact intentions in government because they so rarely communicate any actual policy. I can only judge them on past performance and general principles, neither of which are in their favour from my point of view.

Linky Love - Volume 7

Standard intro - if you have a post of your own, or some else's, that you'd like to highlight please feel free to add it in comments, or to discuss the above posts, or indeed most anything else.


Alas (a blog) - Workplace deaths are overwhelmingly male - Ampersand looks at the reasons why US workplace deaths are mainly amongst men, in particular occupational segregation. My perception is that NZ stats would be similar.

Auckland's Burning - Workers fired because of union membership - John has text and pics about a group of Unite members who had jobs at the Ascott Metropolis in Auckland, until they were fired for having the gall to be union members.

Contradiction - Recanting - George Darroch changes his mind about the post featured in an earlier Linky Love about banning gang patches. Good on him for doing so publicly.

Feministe - File Under: Get pregnant, lose your civil liberties - Jill shines a much needed light on yet another example of discrimination against pregnant women.

Feministe - The New Feminism - Another great post from Jill, this time about how a new reality TV show based on the Pussycat Dolls is apparently empowering to women. That would be why high heels are so uncomfortable to wear then - the pain is empowering me!

Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty - Expecting More - Maia rips apart the post by Russel Norman, Greens co-leader, about the trials of Rickards, Shipton and Schollum. She has written some amazing stuff on the trial and its outcome, including this, this, and this.

The Fundy Post - Listener now to be available as soothing Gel - Paul Litterick flexs his satire muscles in response to news of a declining Listener readership.

Hard News - Bad men - Russell Brown on the police rape trials, resulting in a multi-faceted comment thread which dips into trollville before being redeemed by D&D veterans. A thread to make you cry a lot, and, eventually, laugh a little.

The Legal Soapbox - The Old School Tie - Legal Eagle explores the issues lefties face when choosing between public and private schooling for their progeny.

The Legal Soapbox - Barefoot and pregnant with a gavel - Legal Eagle gets a second nod for a post on some really quite ludicrous reasons why women shouldn't be judges according to Shariah law.

A Long Time Ago and Not True Anyway - With these bombs democracy - Terence expands on a debate on Public Address System about imposing democracy, comparing Germany and Japan with Iraq.

Make Tea Not War - Know Your Rights - MTNW has a handy explanation of a basic consumer right; being able to return things wot don't work good. Includes a dandy letter you can use for your own broken stuff crisis.

Pandagon - Marriage's downward spiral - gay folks didn't do it - Pam Spaulding writes about the socioeconomic reasons why less Americans are marrying and concludes that it has little to do with homosexual marriage.

Single Malt Social Democrat - Charity begins in Parnell - Carl points out that it doesn't have to be private charity or government funding, and argues that the idea of citizens being totally reliant on charity is abhorrent.

stanselen - Ageism and Sexism - jo writes about her experiences within activist groups as an "older" (32!) radical feminist.

Tales from the Reading Room - Fantasy Podcasts - litlove muses on which great dead literary types she would love to interview, and what she would ask if only she could.

Previous volumes of Linky Love can be found in their own shiny category.

Linky Love - Volume 6

Standard intro - if you have a post of your own, or some else's, that you'd like to highlight please feel free to add it in comments, or to discuss the above posts, or indeed most anything else.

Alas (a blog) - The Long Beach Beating Case and Race - Ampersand writes about a number of assault cases in the USA where race has been an issue and looks at the impact skin colour may have had on the outcomes (and the conservative reaction).

Anarchia - Anarchism in Te Whanganui a Tara/Wellington - Asher blogs about anarchy groups in our fair capital.

Auckland's Burning - Activists assaulted while CEO lies - John covers a protest against climate change at Don Elder's speech as CEO of Solid Energy. Includes snaps!

Blogging it Real - Things that hack you off - dc_red asks what would you dispose of if you were Supreme Commander of the Universe, even providing a handy starter list if you are stuck for inspiration.

Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty - It's not anti-feminist to go on a diet, it is anti-feminist to write a diet book - Maia looks at two recent Guardian pieces and writes about dieting as a survival mechanism.

Contradiction - Fashion tips for liberals - George explains why he supports Chester Burrows on banning gang patches.

Feministe - More proof of the Housework Gap - zuzu looks at new research on the housework-gender labour division, and examines her own motivations for cleaning.

Frogblog - Public transport, how do you spell that? - Russel covers and comments on a recent debate in the House about public transport, involving Jeanette Fitzsimmons (first questioner), Michael Cullen (the questioned), Shane Jones (asks a patsy) and Peter Brown (puts in another plug for the roading lobby).

The Fundy Post - Hollaback Man - Paul reports on Matthew Hooton's spirited defence of the Exclusive Brethren on RNZ National recently. Paul reckons Laila Harre made "mincemeat" of him. What a shame.

Island Life - Browned to perfection - David Slack constructs a new New Zealand, loosely based on Tariana Turia's pronouncement that we could be a little browner (and she doesn't mean more tanned).

Long Ago And Not True Anyway - Panel Beaten (Oh for a higher calibre of right wing nut) - Terence muses on the woefulness of Michael Basset's recent performance on RNZ National's afternoon panel.

No Right Turn - Climate change: no policy - Idiot/Savant responds to a Herald on Sunday comment about the lack of policy (which he agrees with) and examines the reasons for this. He also has a related post on the emission statistics the HoS has used and scratches his head over where they got them from.

No Right Turn - Trickle down fails again - And Idsy gets a second nod in this Linky Love volume for his examination of how trickle down economics have failed to deliver not only in NZ but also in the USA under George W.

Pandagon - Salaries and housework and the whine of entitlement oh my! - Further to the housework post at Feministe listed above, Amanda Marcotte looks at the impact of women earning more than their male partners on the division of labour in the home.

stanselen - Playcentre is Anarchism in our area - jo succintly reveals how her local playcentre works.

Walking with Ghosts - Another Modest Proposal - the STFU scale - Phoenician in a time of Romans outlines a brilliant scheme to stop complaints about various things by establishing a Statistics Towards a Fairer Universe scale.

Past Linky Loves are now in their own shiny category.

No policy please, we're National

So let me get this straight, John Key's policy announcements since his ascension are:

• A (privately-donated) muesli bar in every school lunch box
• Back To The Workhouses Work For The Dole (maybe, not sure yet; I don't know, what do you think; I'm sure it worked last time!)
• National hearts John Howard (oh wait, that's not a policy, that's a Tory love-fest)
• The Maori seats gone at some point in the foreseeable future (possibly put off if National needs the Maori Party to get those Beehive offices)
• A slight increase to donation tax rebates for the rich (which Labour are going to do anyway*)

Is that it? Have I missed any?

My word, I just don't know how Helen Clark is going to counter these astonishing new policy ideas. Key is certainly setting a cracking pace!

Perhaps his Education spokesperson, Katherine Rich, might even have an early childhood education policy some time before the end of the decade, so that she can refer to it when being interviewed about how pants she thinks the Government's is. Because sooner or later some journalist is going to ask the question - What would National do - and not let her off the hook with a "we'll have a policy by the end of the year" as Sean Plunkett did on RNZ National earlier this week.**

What happened to all those policies they had at the last election? Did they just forget about them? Now that's not very sustainable. My recollection of party policy processes is that the policy remains until it is replaced by something new. If it is really embarassing you might say that it is currently X but under review. Certainly the major Opposition party should have current policy on current issues.

After all, if 10 Labour MPs defected to United Future tomorrow then Key could be Prime Minister by lunchtime, and then what would his Government be doing if they have already shown all the old policies the door and robustly asserted that those ideas shall never darken their threshold again?

I suspect National's new policy will be remarkably similar to what Don Brash's leadership produced, it just hasn't been re-branded yet. After all, it takes a lot of scrubbing to get that Exclusive Bretheren smell out.***

* The current Government has also foreshadowed that they are likely to allow those who do voluntary work to claim some of it back under the donation rebate scheme too.

** Ok so it's only Tuesday which means it must have been yesterday. But I'm not a hundy sure. Sorry about that. And at least Plunkett asked the frakking question.

*** Yes this is an unusually grumpy post. Blame it on the lack of sleep and chalk it up to experience. Either that or a subconscious desire to inflame my readers into an orgy of commenting that will result in the spontaneous combustion of many of my most reviled foes. Who can tell?

National's "new" policy agenda

A funny thing happened on the way to being in Government (or not). It seems that National have forgotten that their party has internal policy processes.

Since John Key's elevation to the leadership he's made a number of announcements and references indicating a significant policy shift. This creates some confusion for back-room boffins like myself, when Key makes speeches indicating a move away from Don Brash-era policies like a timeframe for immediately abolishing the Maori seats*, focusing on the issue of climate change (which Key and other leading figures considered questionable not that long ago), not to mention endorsing a nuclear-free New Zealand. Did National squeeze in some remit voting between Brash stepping down and Key opening his mouth?

Most recently, in his Jan. 30th "State of the Nation" speech, Key announced school breakfasts (yep, that's right, really BIG policy stuff) and this month there has been a policy announcement about putting Corrections back into Justice. Those with longer memories may recall that a) many low decile schools started breakfast programmes years ago, and b) National took Corrections out of Justice in the first place when it was last in power.

Now please don't think I don't want National to talk policy. I definitely do - not only so that voters can see what National would do in power, but also because I think it's an important part of democracy that the Opposition not only criticise but also put forward alternatives.

But in the wake of The Hollow Men and the insight that gave into National's policy processes prior to the 2005 election, you'd think Key would be trying to distance himself from the perception that National are more Decepticonz than neocons. By changing policy himself, by media statement and speech-making, he is signalling that National is still a party which will change policy not via it's own, long-standing democratic processes, but to suit political whims.

I'm also a little perturbed by National's approach to industrial relations, which Jordan has already blogged about. Key has said that they wouldn't shift away from the ERA as the key piece of legislation, however continuing to endorse Wayne Mapp's 90 day probation law suggests that National would still want to make some radical changes to employment law.

So perhaps a reader who is in National would care to comment - do Key's announcements reflect recent internal policy debates (and of course their outcomes)? Please note, anonymous comments have never been banned on this blog.


* I first started writing this post in early Dec 2006. Now Key has actually gone back to almost Brash's policy, but he has still delayed the possible implementation of the abolition by three to six years on what Brash promised, to 2014. I smell the whiff of a bargaining chip for negotiations with the Maori Party myself, but Sharples and Turia don't appear to appreciate the game playing.

And in the Blue Corner

And so the debate about the make-up of the Labour caucus continues - Carl has posted about the shock news that there are some unionists amongst the Labour MPs, while Insolent Prick has analysed the Red Team to portray it at (what he considers) its worst. You'd never guess he has strong associations with National.

But let's turn the tables a little here - let's look at National for just a few moments. I know that in general people don't like to overly scrutinize National MPs, goodness knows why, but perhaps they deserve a little bit of our attention.

In comments to my post refuting Fran O'Sullivan's attack on the make-up of the Labour caucus, Psycho Milt postulated that a change of Government probably wouldn't see that journalist similarly writing about the lack of "union activists, teachers, lecturers, community workers and nurses" the National caucus has.

So just how many does it have? I live but to serve...

Nurse aide, community worker ("welfare representative") - Paula Bennett
Secondary teacher - Gerry Brownlee
Primary and secondary teacher - Brian Connell
Nurse - Jo Goodhew
Community worker ("youth education coordinator") and union member (4 years in the Clerical Workers Union* in the mid 80s) - Tau Henare
Legal academic - Wayne Mapp
Secondary teacher - Allan Peachey
"Junior lecturer" - Lockwood Smith
Physics teacher (secondary) - Maurice Williamson

As with the Labour MPs, I've looked only at their bios on the Parliamentary website, for consistency's sake. Feel free to make additions/subtractions in comments.

I'd note that "community worker" is about as hard to pin down as "business person" and "entrepreneur" were for the Labour list. Further I haven't included Nick Smith, as he was a tutor at university, not a lecturer, or Nicky Wagner (a lecturer, but at a polytechnic which doesn't quite fit the Labour stereotype) but I'm willing to argue the toss on whether they count or not.

The above is a considerably shorter list than that produced by applying O'Sullivan's list ("Business people, successful entrepreneurs, military men, scientists, accountants, farmers, diplomats and even a few lawyers") to Labour MPs.

Psycho Milt's list works out at:
Union activists - maybe one**
Teachers - four
Lecturers - two (four if you include Smith [N] and Wagner)
Community workers - two
Nurses - one (and one nurse aide)

So what we can conclude here is that the stereotypes applied to Labour MPs apply even less to the National caucus than the reverse.

Newsflash indeed!



* The Clerical Workers Union amalgamated with what is now the Service and Food Workers Union during the 1990s.
** Despite David Farrar's pronouncement in comments over on a post about this at Just Left that many National MPs would have been union members over the years only one listed it. And I note that the one who did is an import from another party.

An Nouncements

Well it's been a few days since I last posted, but I just don't feel like there's much political to write about, and I can only go so far with memes and self-indulgent photo posts.

Jordan's indicated that he too feels there is Not Much going on*, but that "there'll be an announcement, soon."

So I've decided to make up some political news upon which to blog. Some announcements I'd like to hear, no less:

A Veritable Tsunami of Funding For Public Services - Clark and Cullen announce (in dubious taste) the Labour-led Government's grand plans to pump meaningful injections into the budgets of schools, universities, polytechnics, hospitals, and other public institutions.

Bush: "We Will Fight Them On The Beaches" - George W finally admits that climate change is a) real and b) not so good, and decides to launch a comprehensive War on Carbon Emissions, starting with fuel efficiency standards in line with China.

Real Issues About National's Conduct - The Herald's editorial reversing their naive dismissal of the concerns raised in The Hollow Men, and signalling the beginning of their own media campaign to root out and expose corrupt behaviour in all political parties.

International Year of Being Nice To Each Other Begins Well - Headline of article covering the launch of 2007 as International YoBNtEO, for politicians, bloggers, and all the people of the world. Blogs across the nation suddenly seem bereft of trollish comments and senseless barbs, while politicians agree that actually there's quite a bit they can develop across party lines without compromising their principles, so let's stop slagging each other in public.

Ok, that's enough to be going on with then.

* Although I'd note that Jordan has managed to write several posts since his Not Much, which suggests that there is more going on than perhaps he initially thought! I however am not motivated enough to write about climate change or Fiji (especially when No Right Turn has been doing such a sterling job).**
**Can I still call it a digression when it's at the end of the post?

Selfish reasons to be left

Maia's got a post up about our generation and activism. One of the things that struck me about her post was something I'd never really thought all that much about before, not consciously anyway:

I think individual action is a useless form of protest, because it's only through collectivity that we have any power. But that's not the only problem - not buying clothes made in China, or buying fair trade whatever isn't just uselss - it also frames political action as something you do for other people. I actually ended up agreeing with one of the apathetic people they interviewed when he said - I might get involved if I thought there was something in it for me. If people believe that the only reason you paticipate in poltical protests is personal goodness then we're all screwed.

I'd often thought, in my secret socialist heart, that I was somehow a Bad Leftie for being able to find the selfish angle in most political causes I've ever felt inclined to support. Now I know that I'm not the only one, and that in fact it's probably a necessary part of my motivation.

Here's a few of my more self-serving reasons for supporting various things:

• Free education* - I hope it'll mean less crime (less likelihood that my stuff will get nicked) more educated professionals for me to access (particularly in the health and education sectors), more skilled tradespeople (so I can finally find a plumber), and a more democratic society (so all my blog whinges aren't totally in vain).
• Free healthcare - I'll get sick less often with Other People's Germs, because other people will be sick less as they'll actually go to the doctor, or fill their prescription, or whatever. Also if, Deity Of Your Choice Forbid, I need medical care I'll be able to get it even if I'm down to my last shiny new 5c piece.
• A comprehensive and fair social welfare system - Because one day I could be the person who gets made redundant in a shrinking industry, or finds herself with children and no means to support them, or needs to get away from the bullying boss who makes my life a total misery, or has an illness that just won't go away (oh wait, that last one already happened, nevermind). And because if other people can access this same system then they might be less likely to nick my stuff to get by. (Always this obsession with possessions, my precioussssss, ahem)
• Justice (and thus peace) in the Middle East - Well if nothing else it'll bring the price of the petrol I need down, plus it'll mean that the media can't get away with filling up all their papers and bulletins with foreign footage and actually focus on some local news, and hopefully even some actual political analysis, which I'd really quite like to watch.
• Fair trade - The economy's global and I'd like it immensely if the promotion of fair trade helps to maintain and protect my own wages and conditions. Pretty please.

Ok that's enough selfishness for one post. Must be my purple robot genes in control again.**


* Regarding the "free" part of free education. For future reference, whenever I write the words "free education" you can pretty much guarantee that it's shorthand for the following:
"A fully publically controlled, publically funded and publically owned education system, from early childhood to tertiary and everything in between. Oh and tertiary doesn't just mean university or polytech either."

** Is anybody out there getting my robot gene jokes? Anyone? Where's Xavier when you need him. (Mind you he'd probably tell me they're just not funny). Can you tell I'm on a low sugar diet and starting to go a bit manic. Bah, nevermind.

No vision (Happy 90th to Labour Part II)

A while back I posted about my frustrations with Labour, my sense that it isn't going to deliver any radical changes to the unjust society we live in, in a post entitled No Heart. Thanks to everyone for their comments on this post, I think it has been an interesting debate.

One of the things that is clear to me about Labour (both its leadership and many of its activists) is that it is wedded to an incremental approach, or "gradualism" as Jordan Carter explains it.

That's all well and good, and I can see the value of making slow changes to our capitalist society and economy, to make New Zealand more like a social democratic state, or even head towards socialism.

But I don't think that's really the Labour vision. Evidence is that as the leading part of this Government they don't in fact have much vision at all.

Idiot/Savant lays out exactly how Labour has failed the poor, in a post examining a survey on poverty in our fair isles. It's shocking reading.

I'm not suggesting there are overnight solutions to these things, but I do feel that Labour doesn't actually intend to address many of these problems. Maybe they do and they just aren't very good at communicating it.

Labour doesn't appear to be committed to a system of fully publically funded and publically controlled education for example. There seems to be no plan to bring in universal student allowances or abolish tuition fees, although there has been significant softening of the student loan scheme. But that just makes it more palatable and gives ROC Labour MPs excuses for not taking action on the causes of that mountain of debt. Not to mention the fact that school fees are becoming commonplace, kindergartens are starting to charge fees, and there is a great deal of confusion within the early childhood sector about how exactly the 2007 20 Hours Free is going to work, with less than a year to go now.

Labour has been doing better in health, to some extent. But there are massive deficits in many DHBs and apparently no intention to address this. Shouldn't deficits at public institutions send a message that they aren't being funded to an adequate level to deliver on Government's expectations?

What depresses me most is the failure of leadership I so often see from Labour. There seems to be an inability to communicate the vision thing, to take on the Opposition about some of their silly proclamations and policy ideas, and clearly state what Labour's plan is. Too many times I've seen Labour back down and mount a pathetic details argument when it should fight the big picture stuff. Tax is a good example - the Labour tacticians seem to think, despite years of evidence from the NZES, that any suggestion that our tax system needs overhaul to fund the aspirations of our nation will result in endless terms in the wilderness for Clark and her allies.

Sometimes you need to trust the public (more often than not I believe). You need to trust them with your vision, argue it honestly and clearly, and debate the big picture not try to sell it on the little details. A Labour party that did, with the left-wing values and policies I believe the bulk of its membership and supporters would be in favour of, that would be a Labour party I could consider giving my ticks to.

the zone diet

Last night I noticed Bill English's press release on Feb 7th which trumpets out "96% of parents can't be wrong", and goes on to say:

A survey showing that 96% of parents want to choose which schools their children attend shows Labour is out of step with the aspirations of New Zealand families, says National’s Education spokesman, Bill English.

I checked out the Maxim report that English is referring to. I wanted to see what the question was in this survey:

Parents were asked to respond to the statement, "I would like to select the school my child goes to," indicating whether they strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree or strongly disagree.

Nearly all parents (96 percent) indicated that they would like to select the school their child goes to.

Maxim then go on to defend the simplicity of the question, but I want to know is, what would the answers have been if they had shoehorned these facts in:

1. Approximately two thirds of NZ schools don't currently even have zones. The Maxim report itself has a dandy graphic on this that shows only 33% of primary schools and 38% of secondaries have zoning. (I suspect that the vast majority of them are in Auckland and yet those surveyed were from across the country.)
   
2. Being able to pick which school you want your child to go to doesn't mean you actually get to chose which school they attend. Just like the Oscars - you can pick any Oscar that you want to win, but unless the Academy picks you for it too, you ain't getting it.

In situations where spaces are tight (remember Point 1, this is about a third of schools), there is no guarantee that just because you choose School A your child will get in to School A, unless there is some obligation on the school to take students like your child above others.

Under zoning that obligation is for schools to take local students above others. Without zoning that obligation is up to the school and its Board of Trustees, and they could decide anything they liked as long as it didn't directly contravene legislation, eg the Human Rights Act. They could decide they were only going to take students who lived in houses with even street numbers and if you happened to live in an odd numbered house, tough cheese.

In the zoneless world it is the school who has all the power. It becomes even more dangerous when community involvement is also curtailed, through associated policies like encouraging schools to take-over others and turning schools' senior figures into managers instead of professional leaders. Where demand is high and supply is low the market will provide - which usually means the people with the big wallets gets what they want and stuff everyone else.

Abolishing zoning gives the appearance of parental choice. But it can't deliver the reality.

Links:
Moxie over at Kete Were has been writing some excellent stuff on zoning recently, e.g.
- John Morris - victim of injustice?
- Zoning debate rages on - in my mind at least

Tags:
- Education
- Zoning

bring back the politicians

I feel like i haven't written a political post in weeks and weeks, there's just so little happening that moves me to write.

Except...

I heard Bill English on the radio again this evening attacking NCEA. "Defending the indefensible" were the words he used (about the new NZQA head's role in regard to NCEA) - and it was his actual voice, not a newsreader saying "Mr English says etc".

As Apathy Jack has pointed out in his excellent recent post on NCEA, the system that English is so scathing about (ad infinitum, ad nauseum) was actually proposed and introduced by National.

I've already whined about Bill's tendency to inaccuracy and hypocrisy over on Just Left, but I felt it was important to start the new year on the right note - pointing out how National's dreary vision for NZ's educational insitutions often seems to be based on urban myths about how the various systems operate and where they came from. The education stuff is additionally frustrating because from people I know who have met English, even about education issues, he genuinely does know about it all and even understand bits, he just seems to forget when it comes to his media work.

Obviously Bill's New Year's resolution wasn't to remember his party's history.

spot the difference

David Benson-Pope vs Lockwood Smith.

What is it about these Education Ministers?

I look forward to reading the right blogs' attacks on Smith for his reinvention of history sometime soon.

blast from the past

I wrote the below over five years ago - at the time, and for many years afterwards, it was the best protest I had ever been on. After today I am not so sure it still holds that crown.

As I can't post about today I thought I'd put this up instead, unaltered from how it was back in The Day.*

Today Rocked!
Let me tell you a little bit about today...

Today rocked! I spent two hours with several hundred other students fighting for what we believe in; and it made an impact, if not on the Government (yet), then certainly on the hundreds of people we passed in the street, whose cars we stopped, the hundreds of other students we passed at the University, the dozens of police and, most importantly, it impacted on us.

It taught us that together we are strong, together we are good for each other.

We sang, we clapped, we smiled, we listened, we squirted each other with water, we shared sunscreen, we chanted, we talked, we ran up and down the middle of Queen Street like raging spanish bulls, and we laughed. We felt strong and we shared our strength with each other... And what's the most important word up there? 'We!'

Muhammed Ali once said, 'Me? We!' I have always taken this to mean together we are strong; that 'I' am a part of 'us'; to express the intrinsic value of the collective spirit, something that can't be boiled down into a monetary concept because it transcends that - it is joy and it is love... and it is so much more than I am able to express.

I want you to feel the elation I have felt, to share a moment with hundreds of other people, and there are many, many opportunities to do this, all over the world, virtually anytime - a chance to revel in the comaraderie, to feel a part of something, a chance that is all too rare in the society we live in now. Despite our big cities, we all walk around in isolation - we don't even know our neighbours anymore. Rather than being a bunch of feeling, thinking humans living together, we are becoming more like a group of robots, who just happen to be existing in the same space-time.

So reach out, connect with others - raise your voice above the sound of the traffic! If you're not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

---
* I think I wrote this in either early 2000 or late 1999 - if anyone can help me work out exactly when that would be much appreciated.