Hard News: Chew before swallowing
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But on a more important note than this breakfast thing, Russell, no musical entertainment tonight?
And also as important (to me) are you sure there are no more spaces left for the Welly blend?
Hell I'd hang from the rafters if that was the only space left! :o( -
Russell, regarding the Karajoz blend events in Auckland and Wellington, I expect it comes down to logistics, finance and demographics...but is there any chance of them coming to Christchurch and Dunedin at any stage?
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Was it just me or was John's little car ride with the young Maori girl, when he swung on her and said (to the camera I think), "We're going to have a good time arn't we?" totally fecking Pygmalian?
He's got off lightly, hasn't he? Maybe it's the summer vibe, the Waitangi-happy-harmony theme, or just that sweet boyish smile you can't resist. But in any society with a functioning fourth estate he would have been torn to pieces for that stunt. Scoop's story on Madonna was about as sharp as it got.
Close-Up, with Aroha's mum and little brother, was excruciating. Jeremy Wells, where are you?
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(Although a policy statement on market rents for public housing would seem relevant.)
I agree entirely; IIRC one of the most significant findings of both Charles Waldergrave (et al's) studies on poverty in the 1990s and the Economic Living Standards Index (ELSI) work is just how much housing costs contribute to poverty.
I thought it was pretty darn revealing when National tried to slip market rents in, in the lead up to the last election. And it didn't seem to bother Key then - I wonder what he thinks now.
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Nais,
Hate to see us end up like the UK portaryed in Jamie Oliver's "Return to School" programme the other night on One.
It's not just about missing breakfast but about WHAT the kids are eating. So many of today's behaviour issues can be directly attributable to the total crap that goes into their systems.
When large bottles of Coke are selling for 2 for $5 and 2 litrres of milk costs $4.55 a bottle it's not hard to see where some households will spend their $
School provided breakfasts/lunches can work but it's a question of how - money in their hot little hands never makes it to the healthy stuff at school. I should know when Mum used to give me 75c for a school lunch order - filled roll and drink - I'd spend it on crap on the way to or from school.
And this has got to more than a political football as we see the results of pooe nutrition and parental supervision in our crime statistics
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Nais,
OOPS <poor nutrition>
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But on a more important note than this breakfast thing, Russell, no musical entertainment tonight?
DJ Lilly. We couldn't afford a band. And anyway, bands smell.
Russell, regarding the Karajoz blend events in Auckland and Wellington, I expect it comes down to logistics, finance and demographics...but is there any chance of them coming to Christchurch and Dunedin at any stage?
Unlikely at the moment, but more sponsorship might change that.
PS: Jo, do say hello this time ...
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Sue,
Lilly is awesome
Next time put the call out for bands, i know a few who would play for the love, and some quality beverages. -
Next time put the call out for bands, i know a few who would play for the love, and some quality beverages.
Yeah, people are usally keen to play for very little - it's the production that racks up the $$. Next time, though. Anyway, off to the venue ...
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I don't think I've had more than a coffee for breakfast since I was a small kid - eating time cuts into sleeping time! Unless you regard a mochachino as a balanced meal?
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I like to ensure that I have a good solid breakfast to start the day: it's the only way to maintain good nutrition. Four fried eggs with lashings of hollandaise, a dozen rashers of pancetta, a generous hunk of black pudding, half a dozen old-fashioned pork sausages and three hash browns (twice-cooked in goose fat, of course), all served on French toast with a side of chilli beans (for roughage) and washed down with a pint of Lagavulin.
But kids these days...
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Someone mentioned earlier about the quality of food - or lack of it - in lower socio homes:
"It's not just about missing breakfast but about WHAT the kids are eating. So many of today's behaviour issues can be directly attributable to the total crap that goes into their systems.
When large bottles of Coke are selling for 2 for $5 and 2 litrres of milk costs $4.55 a bottle it's not hard to see where some households will spend their $"
Very true.
But to say eating crap is driven by cost is only part of the picture.
Next time you're in the supermarket, have a look at the cost of traditional breakfast foods.
The cheapest options are actually the most healthy - rolled oats (yep, good old porridge), loaves of bread, bananas and apples are not expensive when compared to the alternatives (sugar disguised as cereal, for example).
Let's face it - breakfast is one of the cheapest meals to cater; many people don't eat it because:
a. they can't be bothered
b. they get up too late to make time for it
c. they simply don't feel hungry first thing
d. they prefer to eat crap and don't have respect for their health
e. all of the above.Instead of focussing on breakfast, perhaps we should be more worried about the disturbing obesity statistics.
If our waistlines are growing at such a ridiculous rate, lower-socio groups in equal numbers, obviously "going hungry" is not the problem...eating crap with no nutritional value that piles on the pounds should surely be the target of our concern?
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If you ask me, legislating parenting is a mighty slippery slope. After all, your definition of 'behaviour which adversely affects the development of children' (ensuring they are not exposed to violence and enjoy proper nutrition) might be awfully different to some future governments definition (parents must ensure their children attend one hour of religious education each day to ensure proper moral upbringing).
Parenting legislation is classic 'Road to Serfdom' stuff - it sounds great in principle, but how are you going to monitor it? Should parents inform on each other? Should teachers inform on parents?
OK, well we're already on that 'slippery slope'. You can already report some of these things to the police, and Child Youth and Family, or whatever it's name is this week. I'm fairly confident that the debate that we have in this country about where the line is between what government can do and can't do is robust enough.
Anyway, my point wasn't that you should legislate to tell parents what they're not allowed to do, but that you should make positive efforts to improve the standard of parenting across the whole country. Particularly in the obvious target areas - low socio-economic, single parent, history of violence or sexual abuse - but generally across the whole society.
I'm no expert on the field, but I would have thought throwing a few million dollars at that problem would probably raise the standard of parenting across the board. The impacts in terms of outcomes of youth, and their future in terms of education, health, employment, crime, and just not being little shits, hell, I'd guess that's a good investment of tax money. Good parenting at the top of the cliff stops a heap of ambulances at the bottom I say.
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Now I'm not an especially politically-informed person, but isn't the Red party the one that is all about giving people free stuff, whereas the Blue party is about making people work for stuff? So if this Blue party guy pushes this beat-up of a story to the point of it one day becoming policy, wouldn't that somewhat undermine their stand against that Red party?
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One disturbing trend in this social research is the separation of Maori and Pacific Island figures. From the original data it would appear much more important to classify by family size. And don't try to draw socioconclusions before cutting out the breakfast skippers. I had no idea that teenage girls ate breakfast.
For the large families, we may need to bring back the old family benefit. Non means tested so that it doesn't raise effective marginal tax rates, and universal so that there is no social stigma.
Far less complicated than "working for families", and it would allow John Key to outflank labour on the left.That all went because the tory party of the Holyoake era thought that making babies was fun and the poor should be punished for it. We now have a sub-replacement breeding rate. The rich won't make babies and the poor can't afford to bring them up. Even John Howard does better than us.
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3410,
As for what parents feed their kids, ask yourself where parents get their nutrition information, compared to one or two generations ago. I'd suggest that the answer is: almost entirely from TV advertising by large corporates, who don't give a sh*t about nutrition.
Case in point: tonight's Campbell Live article on "fresh" fish in Auckland. In case you missed it, Snapper fillets from Foodtown, Dominion Road contain about thirty-three million bacteria per gram (when the recommended upper level is one million per gram) and were rated, by independent testers, a "4" on a scale from 1=fresh to 5=putrid (and that's worth $32 / kg?). In total five Auckland fish retailers were tested and 4 (I think) failed.
Here's another: Remember Coco Pops' "One bowl of Coco Pops with milk contains 10% of your daily calcium requirements". I'm sure a lot of people think that means that Coco Pops is a healthful food.
I hate to sound under-graduate about it, but the source reason for a great deal of these societal problems is unconstrained corporatocracy. These organisations are not on the side of New Zealanders; They are exploiters, and their marketing trickery is more responsible for NZ's nutrition problems than anyone else, including parents-as-a-group.
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Those darn kids.
Coming to school hungry ............. and obese.
I teach secondary school students at a decile 6 school but in reality its more like 4-5 (thanks to the wealthier families in the area sending their kids elsewhere) and we have many kids who are decile 1, 2, and 3. I haven't as yet come across any kids who are really going hungry. You can kinda tell. They would be the ones looking dizzy, lethargic and unable to concentrate. Oh , hang on, that describes every teenager in New Zealand. If I ever see kids like that the first question I ask them is if they ate breakfast, morning tea, lunch, have they drunk some water etc. The answer is invariably yes. They either eat at home, on the way to school, scab off their mates or else buy from the tuck shop. And many of the girls don't eat (much) because of those damn skinny models at New York fashion week.
I suggest carpet bombing New York.
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Oh one other observation from school.
I don't recall seeing a single piece of fruit being eaten by anybody in my form class in the whole of last year aside from the odd mandarin (because they liked throwing the peels at each others heads). They were Year 9 (third form).
We are doomed. Fruit will become something from the old days that grand parents talk about once eating ;)
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I'm a teacher at decile 2 intermediate here in lower Hutt - and while we do not do breakfasts, we actively encourage students to eat something to get some energy in their system for the day.
It is frustrating to see them slugging down a V from the corner dairy, that washes down a pie - if only cause they'll probably crash by about 10:30.
We are part of the health-promoting schools initiative, although I'm not sure who/where the cash comes from. Health is pretty general - including an upgrade to toilet facilities, but also fruit breaks and healthy sandwiches - ie. ham and salad, tuna and salad, all on brown bread.
Fruit breaks are fresh fruit, some supplied by the students, that are chopped up in class - and about 2pm - kids get 5 min to get a drink of water and some fruit. They seem to enjoy the fruit breaks, but the sandwiches are so-so.
Much like the Jamie Oliver experience, the taste and texture is something that most students don't know.
Does it help? Not sure if it makes them extra healthy or is preventing scurvy or anything that dramatic. For me as a teacher, having students who get a boost early afternoon is handy, particularly these past few blazing hot days in the Hutt!
one of these days I'm getting to a Blend - annoyed i totally missed the timing of this one.
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'...and how to best roll back the "reforms" that created them in the first place.'
Yep. There was never hunger or poverty prior to 1984. Genius.
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PS: Jo, do say hello this time ...
I did this time! I mean, admittedly I was hardly sober, and my mind was mostly on thinking about my next plunge into the ocean,but still, I was polite!
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a generous hunk of black pudding
Now we are talking! Sell this stuff in the tuck shops instead of the pies & chips & see what happens.
Tom, there used to be a gourmet sandwich place off Lambton Quay - they did a breakfast sandwich: bacon, egg, baked beans & black pudding. Magic. But not for the faint hearted.
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To pick up on Richard Bartlett's point about free stuff from different parties...
To me the issue and division between the red and blue points of view has never really been about generosity and a desire to help folks do well. Both red and blue see themselves as generous in their own ways and I believe that self analysis is generally correct.
The fundamental differences are whether provision of help to people whether for education, health or cash should contain an element of judgment about whether recipients are "deserving" or not *and* whether this sort of help should be viewed as charitable or a right that citizens should expect.
My own view is that charitable work has its place and there are incredibly generous people both rich and poor who give away significant portions of their income and time because they see a need and want to do something about it. These efforts cannot be belittled.
We should recognise the fact that they also only represent the interests of the donors at a particular point in time. So when hungry school kids are off the front page and replaced with starving cats the chances are food for kids programms will turn into save our cats and we will be back to square one.
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Perhaps its time to look at one of the oldest of sayings, give a man fish and your into lifetime of giving, teach him to fish and watch him grow into self sufficient and wonderful contributer to society. schools have some nice spaces, plant trees for fruit crop, dig gardens and teach the young to grow there own food parcels.
I feel the effect is 2fold, its very rewarding to eat your own produce and gardening is a gr8 counter to obesity,boredom and lack of appretiation of the joy in life.It seems to me that most problems have a simple solution that does not provide big income to someone, but these are the ones that noone is interested in. we talk about the need to break the cycle but all i see are ways to keep it turning and give some people a bigger slice of whats not needed in the 1st place.
Anarchy is the only real solution
Cheers -
A MODEST PROPOSAL
(with a nod to Jonathan Swift and Billy Connolly)
Feed the obese kids to the ones that don't have any breakfast.
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