Posts by Hilary Stace
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Giovanni has just posted on Roughan's column.
http://bat-bean-beam.blogspot.co.nz/2012/06/un-educated.html -
This has been popular on Facebook today. A musical politician.
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A couple of years ago, when our unemployment rates began to rise, many migrants who hadn't yet got residency were sent home. Large numbers of these people worked in residential care. The idea was that any NZer registering as unemployed could instantly be reemployed as a carer. A couple of years on what has happened?
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Hard News: Reading the Numbers, in reply to JLM,
I completely agree. And Sky is so expensive at about $88 per month for only some of the channels and including all that sport that used to be on free to air. $88 is a lot of money when you are surviving on a very limited income - it's a lot of weetbix, milk and apples, or a very quick visit to the dentist.
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Many older NZers would enjoy the Heartland channel, yet now you need to subscribe to Sky to access it. That cuts out many people who just cannot afford the $50 + monthly subscription to Sky. Many of those programmes were made with NZers money. That exemplifies the injustice of the system, and it was not surprising that many at the Save TVNZ7 meeting I went to were angry specifically at Sky. The annual broadcasting fee was a fraction of the current annual Sky bill, so why should it be a problem reinstating it, if everyone can access a full range of content (including sport).
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Hard News: Reading the Numbers, in reply to Dave Patrick,
NZSTA is largely funded by a voluntary levy on schools but I think they also get extra for board governance training. I was involved on school boards for about 15 years until a few years ago. NZSTA is basically an employers' organisation, so they are inevitably conservative on issues like bulk funding and improving pay rates - which is a tension for those who want to support the teachers in their schools.
In the 1990s many schools in Wellington withdrew from NZSTA over its support for bulk funding. In the early 2000s there were a group who tried to set up the Wellington region STA as a more independent and relevant supporter of schools, and we had many schools pay their local levy to us but not the part to the national STA. We were very active in training board members in governance, including special training for the student reps who only held their role for a year. I was an enthusiast for local democratic governance. We had really well attended governance days, and some great speakers and workshops. One time both Bill English and Trevor Mallard attended for free and frank Q and A..
But in the end most people seemed to burn out and move on - school governance can be very intense and stressful - and the national body gobbled up the stroppy region again. However, I see the NZSTA still has all the same staff and attitudes as they have had for the last couple of decades.
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Hard News: Reading the Numbers, in reply to Greville Whittle,
Te Papa and the NZ Royal Society also sponsored programmes on TVNZ7. I also caught some of the amazing work of Dunedin's Natural History Unit, which doesn't seem to feature on free to air television for some reason. All reasons to keep 7, especially as the government wants to increase interest in science, technology and engineering. Here are people doing interesting stuff in all those areas, and making very watchable television in the process.
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Walter Nash and Norman Kirk were two Prime Ministers who regularly took public transport (without security guards) and meeting constituents that way was a normal part of the day. I think many MPs are less accessible now than 30 or 40 years ago as they have drivers, security guards and staff to keep them from interacting with the public apart from stage managed occasions. Going back several decades, Janet Fraser, wife of Peter Fraser, appointed herself gate keeper to her husband otherwise his door would have been open 24 hours a day.
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Thanks Steve - because I dip in and out of them only on the rare occasions when I have access to the remote, and the listings aren't in the Listener, I rarely catch their titles.
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Hard News: Reading the Numbers, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Tom Semmens, upthread, called TVNZ7 ‘earnest and dull’. I was suggesting that explosions linked to various scientific theories are neither. There are several wonderful science programmes on 7 and many feature explosions or one type or another, including the original big bang. (I’m going to particularly miss that handsome English academic who narrates various cosmological programmes). Whether scientists are themselves keen on explosions is not really the point – but I do enjoy seeing passionate scientists enthuse about their work.
And if the government was sensible they would wholeheartedly support this too.