Speaker by Various Artists

Meet the new kids: Peter Darlington and Dan Slevin. Both of them are self-confessed "Soccer Nuts". I kid. But they will be here through out the FIFA World Cup giving you their take on things, a run down of games and pools and the usual guff that you expect from Public Address that you don't get from other places on the internet.

And the stories. Oh the stories these guys tell. Mainly about West Ham which is a bit weird, but there you go.

Hadyn

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Kick It!

Four more years! Is it really four more years since Germany 2006? Seems like yesterday, WAGS, boutiques, Lederhosen, Sci-Fi stadiums, inscrutable Swedes, rabid tabloid headlines, Rooney, red cards, tattoos, winks, brooding, crying, headbutts and the angelic beautiful face of Fabio Cannavaro lifting the FIFA World Cup Trophy above his head to give Italy their fourth World Cup win.

I wasn’t happy about it of course, I never am. There’s two reasons for this, firstly my teams aren’t usually there. The fools, punks and crazy entertainers all have a habit of getting knocked out, leaving the big boys to finish up. These are the serious guys, the ones who don’t lose, Joga Bonito slowly turns into trench warfare. Sure, it’s a different kind of cool but I have to say, my favourite tournament of recent times was the European Championship in 2008, because the entertainers won it. Don’t expect the same in this World Cup.

Secondly, and more importantly, the Final signals the end of the tournament and the start of winter proper. Sure the days might be cold and the heater will definitely be on for those early morning starts but who cares about the weather when you have 32 of the best football sides on the planet embarking on a highly strategic journey with a solitary goal (heh) of making that last round of 16.

How can you care about a little frost when Fernando Torres is opening up defences for his little mate David Villa to slot home. What’s a rainy evening late bus ride home when you have the chance to check out Diego Milito, Carlos Tevez and Lionel Messi stop being adversaries and join up to make a strike force that would scare the shite out of even Beckenbauer, Maldini and Bobby Moore. Hell, you get Schneider, van der Vaart and von Bommel lining up in a single Dutch midfield, that’s like passing porn for footie fans. And of course there are those players that just always seem to be there, even though they’re still young.

The Ronaldos, Rooneys and Kakas, is this their year? Quite possibly, but you know there will be heartbreak, and because this is football, tears, hugs and tanties as well. Nope, weather is unimportant, at least until July 12th when for some of us, the world ends and a huge chasm of nothingness opens up before us leaving us bereft of all hope, until the English Premier League kicks off on August 14th.

But what of the Africans? This is the first World Cup to be played in Africa, only the second to take place out of Europe or the Americas. Bafana Bafana (South Africa) will have mad support for the whole tournament but don’t look to them to progress. At least a couple of these teams will be strong though and can get at least as far as the semi finals. Most notably, look to Ghana and Cote D’Ivoire but don’t write off Cameroon, Nigeria or even Algeria either. Sadly, we have lost Ghana star Michael Essien already, and possibly the hyper-talented if sulky Didier Drogba as well. But there’s still plenty of talent with Samuel Et’o and John Obi Mikel amongst many other top European league players. Nothing would be better than one of these teams making it into the final four or even The Final.

We even get to see our guys involved for only the second time as well. Don’t get carried away, we lack pace and a ruthless striker but we’re composed and gutsy, let’s just celebrate the All Whites being there and hope they can pull something like a Bahrain/Serbia out of the fire.

So buckle up mofos, you only get 15-20 of these things in your lifetime, we can’t afford to waste them on frivolous endeavours like families, employment and improving our planet. Chill beer, clear couch, MySky primed. Let’s kick it!

Pete

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63 matches and it all kicks off tomorrow morning our time. 2am for those wanting to set the alarms and have the cocoa ready for the kids. Or Red Bull, whatever, I don't really know what kids drink these days.

And while this opening match (South Africa v Mexico, 2am TVNZ and SKY Sport 2) looks to be a fairly dull affair, you can use it to your advantage. This is your training match.

It's time to figure out if you still have the chops to get up at a ridiculous hour, watch a game of football, and then go to work. Use this early morning awake time to plan your route and the bars in your area that will have the games on.

In Wellington I used to go to Scopa. The Bresolin boys opened early even for non-Italian matches and the breakfasts were better than the usual crappy bacon and vinegar-flavoured eggs. I imagine they'll be packed on the 21st.

New Zealand's first match isn't until the 15th against Slovakia (11:30pm TVNZ and SKY). So you've got some time to perfect the technique. Feel free to suggest places to go, in your home town.

If you're a user of Google Calendar I can heartily recommend adding the FIFA World Cup calendar dates to it.

Under "Other Calendars" click "add calendar" and "browse interesting calendars". Under sports and "soccer" (ahem, it's American) you'll see FIFA World Cup, and you can add which team's fixtures you want. And after the match has played you can check the calendar entry to see the score broken down by half and who scored.

TVNZ have nicely come to the party and will be showing all of the All Whites games live and free to air. They have 11 in total with some of the other key matches (Brazil v Portugal for example), as well as highlights and reviews.

But if you want to watch all the games live and don't have SKY but don't mind a bit of IP Address jiggery-pokery or just flat out illegal viewing, then there are a few sites that will be streaming live games. coughjustin.tvcoughcoughatdhe.netcough. Though some may require a basic knowledge of another language.

And if you're on the go, then naturally, there's an app for all this. And I just discovered that adding #worldcup to a tweet will add a little football to your message that links to an insane Twitter World Cup tweet aggregator.

Think you might want to watch a bit of history before it all kicks off? ESPN have a very nice series looking at players who scored a goal in the World Cup Final.

And what to wear? Personally I like these tshirts. Though where's the black and white "Nelsen Smeltz Brown Fallon Bertos" one?

And given this is a Friday, here's your chance to unleash hell in the comments with your favourite World Cup music/goal/injury/blooper videos.

I'll start with possibly the best World Cup earworm of all time:

And the new one by Dizzee Rascal (via Tears For Fears)

Hadyn

I'd written some notes on this week's science funding announcement, announced in a pre-Budget speech by the Prime Minister, mainly to clarify my own thoughts. Russell was keen to tidy them up and run them as a guest post. So what do I think?

Any new money is good, there is no question that more new money is better than no new money and better than less money. So thanks.

So here’s the basic problem. New Zealand invests stuff-all in research and development. The government invests less than half the OECD average and business investment in R&D in NZ is even worse.

The dilemma is GDP growth and all the positive indicators of a healthy rich country are really strongly linked to R&D spending. In short with our current R&D spend NZ is stuffed in the future, but any spending by this govt won’t make any change for a decade at least so it won’t get them votes next year.

The govt keeps pointing the finger at business saying it’s your fault we don’t invest enough in R&D and business points another finger entirely. So I guess this package is the govt trying to give money to business to use for R&D maybe to get business into the habit of doing R&D.

So here’s how it breaks down. Note that $321 million divided by four does not equal $321 million so all my numbers will be per annum since that is the only relevant figure.

$24 million a year is being reprioritised.

My guess is that means money that is now going to Crown Research Institutes to develop products will be pulled out of the CRIs and transferred to the industries that would use/sell the product. Since those industries will likely simply subcontract the development work back to the CRI, my further guess is there is only a small loss due to various administrations taking their cut. This is more a philosophy change, and consistent with what Professor Sir Peter Gluckman has implied. (That's his lecture last month, The New Zealand Science System – into a brave new world, laying out his view of the changes to flow from the CRI Review.)

$56.25 million a year is new funding.

Of that, $47.5 milliona year is targeted to medium and bigger industries to develop products. Some of this money will establish research teams within companies and that has to be a good thing since it means more employers for scientists.

But much of this money is likely to be subcontracted back to CRIs, and to universities to a lesser extent. It is end-stage development money to take an established idea and turn it into a product. That’s good, but really doesn’t excite me much. For comparison: last year, the government increased Marsden funding by $9 million a year. For me there is a balance issue here – it's out of kilter.

$5 million a year in vouchers.

Which sounds very product development-focussed and confusing. Businesses spend these vouchers with CRIs to get research done, which is apparently different to what is happening now? Colour me confused.

$2.75 million a year and $3.4 million a year to build/establish technology transfer offices and improve the systems for transferring technology from CRIs to business.

Sigh. Someone really believes the CRIs are chock-full of wonderful ideas that if only we had more MBAs in nice offices to capture those ideas then we’d all be rich. It really isn’t true and pretending our CRIs are wonderful places if only we could capture their brilliance is not going to improve the quality of science being done.

Don’t get me wrong: I still believe the CRIs have scientists able and keen to do better, I just don’t think any of this kind of funding encourages any improvement.

If that sounds like I'm down on the CRIs, it isn’t meant that way. The CRIs have ideas and science that is good, but it is a fact that only a very small percentage of good ideas can ever be converted into products. The solution is to produce more ideas. This funding won’t produce more ideas.

$6.25 million a year for Rutherford scholarships

Great -- except they are $200,000 each and it costs $350-400,000a year to fund one scientist. It would be nice if someone could actually explain that to the accountants in Wellington. $200,000 = half a person, which is useless. No wonder the government is worried about numeracy skills if this is what the Wellington accountants come up with.

$3 million a year to attract elite scientists.

Which is good, but again someone needs to teach the accountants in Wellington how to add. A good early-career tenure track scientist in the US can expect a lump sum of $US1 million or more to start their lab, in addition to their university salary which is twice what end career scientists in New Zealand can expect to earn, plus access to free student labour.

Why would they give that up to come to New Zealand? This is a great idea but woefully under-funded. It might be enough for one scientist but even then they would expect to be guaranteed funding streams for five years.

$11 million a year for big science infrastructure.

So after that what do I feel about it. Well there is new money and most of it will end up in the CRIs and Universities after the businesses have taken their cut and subcontracted the work. But it’s almost all late-stage development funding for established ideas. So where is the idea generation that Professor Gluckman talked about?

The worst part of this is that it means the decisions about which projects should get money are now in the hands of business people who are focussed only on their business. It doesn’t matter if the work is poor science, it will get funding because it is business-focussed. I hate seeing poor science being done with our taxes. Some of it will be good science -- but that will be a matter of luck and sheer bloody mindedness on the part of the scientists doing the work.

To me, this feels like more of what we’ve had for the last 20 years, more and more focus on getting products from the wealth of ideas that is present in our CRIs.

But here’s the problem, and it’s a deep dark dirty secret … our CRIs are now full of good (but not great) scientists who are focussed on taking ideas from overseas labs and applying them to New Zealand crops/industries.

Which is fine. But it can’t and won’t create new industries, nor will it get you patents, nor will it get you a transformation of the New Zealand economy. To get novel products you need a large pool of novel ideas, most of which will never directly lead to a product.

As Professor Gluckman pointed out many ideas fail to develop into products and we need to accept that failure rate. You can’t force every idea to become a product and the only proven way to get more products is to generate more ideas and that is not the aim of this funding.

Those same scientists could do great work if they had the funding for it but they don’t. Those same scientists would produce new ideas if we let them, but we force them to develop products with clear business plans already established before we start the work. Novel it ain’t. It’s pedestrian mostly. There are good people in the labs and they do sometimes squeeze the time and money to do good novel work, but that work then gets ignored because there is no business plan with a clearly identifiable product.

The only funding that can lift that kind of novel work is based on pure science quality, like the Marsden Fund. Which also has a very good record of producing patents and new business ideas. Just for comparison, in 08/09 the Marsden Fund handed out $54 million. My personal belief is you would have far more impact on New Zealand's economy by doubling the Marsden fund than you will see from this Budget.

Bart Janssen

When the International Monetary Fund says that our central bank should also focus on controlling the exchange rate and not just have a narrow monetarist focus on inflation, we know for sure that the so-called “best practice orthodoxy' of the last twenty years is now just another discredited dogma.

That “there is no alternative” in fiscal matters, stifling debate for so long, is no longer acceptable. That is why the New Zealand Fabian Society will launch a seminar and lecture series next month in the Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

There is a general consensus across all political parties and government bodies that New Zealand's economic future is precarious - our exports are low, our debt is high, our relative standard of living continues to decline. As a small, open trading economy with a heavily reliance on commodity exports, coupled with a volatile exchange rate, we are prone to “boom and bust” cycles.

But the public discourse for many years has been limited to the solutions of the neo-liberal right. They haven't worked. New Zealand Fabians believe that we need a wider debate, and a wider range of progressive options and solutions to consider and discuss.

The theme of the first seminar series will be around the theme of building a resilient economy – fit for 21st century scenarios, resistant to shocks, ecologically adaptable and responsive. Applied to economics it looks to retain the best features of 20th century capitalism – freedom and openness; and the best features of democratic socialism – a safety net and democratic oversight and planning.

The lecture series will focus on tax and budget issues. The Tax Working Group has run away from the problem of avoidance, proposing that there should be massive tax reductions at the top end paid for by an increase in GST, and asserting that equality is achieved by leaving 16% of our children in poverty. We have to be able to do better than that.

Fabian Societies have been established and been active in New Zealand from time to time – it is our view that it is time to become active again. Fabian Societies have helped develop an independent social-democratic tradition throughout the 20th century in English-speaking countries, particularly Britain and Australia. Although our output is thoroughly contemporary and relevant, it will never be rootless: by dint simply of who we are, it is organically connected to that history. In our view, New Zealand needs a progressive think tank to balance those on the right.

The New Zealand Fabian Society aims to generate and disseminate ideas that are original, meet the challenge of the times, and are of high quality. Our values are that we are independent of all political parties, open and progressive. We do not believe that “there is no alternative”; rather that there are not enough alternatives.

People interested may find out more about our seminars and lectures and register via our website.

Mike Smith, Chair NZ Fabian Society

 

Inciting debate – Wero o te ahi

I suppose it's true to say that much of my early education on matters of class and race came in the 1960s from two unlikely sources: the left-wing British newspaper, the Daily Mirror, and the two weekly US news magazines, Time and Newsweek. I did not know at the time that I was getting schooled along those lines; looking back, I imagine I can see some of what was going on in my adolescent soul.

The Mirror arrived fortnightly or thereabouts, by sea mail, about two months out of date, with each week's seven papers bound together in a yellow cover. It was a whopper, and after my Dad had made his way through them, my brother and I got to explore these strange messages from another planet. What did we know about England? After all, being born there but coming here as toddlers, we were New Zealanders -- read, the same as all the other kids -- but actually, we weren't. You never know you're different at the time: it's only afterwards, when some things that were not even questions then, come back in later life as a kind of answer. Ah, yes, so that's why my father got the Mirror -- it was his one concession to homesickness, a touch of nostalgia for his working class roots in a London starved by the Great Depression. Plus, he got to read the match reports on how his team -- Queens Park Rangers -- was doing. I never knew this until years after his death, when my English aunt on a visit here in the 1980s told me that Dad was a QPR supporter.

What drew me in was the Andy Capp comic strip and savage political cartoons lampooning a droopily moustached Harold McMillan, muddling his way through the PR disaster that was the Profumo affair. Then there was the graphic reporting of the terrible Aberfan disaster in October 1966, when a slagheap in a tiny Welsh mining village collapsed and buried the school, killing 144 villagers, 116 of them children. That made sense in a coalmining town like Blackball. The Mirror no doubt gave a class-based critique of the reasons why, with the same kind of one-eyed gusto invoked as when it slammed into "Rack-rent Rachman", a notorious London landlord.

Time and Newsweek were of a very different stripe. Politically Time's owners were Republican, and the international slant was very pro-US in terms of foreign policy reporting. But for me, pushing fifteen and aware with every passing month that the adult world possessed deeper and deeper shadows, these American magazines were like the Mirror -- their own strange form of manna from elsewhere quite other. We had no television, there were only a handful of private media outlets, few journals available to the average person, and there was no such thing as instantaneous news, except for the bulletins on the local (national) radio. The airwaves were still state-controlled in 1963 when John Kennedy was assassinated, but it didn't take long to get around the town once the report came through. Our Catholic neighbour, Mrs Neilson, came running across the road from her neat miner's lean-to, crying aloud for all the world to hear, "President Kennedy's been shot!".

More affecting for me long-term than such a dramatic news event was the reporting of the Civil Rights movement, as chronicled and pictured in those two magazines -- it began to wake me up. That, and the primal snarls of Bob Dylan, singing Only a Pawn in the Game: "Today Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught/and they lowered him down like a king...". Haunting stuff: even today, I can't escape a touch of neck-hair prickling when I hear him intone in that cod-hillbilly singsong, "From the poverty shacks, he looks from the cracks to the tracks, /And the hoof beats pound in his brain". Shacks, cracks, tracks -- violent clashing sounds, poverty and prejudice crystallised in a single line, as the dark threat of a lynch mob loomed like a storm on the horizon.

Of course, I wasn't figuring and analysing all this back then, as I am right now -- but it was going in deep, shaping something I've never been able to shake. Looking back to my own arrival on these shores as a tubby wee Pommy toddler in 1950, it helps me to understand why I now feel the links between myself and that moment, and the remnant whānau of those Ngāti Whatua who were being forcibly removed from their marae settlement at Bastion Point and "relocated", their old dwellings burned -- at the same time as my father, his wife and two boys, FOB, were housed by the government in a brand new State house over in Plymouth Crescent, Bayswater, on the North Shore.

This is all by way of a somewhat oblique meditation on what Waitangi Day may be about for some of us: not protest, deeply felt or stage-managed; not reactionary denial, overt or passively aggressive; not the same old talking heads banging away in the media, a kind of repetitive local version of a Punch and Judy show; not the usual wise heads discussing on radio the "meaning" of the words of the Treaty, and if Maori knew what they were doing back in 1840; but perhaps a moment of reflection when we look at who we are, where we came from. And if justice and fair play have any meaning or application in our lives, what can we do to embody them now -- in the year 2010?

Dr Jeffrey Paparoa Holman is the author of Best of Both Worlds: The Story of Elsdon Best and Tutakangahau (Penguin Books)

Not many people talk about what they might do if they got hit by a bus. Given the state of public transport in NZ, perhaps that's not surprising. When you think that it's a possibility for everyone, it gets more intriguing. Life could change quite dramatically and quite quickly. But you better hope you don’t get hit by a bus, because the NZ Government is hellbent on restricting your choice of who could be paid to support you if you sustained a short- or long-term injury as a result.

The Crown will appeal the decision of the Human Rights Review Tribunal which, earlier in January, found that the Ministry of Health discriminated against parents of disabled adults because “they are not allowed to be paid for the services they provide to their child (or children) while anyone else providing the very same care to their child (or children) is able to be paid.” Health Minister Ryall has said the decision could “open the floodgates to potentially thousands of claims for ACC short-term injuries where people leave hospital but still need care and a family member is willing to provide that for a payment.”

But, the Tribunal did not accept that “the financial impact of paying family members currently excluded would be unsustainable.”

So, who’s right and what’s more important? Human rights or economic sustainability? Obviously the Government thinks it is right and economic sustainability is more important. Well, I disagree. I think they are equally important and that the Government does not agree with me is discrimination in itself – discrimination born of dysfunctionphobia.

What is dysfunctionphobia? It’s the fear or hatred of losing function and, unlike homophobia for example (the fear or hatred of same-sex love and attraction), dysfunctionphobia goes unchecked in society.

You have it. So do I. But you probably have it worse than me unless you use the identity label “disabled” or “with disability” and/or are extremely self-aware. I say that not to be self-righteously arrogant. I say that with 20 years training and experience in counselling, therapy, human rights, diversity, social work and business; and a keen interest in human behaviour, quantum physics and change.

I’ve pretty much dealt with my dysfunctionphobia, though I would be bummed out if, by virtue of being hit by a bus, I lost the capacity to close my eyes in the presence of ugly people.

I jest.

A wise society would accept the potential inevitability that through birth, accident, illness or aging we’re all functionally incompetent or incapacitated at some point in our lives. We would design environments, systems and structures that accommodate functional diversity.

That’s just not sensible.

Having worked with (but not for) the Ministry of Health for a number of years in different roles, I can tell you there exists a culture of fear and indifference towards the experience of impairment – at best it is displayed as well-meaning ignorance, at worst, professional arrogance.

I don’t mean that everyone is scared, indifferent, stupid and arrogant. But synergy creates the culture, if you know what I mean.

It is manifested, as stated in the Tribunal decision, in the expectation that families should provide, indefinitely, unpaid “natural support” to adult children; in the belief that disabled people should be excluded from professional or commercial family relationships because they are disabled, even though such relationships have existed for generations in family businesses; and in policies that blatantly act against the Government’s own Disability Strategy.

The decision also highlights an unacceptable level of incompetence in the policy-making process: the Tribunal found “no evidence to show…that the financial impact of a policy to pay family members…would not be sustainable. Certainly, a detailed assessment does not appear to have been undertaken…”

I’m seriously not surprised.

The Minister’s resolve to appeal the decision echoes the Ministry’s meagre attitude towards disabled people and their families, if you ask me. It places economic imperatives before social responsibility. It assumes the worst about human nature. It displays a complete lack of benevolence from our country’s leadership. And it demonstrates a total denial that this policy could, at some point in time, affect his own family.

The case is about choice, rights and generosity. It’s not about whether parents are going to exploit their disabled adult children – some will, most won’t. We don’t stop people driving because some drive drunk – we deal (with varying efficacy, admittedly) with those who do.

It's not about other people. It's about you, your family, friends and neighbours. Everyone needs to be selfishly concerned about their own potential situation.

And it is about money. But anyone who thinks it’s just about money, including the Minister of Health, needs to consider how his life might change if she got hit by a bus tomorrow – and then think again.

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Until 2008 Philip Patston identified as gay, disabled and vegetarian. These days he prefers to think of himself as having a unique experience. He runs Diversity New Zealand in his spare time. www.diversitynz.com