Posts by Jolisa
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I'm off to the Hearings Meeting Room for the 9.30 explanation. I can't speak for the other citizen-submitters (not all 22 of whom may be able to be there under the new circumstances), but I imagine that if the submissions are re-entertained, they'll need to entirely reschedule the hearing to allow people to make fresh arrangements to be there.
Also, never has that other Douglas Adams quote seemed so apt (hat tip to Rob Hosking for reminding me!):
'This must be Thursday,' said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. 'I never could get the hang of Thursdays.'
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(I wished I could have embedded those tweets and a few choice images from Promoting Prosperity - will be away from the keyboard to vote, but back in a while to fix that and see how it's all going).
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Hard News: The silence of the public square, in reply to Luke Williamson,
Vladimir: Well, shall we go?
Estragon: Yes, let's go.
(They do not move).Keep trying, though - you never know.
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Any chance there'll be a live stream of this non-debate? Looking forward to hearing the many creative ways the candidates get around mentioning each other by name. It certainly has a Voldemort-ian whiff about it!
Meanwhile, this is the meeting I'm looking forward to tonight. Word is that the Education Minister herself will be there. I'm not sure an hour will be sufficient for all the questions people will have for her.
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As a fellow perfectionist I have to say, stunning work on the house, David -- I would expect no less from someone who lavishes the same intensity of care on his writing. We're all so lucky you're so very good at both!
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Southerly: How I Became a Grumpy Old…, in reply to Russell Brown,
I propose that I use the proceeds of Public Address's recent crowdfunding to acquire an adjacent property and install a family in which another highly-credentialed householder -- a physicist, say -- pursues a similarly endless, admirable restoration mission, writing occasional blog posts about his fitful progress.
If only we knew a handy physicist...
The ideal theme tune for such a show has of course already been written.
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Do we have any feijoa recipes? DO WE HAVE ANY FEIJOA RECIPES??
Check out this vintage Busytown post, the enthusiastic response to which was when it first seemed a food blog might be a goer...
I've made feijoa liqueur two seasons running and it is the nectar of the gods.* Not to mention, the soused feijoas you're left with after you drain off the liqueur make for some pretty special breakfasts.
Can I come round and harvest some? There's a reason feijoa rhymes with "freeloader", after all :-)
* Rhubarb liqueur, not so much.
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Up Front: The Kids are All Right, in reply to Emma Hart,
Abbott said, “Let’s have a guy question.”
He actually said that. With those words and everything. Let’s have a guy question.
Good grief, I missed that moment. Because two girls speak and suddenly it's time for affirmative bloke action? Dick.
(Not that the boys who asked questions weren't also incredibly articulate. Just, what a dick).
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Those are some righteous 3rd formers -- and superb interviewers, by any standard! I love how they manage to push Abbott beyond his own stipulated rules of engagement. This would make for a great discussion in a media studies class.
For anyone who hasn't had the time to watch the video (WATCH IT!): Even though he's been cornered on the marriage equality question, carbon tax, and asylum-seekers, Abbott is so keen to ingratiate himself with these kids that he bends his rules: "Because you're such fantastic people, I'm going to let one more question be asked."
The bonus question is about asylum-seekers again, so Abbott bounces the opportunity to another kid, who doesn't let go of the subject: "People are risking their lives to come to Australia. Why are they pushed out when there's so much to share?" Exemplary pincer movement, and beautiful phrasing!
Abbott gives them the whole patronising "Look, you'll understand it when you're older" rigmarole. So the kids campaign for yet one more question, from someone they know will bring it. "LJ! LJ! Listen to LJ!"
LJ is brilliant: " Not saying that I don't trust you or anything," she begins, to cheers and laughter. "Just wondering, just a simple question: why is a man the minister for women? Why is a man in control of the rights of women?"
Abbott: "Well, I believe people are either male or female..."
LJ, patiently: "No, there are actually intersex people."
When Abbott waffles on about the innate human capacity for empathy, LJ grants him that, but presses on to argue for the basic principle of diversity in representation. Abbott backs his way out of the encounter, and his last pat-on-the-head, have-a-lolly feint -- that if LJ thinks more women should be in power she should join the Liberal Party and "work her way up" -- is greeted with howls of jubilant disbelief.
And people reckon kids are politically naïve. Underestimate at your peril; give these ones the vote!
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Also, remember the Ministry's first proposal was to either a) continue building at Pt Chev Primary as long as necessary to contain the increasing student roll - pretty grim, given they've endured a decade of being a building site and have one of the smallest open spaces of any urban school in NZ -- or b) transform Pasadena Intermediate into a "full primary" - adding junior classes to the current Year 7/8.
I had very mixed feelings on this proposal, especially with one child at each school, and a weather-eye on how the community looked set to tear itself apart when faced with this divide-and-conquer approach from the Ministry.
As constructed, Option A was pretty unpalatable, so at first glance Option B might have seemed the obvious thing to do. Pasadena has a reasonable amount of space (albeit not little-kid friendly at the moment, given the surrounding stream; and certainly not able to accommodate primary-school car drop-off traffic). And it has a smallish roll (a perceptible upwardly-mobile-flight towards Ponsonby is part of that, but not the whole story -- and it's a pretty ironic and transient phenomenon in the light of Ponsonby Intermediate's own history, given that Ponsonby was in a "poor cousin" position relative to Pasadena not all that long ago).
And yet... given the current government's enthusiasm for closing intermediate schools and bundling them into mega-schools, I decided that option B was something to resist on principle.
I'd started out sceptical of separate intermediate schooling, not having been through it myself (Catholic primary) -- and have become a convert to the middle-school philosophy as I've watched my older son go through Pasadena. It's not been without bumps - and his mates who went to Ponsonby have encountered different but equal bumps - but it's been wonderful to watch him and his cohort blossoming.
Those years between primary and secondary are pretty magical on many levels: the kids are no longer infants, but not yet on the growing-up escalator to figuring out what do do with their lives, and sitting exams in some subjects and not others.
I love the way Intermediate lets pre-adolescents take turns being junior and then senior, and the way it lets them mix socially before being split up again into subjects and streams and social groups. Pasadena, for example, draws kids from Westmere, Mt Albert/Carrington, Waterview, Western Springs and Pt Chev, and mixes them into mixed-age mixed-ability classrooms of both years 7 and 8. The kids do art, music, sport, water safety, technical subjects, kapa haka, marae visits, zoo activities, overseas exchanges, Lego robot competitions, etc etc. For what it is, it's a pretty cool little school, looking to keep growing under a new principal as of the end of this year.
Not to mention, Pasadena is the only dedicated intermediate that local kids, mine included, can get to on their own two feet (or own two wheels). That's a bottom line for me, and it was a huge part of why we came back to NZ: a decent array of reliably good neighbourhood schools that are accessible to the people they serve.
I'd be really loath for our community (any community) to be obliged to sacrifice that dedicated bubble of time-and-space -- and a school with a long and proud tradition -- just because Council and the Ministry had screwed up the question of whose job it was to set space aside for projected population growth. (Honestly, how can you write permits for infill housing for 30 years without asking yourself where all the kids are going to go to school!)
Yes, of course change is possible, and schools will necessarily get denser as housing gets denser, short of building them on golf courses and reserves. And of course full primaries and different school arrangements can be made to work successfully in many different ways. No problem with that. And if the main reasons for rearranging inner-city schools along these lines were pedagogical ones? Fine.
But they're not: this is all about convenience. And I'm not comfortable with eliminating educational options just to make up for elementary planning failures by entities that should have known better -- or worse still, doing it to smooth the way for mega-schools and the corporations that would love to run them.
TL; DR: don't rush to foreclose the only local intermediate school just to suit some suits.