Posts by bmk
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Hard News: Crowdfunding Time, in reply to Russell Brown,
I'm not sure it's a priority, to be honest. The comments styling does work and it might not be cheap to introduce full GUI editing.
I agree. There's no problem with the current mark-up - it's already easy to use.
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Hard News: Spring Timing, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
Losing less than half a percent of the party vote doesn't seem such a cost to pay for clearing all the space to your right and not having your image tarnished by the pile of dung that Act has made themselves over the past few years.
This is true but there is a an advantage to National of having Act to the right. It allows them to push through unpopular right-wing policy saying that it is a condition of their support agreement. This allows them to do things they want to do but avoid taking the political heat for it. See charter schools and so on.
This is quite possibly worth the associated damage to the image. Especially if they believe their won't be a second John Banks type scandal. I think a lot will come down to their faith in both David Seymour and Jaime Whyte being able to keep clean and not rock the boat.
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Hard News: The Internet Party, whatever happens, in reply to netcoach,
3. Clare Curran - fallen out with David Cunliffe who has taken over ICT from her, she is pissed.
She's just been announced as an electorate candidate unfortunately (though I guess that doesn't mean it's not possible). Labour would do so well to get rid of her. She proved to be spectacularly incompetent on ICT matters. Was very glad David Cunliffe took over ICT - he did well as a minister and seems to understand the sector.
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Busytown: School bully, in reply to Jolisa,
about one NZ 5-year-old being kept in at lunchtime to "complete his writing."
This recently happened to my 7 year old niece. She'd been in a decile 5 school where she'd been thriving and doing really well. Her parents moved and she ended up in a decile 9 where the teacher decided her writing wasn't up to scratch and forced her to spend all her lunchtimes locked up in the classroom writing lines. She'd come home from school in tears, in the weekend say 'Why am I so sad?'.
Until finally her mother had enough and complained to the principal who got her moved to a different classroom where she's since been much happier.
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Busytown: School bully, in reply to BenWilson,
Lunch isn't exactly a bad idea. Dinner, not so much, since by then, the kids aren't actually at school.
This is kind of what I mean by conceding the argument to the right. This is kind of saying we don't care if kids go hungry or live in poverty as long as they are fed and productive at school.
That's where I much prefer the school-hub idea, mentioned above, of the Greens. About a whole package of care for those who need it - not just food at school.
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Busytown: School bully, in reply to Sacha,
I liked that since that seems a much more comprehensive solution than just providing breakfast.
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I don't want to sound all contrary here. With sufficient evidence I could easily get behind the idea.
But I feel like we are conceding to the right by proposing this idea. Rather than putting benefits back to proper levels we're saying we'll feed the hungry kids at school. It feels very much like papering over the cracks. It feels like we are saying as a society that it's ok for there to be bad poverty and for kids to have no dinner as long as they have breakfast and can learn better then we're doing our job. Instead I would much prefer a policy aimed at addressing the core problem which is poverty not a lack of breakfast.
But maybe I'm wrong on this - certainly I seem to be in the minority here.
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Busytown: School bully, in reply to Sacha,
As a proportion of total spending it seems pretty small. Hoiwever current proposals suggest that what's politically achievable now is targeting of bottom deciles (providing govt is still measuring such things).
Again this is inefficient though. School decile ratings are very crude. You get very poor kids at high decile kids and plenty of comfortable, middle-class kids at lower decile schools (at least in my experience).
This means if you only target low-decile schools you won't be solving the core problem; there will still be kids going to school hungry.
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Busytown: School bully, in reply to Sacha,
yes. UBI could be interesting.
Yes, that's my favourite idea too.
What I like about it is that because it's universal it gets rid of the 'us and them' mentality of tradition welfare. And best of all it recognises that a universal income is a fundamental right and not something begrudgingly doled out provided people humiliate themselves enough in order to receive it.
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Busytown: School bully, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
And even if you don't want to buy into the whole "children are hungry because their parents are neglectful", or "parents don't feed their children because they spend the money on alcohol, cigarettes, lotto and Sky subscriptions" thing, providing breakfast at school rather than just handing over money means that when parents on the poverty line are faced with competing priorities and trying to decide which bill they're not going to pay because the last electricity bill blew their budget and the landlord's just put the rent up and they're looking for somewhere cheaper but haven't found anywhere yet, it doesn't come to a choice between giving the children breakfast and getting evicted.
Again to me this says that benefits are far too low (which they are). The answer to that isn't breakfast in schools (which feels like a band-aid). The answer is to increase benefits. Make it so that a car breakdown or doctor visit doesn't leave beneficiaries wondering how on earth they can pay it.