Good point.

Perhaps I should expand on what I just wrote. I am not saying that government ministers and officials set out to craft a bad deal (for the public) in order to favour corporate buddies. It was probably more that there was pressure for a deal, the politicians were not into the detail, and the officials and advisors, who should have been able to see where the risks lay, recognised the commercial realities and accepted what had to be (at least from their limited perspective). If you share the worldview of the dealmakers, then this probably makes sense, and to push back is to separate oneself from all the other sensible people, some of whom are probably also friends. Not muppets, but perhaps not really fully switched-on autonomous moral agents either.

Calling the people who negotiated this deal muppets just lets them off the hook. These deals are nothing new, and there are plenty of people with experience in and close to government. That the public is now on the hook for extra costs is more like a feature rather than a bug.

Thanks Lucy, I´ll try interloan.

Is that thesis publicly available? Sounds like it might contain some useful lessons.

Brin, I agree that National Standards are a disaster, but I think by framing your objection in terms of evidence of educational outcomes you are inadvertently playing the government´s game, using their vocabulary. Their whole mindset needs rejection (and rigorous refutation), not tweaking.

re the ways the system is put to use, Kelvin Smythe has a pretty amazing claim re the involvement of 5eyes in slurring a school principal.
http://networkonnet.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/dont-use-comment-section-of-this-site-while-the-national-government-is-in-power/
I find this a bit hard to credit - would they really get involved for something like this?

I watched the show last night Russell, and wasn´t all that impressed with Sean´s question to you: Don´t they have the right to feel the way they do? (ie be offended by the supposed Hitler Youth rally) This is a pernicious and slippery argument. If someone tells a lie, and a second person becomes righteously indignant because they believe that lie, it´s still a lie. Do we have a right to be mistaken or misled? I suppose we do, but that´s not the point. What Sean seemed to be doing was a bit of sleight of hand, where something bogus (eg the KDC paid for all the booze claim) was transformed into something valid (the honest reactions to what was presented to Sean´s trusting listeners). Not an argument I would be particularly proud of making.