by frog
Published in THE ISSUES by frog on Sun, August 28th, 2011
Tags: general debate
General debate, August 28, 2011
Published: August 28, 2011
Comment via Facebook
131 Comments
Hide comments with a score of
or less
Hide comments with a score of or less
Leave a Reply
Please use 
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
http://whoar.co.nz/2011/commentwhoar-experts-talk-drivel-a-tale-of-two-talkshows-the-nation-vs-qa/
it all started with political ‘expert’ colin james whose simplistic reading of an automatic defeat for the centre-left in an election ..three months from now..
..showed him as decidedly un-expert..
(now..i know it is a cliche there..colin..but three months is a hell of a long time in politics..eh..?..and make your assumed defeat a joke…
..i am not claiming the centre-left are a shoo-in..’cos like james..i know not what the political mood will be..three months from now..)
he followed that up with a demonstration of an astounding lack of basic logic..
..arguning that ‘cos of this inevitable defeat..that labour should work on their opposition to asset sales in time for the election after next..
..now..reality check here..colin..should national get back in..they will be at it like robbers’-dogs..
..and those assets james is talking about will be well and truly flogged off…
..how can you not see that..there..mr james..?
..i repeat..the assets will be sold before the 2014 election…
..the nation then confirmed what a dire under-achiever of a program it is…(mostly..)
..by having duncan gardener question/harass various labour entities with ‘the goff-question’..
..memo to gardener:..most of us mug-punters/voters are bored rigid with this meme..eh..?
(i have a recurring nightmare of the political news content of rugby world cup times news bulletins will be duncan gardener popping up with yet another update on ‘the goff-question’…
..give it a rest..eh duncan..?..
(and all you others..you are boring us all into the ground..)
..how about focussing on the actual policy-areas/imperatives..eh..?..the shit we are actually in..and the/any solutions..?
.the person who runs/announces that inane weekly quizz thing they do..(w.t.f.is with that..?..designed for the mentally-challenged..that one..)..then interviewed james belich..
..(which..to be honest..i didn’t follow close enough to comment on..porridge called..eh..?..)
..the next high/lowlight was that old bombast-blimp chris trotter…
..also assuming defeat..and settling old scores with labour-entities..as he does…
..perhaps my favourite trotter-quote ever was his stated ‘hatred’ of vegetarians..(said to me..on dominion rd..mt eden..)
..he really is the advert for the carnivore-lifestyle ..eh..?
..more pork-fat..!..he cried..!..bring me another beast..!..i hunger..!..)
..the other commenter/expert had me wondering just how many people in the media engineer young-hair..
..that craggy-faced/flowing dark locks look is mildly disturbing to view..
..in summary:..the nation really is a benchmark in underachieving….
..which brings us to q&a…
(cont..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
1 
3 (-2)
The trouble with researchers and scientists is that they do not necessarily excel in public speaking and promotions, but that should not devalue their work. The Spirit Level should not be rejected because Richard Wilkinson did not perform well on Q&A, his data and research should speak for him:
http://localbodies-bsprout.blogspot.com/2011/08/spirit-level-deserves-attention.html
Like or Dislike:
3 
2 (+1)
The Land feels poor….have we got rid of Happy Feet?
Think i may establish a colony of Penguin offshore
No heart – those Kiwis
A Town Without Pity.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
Super Fund Invests in Nuclear Weapons
Last Wednesday it was revealed that the New Zealand superannuation fund holds 44,595 shares worth $2,082,736 in a Mumbai-based multinational company called Larsen and Toubro, which in partnership with the Indian Navy, is involved in designing and manufacture a fleet of nuclear-armed submarines for India. But that’s not all Larsen & Toubro (L&T) India’s largest engineering group gets up to…
Like or Dislike:
5 
5 (0)
So we have dirty hands Iakal?
Nothing has changed much
Except the idea those boys are fighting for ‘our’ freedom
A statement that wont fly for a number of reasons
And once reason is gone?
Like or Dislike:
1 
1 (0)
run rodney..!..run..!
see rodney run..!
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
0 
3 (-3)
the act number three position is still unannounced..
‘cos the fee to be paid by the petitioner/wannabe-candidate is still being haggled over…
..and things must be pretty grim/tense/thin-lipped around the act hq watercooler..eh..?
..wot with hide and calvert being unceremoniously given the boot..
(..run rodney..!..run..!…)
and i for one will miss that tribute to robert plant (circa seventies) that she/calvert carries off so well..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
1 
3 (-2)
those nervous americans have obviously not spent much time in wellington…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
1 
3 (-2)
btw..’the hollow men’ is on maori tv @ 8.30pm…
..see the rightwing laid bare…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
2 
3 (-1)
“Yes you’re right. There is this famous exchange at the G* a year or so back between Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel where Brown asks why Germany weathered the GFC so well and Britain had just plummeted into debt. Merkel answered “Because Germany still makes things Mr Brown!”"
Like or Dislike:
4 
0 (+4)
Yes Phil; i forgot to ask why those creepy right Acts are missing in Gnaction – probably a case of avoiding public embarrassment.
And if the All Blacks keep losing – good old Jon Key and his sad little mob are done for – funny that.
Like or Dislike:
0 
2 (-2)
i think the asset-sales vs making the rich pay their share-debate will decide this election..
..and growing awareness of those cows being the equivalent of 80 million humans pissing and shitting in the open..
..(the ‘real’ freedom-campers..eh..?..and 80 million of them..shitting/pissing multiple times..every day..
..are the greens at all reconsidering their wholesale-support (purely on economic-grounds) of the dairy-industry..?
..they should..eh..?..reconsider..)
..that the rightwing/elites/vested-interests are obviously planning on doing nothing about both the environmental and economic-disparities issues that are shouting at us..
..this is going to come more and more into focus as we near election day..
..and while i see labour as a component of a centre-left govt…
…they are too scared to effect any real changes to those abolish the underclass/stop the greedy farmers from fucking our country issues..
..(first $5,000 tax-free…to be phased in over three years..?
..gizzafeckin’break here..!..eh..?
..talk about promise little..deliver less..
..any hope for real change will only come from a centre-left coalition with the greens and mana strong in both presence and influence…
..labour there..but as an equal partner…
…anything less will mean no change…
..new boss same as the old boss…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
1 
2 (-1)
http://robertguyton.blogspot.com/2011/08/another-phil-ure-classic.html
Like or Dislike:
1 
3 (-2)
chrs fly…
(an argument i feel can be expanded on/worked on..the farmers as freedom-campers..i am claiming no copyright…so go for it..!..)
http://whoar.co.nz/2011/sorry-richard-branson-%E2%80%93-we-didnt-care-about-your-blaze-commentwhoar-local-evidence-that-the-rich-here-in-new-zealand-wouldnt-well-piss-on-us-if-we-were-on-fire/
(i feel a political-seachange approaching…and think this election will wreck the reputations of most pundits…)
..and as an aside…while at university in the 90′s – after one election i did a post-election audit of the pundits’..and their election-outcome predictions…
..and the winner..?..as in most-wrong..?..
..and by a country-mile..?
..come on down..!..chris trotter…!
..it tickled my funnybone then…
..and it still does…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
0 
1 (-1)
btw fly..i have a new role-model…
..his name is spider jerusalem…and he is a citizen-journalist…
..’the boy’ is seriously into graphic-novels…
..and he looks out for/passes on ones he thinks i’d be interested in…
..and he flicked one called ‘transmetropolitan’ at me…
..telling me the main character reminded him of me…
..a back-cover review calls it ‘brilliant future-shock commentary’…
..’angry political sci-fi and its’ funny as hell’..
..and compares it to (the essential)’watchman’…
..libraries have it..and i wd recommend ordering it…
..and the inspiration i have received is to ‘harden-up’..
..and fear nothing..fear nobody…
..i was wondering there if i was being too ‘hard’ in/on my arguments/targets..
..having this new citizen-journalist role-model..of spider jerusalem…
..has swept those uncertainties away…
..in fact i am thinking of donning full-body protection..and as part of doing my bit for the election…returning to kiwiblog…
..as spider jerusalem…and kicking some rightwing arse..
..whaddayareckon..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
1 
1 (0)
Yes, you have to “still make things” to manage your economy.
“THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY AS LONG AS PEOPLE USE INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS”
http://boards.fool.com/yes-we-need-industry-29507387.aspx
Germans know, Koreans know, Americans forgot , and National denies … that you have to protect your industrial base.
Maybe less efficient on a planetary scale, but we don’t have a planetary scale economy, or government.
Like or Dislike:
5 
3 (+2)
Actually, “protecting” your manufacturing base is a sure fire way to eventually undermine it.
The correct policy is to “enable” it and to avoid putting obstacles in its way.
At present we are disabling our manufacturing base with death by a thousand cuts. Not the least being high land prices. The McKinsey Institute pointed out back in the 1990′s that “Silicon Valley” simply could not happen in high-urban-land- price Britain, because all those new start-up businesses simply would not be able to afford the cost of land once an area had begun to experience “demand” that forces the price up, without nearby agricultural land being legally accessible to the urban economy to keep prices flat.
I remember visiting Silicon Valley in the late sixties and it was farmland with the first sheds and mobile homes (offices) beginning to dot the landscape.
Like or Dislike:
4 
4 (0)
fly…keeping in mind this is set in a future-dystopia..
..a voice-bubble in one panel has a newsreader saying:
“police are still trying to talk tv cook della kent off the roof of the amtri building after the columnists’(spider) savage critique of her grasp of new zealand cuisine’…`
..(now..that made me laugh…)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
0 
1 (-1)
SPC asked the other day how much our clean green image is worth to NZ dairy industry. According to Holmes on Q and A it’s worth 240mil/year. We have traditionally been successful with dairy by producing low cost dairy products. It is very apparent that soon we will not be the lowest cost producers as places in China, Africa and Sth America can do the same but cheaper. Our advantage (our clean green and melamine-free) will be more and more important in the future and yet it is at serious risk.
There is a very good case for the govt (and Iwi) to plant the Queen’s chain.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
So what worked for the Japanese, the Chinese, the early US, the early British, the Koreans and just about everyone else doesn’t work?
Sorry… I don’t believe it. “Enabling” is not enough… not when labour and resource management is globally arbitraged, all you get is a race to the bottom with the result being either the death of your industry, or the deaths of your citizens as a result of that global arbitrage. The global effective efficiency is not distributed globally.
Enabling is a good idea, and I do not disagree about land prices, but it is not sufficient here. It was not sufficient in the USA either… which should tell us something.
All we have to do is listen.
BJ
Like or Dislike:
4 
1 (+3)
Actually. Owen. All the countries with a successful manufacturing base protected it, at least in the developing stages.
The UK and USA for example, are less than honest about the part protectionism played in their development.
The emerging successes at present, Korea, China, Singapore all have a degree of State intervention which would be anathema to Neo-Liberals.
As do the currently successful, like Germany.
Like or Dislike:
1 
1 (0)
That was then – this is now. Many of us can remember what is was like in New Zealand under the Muldoon protectionist regime, when farmers were paid to produce sheep no one wanted and you had to get a prescription to buy a pat of butter and the cost of NZ assembled televisions was massive and coming home from a business trip and going through customs we were all treated like criminals.
We have two moral high grounds in international trade negotiations that enable us to punch above our weight.
We have no protectionism to speak of and in particular we have no protectionism in agriculture and we produce high quality low cost food. Our high tech manufacturers do not seek protection. When I was in the venture we always took any subsidies or export incentives out of the financial models because they could disappear out of the blue. Protection at this end encourages tariffs in our markets at the other end so is counter productive.
Seems unwise to force protection on business that does not want it.
Like or Dislike:
4 
8 (-4)
bjchip talked about manufacturing and how NZ does not do it anymore, which is not the case.
NZ does not (fortunately) manufacture low-skill/cost items better done elsewehere, agreed, but we do manufacture what others need. Food.
And many Greens want to destroy that ‘manufacturing’ too!
Like or Dislike:
3 
4 (-1)
phil continues the myth about ‘the rich’ paying ‘their share’.
Phil neds to recal some salient facts:
1) families earning under $50kpa pay no income tax in NZ thansk to WFF top-ups
2) Families earning over $150kpa (about 10%) pay about 80% of the income tax in NZ
3) The top 20-something pergnet of income taxpayers pay about 70% of the income tax in NZ
Quite why/how phil et.al. justify trying tryingto tax them even more is fancinating.
Like or Dislike:
3 
1 (+2)
Kerry,
I was in Singapore advising certain areas of their Government activities (most SISIR) at the time they were developing their economic development policies. The big difference between their “protections” and our “protectionism” was they they provided a level of tariff protection BUT they were phased out by say 1.5% per year.
So they were given a bonus to get them going but the bonus shrunk on a regular basis and if a business could not cut it without the subsidy then it was left to wither on the vine. So survival went to those who earned it.
The problem is that with less confident regimes the subsidies become entrenched and the response of a failing business is to ask for more – and they normally get it. This is one of the problems besetting the EU.
Like or Dislike:
2 
0 (+2)
well m.c….the statistical facts of the growing wealth gap in this country..
..and the growth of the underclass since the gutting of social welfare by strewth richardson…
..are undeniable…
..plus there are now the working poor…
..and the latest phenomenom..the squeezed middle-class..
..plus the facts of the transfer of wealth to the top percentile..
…and our worldbeating rates of child poverty..
..plus that the rich pay zero tax on their ‘capital-gains’..
..(as i noted warren buffett in america is calling for their 15% cgt to be raised to what workers pay..on ‘fairness’-grounds..
..and here..?..zero..)
..these facts..m.c…come together to prove that indeed the rich are not paying their share…
..and this needs to be rectified…
..and it will be rectified…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
1 
2 (-1)
and all those concerned souls now casting around for complicated-solutions to this underclass problem..
..could well cast there minds back to when elder-poverty was the ongoing sore/problem child poverty now is..
..now..how did we largely fix that problem..?
..that’s right..!..we provided them with a liveable income…
..problem solved…
..so a re-transfer of that wealth back from the richest to the rest..
..must be part of any ‘solutions’..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
0 
1 (-1)
perhaps distributism needs to be reconsidered…?
“…Distributism has often been described as a “third way” -
- in opposition to both socialism and capitalism.
Thomas Storck argues that “both socialism and capitalism are products of the European Enlightenment – and are thus modernizing and anti-traditional forces.
In contrast, distributism seeks to subordinate economic activity to human life as a whole -
- to our spiritual life, our intellectual life, our family life”.[6]..”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
0 
1 (-1)
@Owen. And last year Singapore gave a State dividend to all existing business.
It is a joke saying our farmers are not subsidised. We would still have manufacturing if it was mollycoddled half as much as farming.
From: roads, water supplies and facilities paid for by other ratepayers, education , health and other infrastructure they do not pay taxes towards, reduced wages to cut their costs (Making tax payer top-ups necessary for their employees), the distortion of the economy to support farming, to State handouts when the inevitable floods and storms happen and indirect subsidies like paying more for their produce than it costs after being shipped 15000 miles.
Not to mention our the rest of our economy being gutted, to make things cheaper for farmers, and by, removing all forms of protection in a vain attempt to get the EU and USA to remove agricultural protection.
Without farming we would have been forced to have a real economy instead of being just a commodity exporter.
If you take a dispassionate look at farming, it has probably been a net drag on our doing well. The same as reliance on oil exports prevent the Gulf States from developing a viable post oil economy.
Like or Dislike:
3 
2 (+1)
Trouble is, Phil, there is a school of thought that says we enabled many to escape poverty through the use of energy and innovation, rendering slaves obselete, and that as Peak Oil becomes an issue and the world becomes energy constrained, there will be a return to slaveatude.
An incredibly terrible possiblity…
Like or Dislike:
2 
0 (+2)
NZ Breaches International Convention
If the flagrant abuse of New Zealand’s Nuclear Free Legislation I blogged about yesterday wasn’t bad enough, it was also revealed by the Greens that the New Zealand Superannuation Fund Board of Trustees invested $2.5 million in five companies involved in the production of cluster bombs.
Like or Dislike:
1 
3 (-2)
phil says “..that’s right..!..we provided them with a liveable income…
..problem solved…”
There’s one way to get a decent wage – work for it. (most people who get the pension have spent a lifetime working)
If you are waiting for someone else to give you a decent wage for doing nothing, then you will be waiting until you are a sad old man.
There is only one person on the planet who will provide you with a decent wage – and that’s you.
You can bitch about it for the rest of the year, the rest of the decade, or the rest of your life, but you won’t change anything.
The only way you’ll ever change anything is if you could put that effort into getting the skills that will make you useful, so you can be someone who is self sufficient and contributes financially to society.
Like or Dislike:
4 
6 (-2)
phil was discussing how to end poverty, noting that for those retired/above the age for a pension/super a universal rate set to a net average wage level ended poverty amongst the aged – in the context of child poverty.
Your homily about personal goals/attainment does not speak to the issue he was raising.
The 20% of children concerned are those of families on benefits, including SB and IB and otherwise the low waged – it is difficult for them to improve their circumstance when they cannot upskill while supporting a family.
Like or Dislike:
2 
2 (0)
That was then – this is now. Many of us can remember what is was like in New Zealand under the Muldoon protectionist regime, when farmers were paid to produce sheep no one wanted and you had to get a prescription to buy a pat of butter and the cost of NZ assembled televisions was massive and coming home from a business trip and going through customs we were all treated like criminals.
Owen… why on earth one would regard sheep as a manufactured product, particularly non-GE sheep, I have no idea. Nor a clue why Muldoon would subsidize the production of sheep.
A prescription for a pat of butter is not really understood either. Was it regarded as a medicine, or are you creating a more literary less literal description of something… ?
The notion that the NZ manufactured TV was an expensive beast makes more sense… but massive isn’t a price differential I can work with… double the overseas price? More? Less? Were we assembling the TV from imported parts like we did with the cars from the Mitsubishi plant in Porirua?
There are a lot of steps between what you’re describing and what we have now, and there is a lot better understanding of why something works and why it doesn’t. Independence doesn’t come free, we’d pay for it, and the industries and manufacturing we’d have WOULD cost us in terms of some of the trappings of wealth that we think we’re entitled to… but we’d regain the middle-class, we’d flatten the GINI and we’d be a lot healthier a society.
The mechanism I’d favor is simply the redefinition of money here in NZ. The results from that would accomplish much of the required change all by itself, owing to the exchange issues.
The neo-liberal mantra of free-trade does.not.work. It WOULD be more efficient if there were a global government to administer assistance, tax the wealth generated, regulate the businesses and do the necessary things that governments do. It does not work for a mob of discrete nations with differing circumstances and values. There it turns into a race for the bottom.
Which has pretty well gutted the US middle class, and is in the process of gutting the NZ middle class ( such as it is and what there is of it ).
The railroad cars could have been made here. No doubt at all. TV is an essential product… given the content available it is essential not to have one
We once had a decent whiteware manufacturer, and high quality goods came out of our shops. Now we’re competing on price against products from china with products from china and the quality isn’t so hot. Get what you pay for, and wipe out NZ jobs in the process.
Good luck with that.
BJ
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
bj..mcshane is outright lying about the prescription for butter…
(who’d a thunk it..?..eh..?..ol’ climate-change denier mcshane ‘telling lies’..?..whoar..!..)
..many years ago..as part of that long tradition in new zealand of the farmers owning the government..
..protectionism for them was attempted to be maintained by forcing those wanting that new economic-challenger..margarine..
..to get a prescription for said margarine…
..and really..when evaluating anything mcshane says..
..you must take into account his long history of peddling mis-information..
..eh..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
0 
2 (-2)
@Photo. So anyone who cannot work or are unable to work should starve.
AND many working people who are not paid enough to live on.
So the richest in NZ can avoid paying 2% more tax. (Oh sorry, 100% for some of them as they evade tax anyway).
What a brave new world you people want.
One of the worlds richer countries, with beggars on the streets.
Like or Dislike:
1 
3 (-2)
I would have thought even you could identify a “typo”. OF course we did not need to have a presscription to buy a pat of butter – it was to buy a pat of margarine.
It is a sign of your perversity that rather than ask if I had made an error you immediately accuse me of lying in public.
This is why so many hold you is such contempt.
Like or Dislike:
7 
3 (+4)
owen..
gee..!..i guess it’s because you have this long history of lying..
..of being one who has received remuneration from climatechange-denial front-groups…
..pimping for the oil companies..as it were..
..and delaying the imperative/urgent.work that must be done…
“..This is why so many hold you is such contempt…”
..were you not so banal..i wd call you fucken evil..
..eh..?
..oh..!..hang on ..!
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
0 
5 (-5)
Kerry Thomas,
I once had articles published in the Asian Wall Street Journal and later (1995) in the Far Eastern Economic reviewin which I argued that natural resources were the curse of the modern economy. Statistics demonstrate that countries blessed with natural resources have tended to slide down the GDP tables since the second world war while those countries deprived of natural resources have improved their lot.
Commodity suppliers are always lobbysts for a weak currency which means we must all stay poor. So I am not unsympathetic to your point of view.
But the response is not to extend protection and subsidies but the clean them out of the whole system. I will give an example of negative outcomes in a separate post.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
“…Our welfare reform experiment is little more than a confidence trick -
- in which poor people get shuffled this way and that -
- while their lives remain essentially unchanged.
Fifteen years ago, on August 22, 1996, President Bill Clinton perched at a podium in the White House Rose Garden – and signed the bill that would become known as welfare reform.
Flanked by three former welfare recipients – and looking glazed and smooth as a donut -
- he swept aside six decades of social welfare policy with a single triangulating stroke of his pen -
- reversing a course that had been set by Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the New Deal.
In the process, he handed the law’s right-wing backers their first emboldening victory -
- in a far bigger, dirtier, and still raging campaign to unravel the government safety net.
“Today we are ending welfare as we know it,” Clinton declared -
- the words “A New Beginning” emblazoned on the podium beneath him in case anyone missed the point.
From that moment on, needy families would face a strict five-year lifetime limit for welfare assistance.
They would have to comply with stringent work requirements.
Handouts would be replaced by a hand up -
- self-destruction would yield to self-sufficiency -
- and dependency would give way to the starchy respectability of personal responsibility…”
(cont…)
http://whoar.co.nz/2011/the-failure-of-welfare-reform-is-exhibit-a-that-the-rights-punish-the-poor-philosophy-doesnt-work/
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
2 
1 (+1)
Is Cactus Kate Dead?
It was rather amusing to see Cathy Odgers joining the Act party a few months ago. Even though she’s immensely qualified to be a member of the bigoted party, some of her beliefs appear to go against the grain. Odgers says that corporate welfare must stop and that politicians should be honest and accountable. Perhaps she doesn’t know about Don Brash’s sordid history?
Like or Dislike:
1 
3 (-2)
memo to the green party election campaign committee:..
..keep yr billboards simple…
..the most powerful graphic-message i have seen for a very long time..
..was the couldn’t-be-more-clear-yet-so-simple graphic on q&a on sunday…
..the one that showed that our dairy herd numbers are the equivalent of 80 million ‘freedom-campers’..
..pissing and shitting on our country..every day..
..(as (a seemingly alarmed) holmes noted:..’that won’t be washed away by the rain’..)
..to further my case i wd note that however odious they were…the undeniably potent iwi/kiwi billboards..
..were also notable for the simplicity of the message…
..remember..’cos of car-driving etc..
..you have to sell yr message at/in a glance..
..(just thought i’d mention that..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
4 
2 (+2)
Hi frog
Just to let you know that there is a Jackal impersonator who has attained my email address. Please keep an eye out for any anti left wing derogatory comments from this account. Thanks.
Like or Dislike:
0 
1 (-1)
During the late seventies and most of the eighties I headed the Auckland region Appied Technology Programme.
One of my favourite clients was ANAC (Auckland Nuclear Accessories Corp) a university based company headed by four of my old friends from my BE Int days.
They had designed and were manufacturing polarised ion systems for particle accelerators mainly at Los Alamos.
Anyhow, along the way they found they had developed all the technologies required to make ion implanters needed for the manufacture of silicon chips. So they started to design these new machines and already had a plant manufacturing precision magnets. It survives as BSL http://www.buckleysystems.com/
So we were all set to become the world’s centre for manufacturing ion implanters worth millions of dollars each. ANAC had all sorts of problems and not the least was import licensing designed to protect existing manufacturers – including stainless steel. These cyclotron type machines need special stainless steel and ANAC used huge amounts of energy trying to get the right materials because we made stainless steel (wrong type) in NZ.
Also ANAC was not on any list of DTI “industries deserving support” – not invented yet and ion implantation was simply beyond the officials’ comprehension. Eventually ANAC went into voluntary receivership and my friends went to Standford and to Eaton Corporation and so Eaton became the world’s largest manufacturer of ion implanters for the world. Fortunately, BSL continues to supply 80% of the world’s market for the magnetic lenses. But imagine if we had kept my four friends and their vision rather than sacrifice their visions to the need to protect other “manufacturing industries” by insisting they used local products.
This was not a lone example. So many innovative emerging industries were strangled by protective red tape and by limited official visions.
So pardon my cynicism about benign government intervention. Most of my frustrations came out of Wellington.
Like or Dislike:
4 
0 (+4)
Actually Owen, your comment about butter isn’t just a typo, nor a lie. It’s just one of those silly exaggerations that neo-liberals have spread around. The restrictions on buying margarine – fairly common around the world – were lifted in 1972, well before Muldoon came to power. And I recall somebody telling me they were only in force for a couple of years. It was a strange anomaly rather than something typical of those times.
Much of NZ’s ‘protectionist’ regime was intended to prevent the balance of payments situation getting out of hand, rather than to protect local industry. Muldoon dropped a lot of import restrictions with the result that NZ’s previously very low level of debt skyrocketed, and has remained high ever since.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
The IMF has discovered that inequality causes financial crises and proposes strengthening workers collective bargaining rights as a solution. I guess after 60 odd years even the world’s top economists are capable of noticing the incredibly obvious.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2010/12/Kumhof.htm
Like or Dislike:
1 
1 (0)
Sam
I would not be surprised to find the margarine story is a a hyperbole – it just happened to come to mind while rattling off a post.
However, while it is true that our protection/subsidy regime was attempting to halt the overseas exchange imbalance it is also clear from the writings of W B Sutch that it was also intended to protect and promote local industry and agriculture. Public policy is seldom uni-dimensional.
So where does this example fit on the spectrum?
Fertiliser was highly subsidised and so farmers spread it around with Gay Abandon. Lovely girl.
Another client of mine had developed an electronic ground proximity measuring system which adjusted discharge according to slope so as to keep actual application rates even. We could not get any interest. This was very early high tech by the way. Then Douglas cancelled the subsidies and suddenly every top dresser wanted one.
On the other hand the need for exchange control approval to subscribe to a foreign journal was obviously based on control of foreign exchange flows.
I’ve just done a quick check on margerine and many papers by reputable authors refer to the margarine prescription fiasco and how cardiac victims used to smuggle it in from Australia etc – so I am not sure how much of an exaggeration it is. The opinion at the time seems to be it was an anti competitive nonsense driven the “greedy farming lobby” who were terrified of any competition.
Bit like the car importers of the time.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
I have just been invited to give a paper at next years conference by the NZ Institute of Surveyors and they have offered a fee of $3,000.
So for the next decade or so Phil U will turn every comment of mine into a rant about how I am a shill or whatever for the surveying industry and obviously lying in their cause.
The fact that the topic relates to affordable housing for low income households will not discourage him from his perverse interpretation of human behaviour.
Like or Dislike:
2 
0 (+2)
Hi Owen, can you tell me when this marge rule was brought in? I couldn’t find any reference to its beginnings.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
We are talking about events pre internet and so when you do a search on the topic the response is flooded with hundreds of references to stories listed yesterday.
Heaps of people recall it being in operation but being writers they are not interested in legislative dates.
Similarly ANAC was a big story in my life but a search on ANAC turns up nothing relevant and a search on Auckland Nuclear Accessories Corp turns up a single reference but it is to my own submission to the CRI select committee last year. There is a real digital divide – in time.
Like or Dislike:
2 
0 (+2)
Invercargill primary principals send an open letter to Anne Tolley to express their frustration with National Standards. Many are going through the motions of implementing them because it is a legal requirement to do so, but not one thought the will deliver anything worthwhile:
http://localbodies-bsprout.blogspot.com/2011/08/invercargill-principals-send-open.html
Like or Dislike:
1 
1 (0)
National’s Financial Fantasy Land
The National party made a press release today concerning an increase to the estimated liability for the Canterbury earthquakes. Despite the huge increase of around $3.3 billion, Bill English is down playing any negative impact to the government’s growing debt crisis, saying that they still expect to return to surplus by 2014/15 and will keep net debt below 30% of GDP. It’s really just more National party bullshit!
Like or Dislike:
0 
3 (-3)
There is not a hope unless they release the logjam of DURT at local government level.
Auckland’s construction sector is an economic catastrophe in terms of growth, affordability, and employment but Len Brown dreams on.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
Sam suggests that Owens recollection of margarine beings prescription only is “just one of those silly exaggerations that neo-liberals have spread around” is wrong. It was a fact.
Sam also appears to suggest that the Green MP Gareth Hughes is a neo-liberal, because Garethe mentions this is his Maiden Speech when he says “I was born in 1981 in a very different New Zealand. 28 years ago we had 3 million people and 7 million sheep; you needed a doctor’s prescription to buy margarine” :
http://www.voxy.co.nz/politics/gareth-hughes-maiden-speech-green-party-media-release/5/39602
The only way Sam can continue to deny that margarine was a precription item well after 1972 is to call Gareth Hughes a liar when Garteh says they were still in effect in 1981 when he was born.
Like or Dislike:
3 
3 (0)
Rubbish MS – apparently you don’t understand the simple difference between lying and getting something wrong.
Gareth didn’t know what he was talking about – I rather doubt that he has a strong memory of margarine regulations at a time when he was less than a year old – and swallowed a myth, as did many people (matter of fact, Radio NZ’s mediawatch programme pointed out Gareth’s speech as an example of even Greens believing the historical revisionism of neo-liberals).
I said Owen was wrong about the policy continuing into the Muldoon era. I wasn’t accusing him of lying, he just got it a bit wrong.
There’s a few silly myths about pre-1984 NZ spread to bolster the idea that we led some sort of grim Stalinist existence in those days – a friend was told at university that we only had two types of ice cream, for example.
Like or Dislike:
1 
1 (0)
BTW, Gareth got the sheep numbers wrong as well.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
I was around in the early 70′s.
If the prescription to buy margarine was a fact it was definitely pre-Muldoon. I remember getting it from a dairy before 1972.
Anyway. Australia managed to get rid of the same sort of restrictions without killing their economy.
Similarly a lot of the problems of the time were less to do with protectionism than Governments, especially National ones, protecting their cronies, and/or their voting base. (Though Labour did things also. Like packing the Shipping Corporation with more office staff than operations staff).
Fletchers, Spencer and others were gifted monopolies which many of them still have.
I remember tariffs, and import licensing, on many things which were not manufactured in NZ, to keep up the importers profit margins.
Borrowing for farmers welfare and to keep up the level of super were straight out election bribes. Sound familiar!
Far to many farmers retired just before the agricultural subsidies were removed, leaving young farmers with debt they could not repay.
A bit like the people who, just by chance?, invested in SCF just before it collapsed!
Muldoon did have the right idea, with projects to try and reduce our dependance on imported energy. If the projected oil price rises had continued, he would have been a hero.
Unfortunately Managers, with a privatisation agenda, used transfer pricing to hide the real returns. Most were sold to make good profits for private owners. Leaving us with the debt.
Like or Dislike:
2 
0 (+2)
“..Auckland is the 10th best city to live in while Wellington occupies the 23rd position, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s latest survey of ranking among 140 locations..”
eh..?..eh..?..
you carping small-minded provincials don’t know what you are missing…
..hulking down in yr white-flight hell-holes..
..(i’m looking at you tauranga/nelson..and most points south..)
..unable to conceal yr naked envy whenever a cheerful/sunny ak’er hoves into view..
..spreading goodwill and bonhomie..as we do…
..it’s ‘cos we’re so warm most of the time…eh..?
..not to mention having more to look at/be stimulated by…
…than cows…
..and other inbred hicks…
..eh..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
0 
5 (-5)
The politician’s attack on our livelihood is their revenge for having to live in Wellington.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
Talking of historical revisionism.
On a money program on Discovery recently they were going on about how good Pinochet, Pineira and Friedman were for Chile. ??
Like or Dislike:
2 
0 (+2)
Sprout says “Many are going through the motions of implementing them because it is a legal requirement to do so, but not one thought the will deliver anything worthwhile:”
That shows just how narrow minded they are. We’re into the second year of them with great results.
Your school had an ERO report saying 40% of your pupils can’t read at the expected level that their peers can.
And they are critical that your board is going several years between reports on childrens progress, and are critical at the schools ability to identify children who need more help, and of the variable quality of teaching.
They say these things need to be better measured and identified – exactly the sort of problems that would be sorted out with National Standards.
I can see why you don’t want things measured, but it sounds exactly the sort of school where close scrutiny and measurement of progress is needed to see where the problems are.
How can teachers, the board, and parents make decisions, solve problems and help children when their progress is not properly measured, and problems not properly identified.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
But then, the ERO Reports show that national standards are not required to identify childrens reading levels or any variability in teaching standards.
As for the statement that 40% were not reading at the expected level of their peers, this is below the average performance of a New Zealand school, but without knowledge of either trend in performance or relation to similar (decile) schools is hard to link to the debate over national standards.
There are some local schools where I live that have good ERO Reports but oppose national standards, does their performance validate their opposition?
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
Thanks Owen…everyone… Ironic now, that we know that the trans-fats in the margarine of the day are even worse than the fats in the butter.
Prescription margarine, not butter. OK. I am officially weirded out by the past excesses of NZ politics.
Doesn’t change the current problem… or its solution.
BJ
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
so owen…
are you moving into denial against yr denialism-mode..?
..(and taking the ‘poor me’-plea..?)…
..good luck with that one…eh..?..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
0 
3 (-3)
are you denying..owen..
that you have a ‘long history of peddling mis-information..’..?
..shorthand:climatechange-denying..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
0 
2 (-2)
The government announced their intention to open up the country to mining and drilling yesterday.
I have to say I was really disappointed on lots of levels but take my hat off to Kennedy for the way in which he presented the alternative perspectives on National radio both in the morning and the afternoon.
Of course this is only my personal opinion but ….do people just not get it!
We are addicted to oil. We know it’s bad for us but we are going to do it anyway. It appeared to me that the interviewer in the morning (and I could be wrong about this) seemed to think that the end user pays the carbon tax not the producer – so what’s the problem? That, using the drug analogy is like going after the addict but leaving the manufacturing labs alone – not the model that the police use.
As Kennedy pointed out, our dependence on oil will remain for some time but we need to start the move toward alternative energies/systems and the financial gains may be had from cleaner technologies.
Like or Dislike:
2 
0 (+2)
There are two separate issues which need to be kept separate if there is to be useful debate.
There is the Energy Issue and the presumed need for renewable energy sources. We can probably achieve 100% provided we usefully employ our hydro and geothermal resources.
Then there is the completely separate issue of the need for liquid fuels and the objective of being self sufficient in liquid fuels and save overseas exchange and have a more stable price regime.
The need for liquid fuels is not going to disappear in the near future. NZ sits on a sea of natural gas – which is not a fossil fuel – and can be turned into oil or used directly as a fuel.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
SPC says “…but without knowledge of either trend in performance or relation to similar (decile) schools is hard to link to the debate over national standards.”
Of course it’s linked – when a school is reported as not properly measuring performance, not adequately identifying children who need more help, and it’s years between reports on progress to the board.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
With more efficient use of energy, we could probably achieve 100% with generation including generation for commuter travel and urban freight.
Energy efficient new buildings use 20 to 30% less energy over their lifespan, for example.
Christchurch is a great opportunity to add a lot of energy efficient construction without the added cost of replacing existing buildings. An opportunity which National will waste.
Most of our petrol is used within city limits, by cars which do less than 50km a day. A prime use for electric vehicles.
At present we use over a billion a year in fossil fuels, including for generation. This is offset a bit by local production, but new sources of local fuels, such as the Great South basin, will cost many times more than Maui to extract the hydrocarbons.
As sources of supply get more expensive the price will easily triple.
Fossil fuels may even be unobtainable for us. The USA has already shown they will fight wars to ensure their own supply.
Whatever your take on AGW, even a denialist can see there are good economic and practical reasons for reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
Actually most use of cars is for non commuter use.
Cars account for only 8% of our fossil fuel use. Transport accounts for 30% including trains, buses, taxis, shipping and planes. So converting all urban cars to electric drive will have only a trivial impact on our demand for fossil fuels although it has other benefits. (Probably gradually gets rid of the deafness genes in the genepool.) We can probably convert more cars to CNG more quickly and get greater gains in a shorter time.
Powdered coal can power jet engines.
Anyhow, the changes in transport are going to massive as the revolution in telecommunications is transferred into the transport sector. Google seems likely to be a major player.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
(some more information for keith locke..
i wonder how much longer he can just stuff his fists in his ears…and go nyah nyah nyah..!..i’m not listening…
..the longer his sullen silence goes on…
..the more juvenile it appears…
..surely he can’t still be believing the bullshit..?
..can he..?..)
http://whoar.co.nz/2011/%C2%A0-al-qaeda-and-nato%E2%80%99s-islamic-extremists-taking-over-libya-%C2%A0/
“..Elements of al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups were known to be key players in the NATO-backed uprising in Libya from the beginning -
- but now it appears that prominent Jihadists and terrorists are practically leading the revolution with Western support.
One terror leader in particular, Abdelhakim Belhaj, made headlines around the world over the weekend after it emerged that he was appointed the chief of Tripoli’s rebel Military Council.
Prior to leading rebel forces against Gaddafi’s regime, Belhaj was the founder and leader of the notorious Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).
Eventually the terror “Emir,” as he has been called, was arrested and tortured as an American prisoner in the terror war.
In 2004, according to reports, he was transferred to the Gaddafi regime — then a U.S. terror-war ally.
By 2010, Belhaj was freed by Gaddafi under an amnesty agreement for “former” terrorists.
And more recently, the terror leader and his men were trained by U.S. special forces to take on Gaddafi.
“We proudly announce the liberation of Libya and that Libya has become free and that the rule of the tyrant and the era of oppression is behind us,” Belhaj was quoted as saying by ABC after his forces sacked one of Gaddafi’s compounds.
His leadership is now well established.
While most news reports about Belhaj acknowledged that the LIFG has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department -
- many accounts inaccurately downplayed the group’s links to terror and al-Qaeda.
But evidence suggests the two terrorist organizations actually merged several years ago.
According to a study by the U.S. military, the organization had an “increasingly cooperative relationship with al-Qa’ida, which culminated in the LIFG officially joining al-Qa’ida on November 3, 2007.”
And even before that, former CIA boss George Tenet warned the U.S. Senate in 2004 that al-Qaeda-linked groups like the LIFG represented “one of the most immediate threats” to American security.
A few reporters, however, have highlighted the seriousness of the problem.
“The new military dictator of Tripoli is none other than the infamous Abdul Hakim Belhadj, an international terrorist, a famous, notorious ‘genocidal’ of al-Qaeda who has carried out international terrorism all across the globe,” noted investigative reporter Webster Tarpley -
- adding that the terrorist has boasted of killing American soldiers.
Journalist Pepe Escobar, one of the first to report the news of Belhadj‘s rise to power -
- explained in the Asia Times that the repercussions would be widespread.
“The story of how an al-Qaeda asset turned out to be the top Libyan military commander in still war-torn Tripoli is bound to shatter — once again —
- that wilderness of mirrors that is the ‘war on terror,’” he noted.
It will also compromise “the carefully constructed propaganda of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) ‘humanitarian’ intervention in Libya.”..”
(cont..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
1 
1 (0)
CAn’t believe it. As if on cue one of Google’s fleet of about 700 driverless cars, driving around California, has been in an accident.
It was driven into by a Prius!
Obviously the contest between these competing technologies is heating up.
Like or Dislike:
2 
0 (+2)
Sam now says that Gareth Hughes was wrong. This woud also mean that (‘neo-libs’? like) Pete Hodgson was wrong, Wyatt Creech was wrong, the RBNZ was wrong, The Press was wrong
http://www.vdig.net/hansard/archive.jsp?y=2001&m=02&d=14&o=26&p=60
http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/1997/10/24/creech-launches-social-studies-curriculum/
http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/speeches/0031201.html
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/opinion/editorials/2594164/Editorial-Lange-legacy
Or maybe, Sam, you are wrong
Like or Dislike:
0 
2 (-2)
Go to: http://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/News-and-Events/Media-Releases/geothermal-scientists-at-the-forefront
“Geothermal energy from conventional subsurface technologies currently provides about 13 percent of New Zealand’s total electricity generation from an installed capacity of about 730 megawatts.
“Scientists conservatively estimate that deep geothermal resources in the central North Island could provide 10,000 megawatts for over 100 years for New Zealand,” said GNS Science Senior Geothermal Scientist Greg Bignall, a convenor of the Taupo workshop.
“This would satisfy all of New Zealand’s current electricity demand, which is generated from a capacity of 9,000 megawatts,” Dr Bignall said.” more.
Like or Dislike:
3 
0 (+3)
Not only that MC, all the people, like myself, who remember margarine openly for sale in dairies and supermarkets in the 1970s must also be wrong (false memories implanted by the Muldoonist/leftist conspiracy?). Because that would spoil a good story. And MC would never want the facts to get in the way of a good story.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
Belich records that the ban on margarine was lifted in the mid seventies. (Belich 2001
Nielsen of the University of California advises that there was a Margarine Act passed in 1908.
Must be one the best known but least documented regulation in our history.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
New Zealand’s Oil Bonanza… Yeah Right!
The National government has been promoting the petroleum industry as New Zealand’s saving grace. They are hell bent on extracting dirty fuel to the detriment of our clean green image and the environment. Instead of investing more into clean green alternatives, National is throwing millions of taxpayer dollars at the problem, and completely ignoring the consequences. The return on investment and tax exemptions mean we are paying for oil companies to become exceedingly wealthy. It’s not good for the climate or the economy. In this article I take a look at the details of National’s fossil fuel future that will fail New Zealand..
Like or Dislike:
1 
1 (0)
“Or maybe, Sam, you are wrong”
Well MS, I’ve been wrong before, so it’s certainly possible. But none of the links you give contradict anything I said, so why bother posting them?.
Like or Dislike:
0 
1 (-1)
Actually, I’m wrong – the Hansard reference does contradict what I said. Pete Hodgson claims margarine purchase required a prescription “in the Muldoon era”. None of the other references given have any time period specified at all – just that it happened some time ago. Hodgson doesn’t give any actual dates, I reckon he’s just repeating something he heard, like Gareth and others.
Personally,I wouldn’t give Hodgson’s political rhetoric much credence as evidence, but MS is welcome to believe that if a politician says something it must be true.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
BTW, the 1908 Margarine act didn’t restrict its sale – it licenses marge production and ensures it can’t be marketed or coloured in such a way as to be mistaken for butter. Nothing about prescriptions.
Well, who’d have thought there was so much to discuss about historical margarine politics?
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
More marge news! According to Statistics NZ: “margarine was added to the CPI basket in 1975 as a result of a basket review in 1974. At that time, 79 percent of spending (in dollar terms) on butter and margarine was on butter, and the remaining 21 percent was on margarine.”
I rather doubt that something only available on prescription was in added to the CPI basket.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
that’s a well-researched/written piece on how we are being oil-screwed..there..jackal..
i’ve linked to it..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
“…Well, who’d have thought there was so much to discuss about historical margarine politics?..”
it’s more an expose of the multi-layred-lies/fogging of issues modus operandi that mcshane honed/practised in all those years of professional climate-change-denial..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Like or Dislike:
0 
3 (-3)
@Owen. I do not know where you get your numbers from. Mine from EECA say that commuter use of cars is 2/3 of car use. Around 20% of fossil fuel use is non aviation petrol.
The majority of freight transport and commercial use is diesel, gas, kerosene or HFO. So I think it its a fair assumption that most of the 20%, using petrol, is passenger cars.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
EECA publishes many strange statistics.
The question is where and when.
Driving patterns have changed dramatically with the ageing population and more women with access to whole of day use of a car. I shall have to go back and search but this finding that non-commuter trips now constitute a small majority of all trips is in line with international experience.
Cities are churning rapidly. Work from home and telecommuting have dramatically changed patterns of use.
But the major increase in women driving their own cars to schools, rest homes, dance classes, gyms is possibly the major change. Then there are all the retired households who do not commute at all.
Of course if you are going to focus on petrol use rather than liquid fuels you will skew the statistic towards cars but I do not see the point. Why is petrol worthy of such focus?
Diesel trucks and trains are much more important to the economy.
Have a look at consuming Australia for the calculations of carbon footprints and the graph on page 5 in particular. Go to:
http://acfonline.org.au/uploads/res/res_atlas_main_findings.pdf
It puts total transport at about 10% of the household energy footprint, and cars about 8.5%. Food accounts for almost 30%. Join weightwatchers and save the planet?
And inner cities are consumption hotspots. Fringe households have the lowest footprints.
The report is written by the Australian Conservation Authority. The authors were surprised by their own findings which they expected would support urban intensification.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
Figure 3 on page seven is even more surprising – it measures the eco footprint and includes land disturbance etc.
Household transport accounts for only 3.2%of the pie. The text reads:
“As this figure shows, nearly half of an average household’s eco-footprint
is attributable to food production. Cattle grazing in particular is very
land-intensive in Australia. On average it takes three times as much land
to raise an equivalent amount of livestock in Australia than in any other
OECD country except for Iceland, and countries such as New Zealand
and Germany raise more than 10 times the amount of livestock per
hectare as the Australian average.ii
Because direct household and transport contributions to land disturbance
are relatively small, the best way for most individual households
to meaningfully reduce their impact on land is to alter their patterns of
consumption of food, clothing, and other goods.”
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
The Aussie report doesn’t seem that surprising – it points to the usual issues – wealthy people have higher impacts; as do smaller households; isolated, indigenous communities have very low impacts etc.
But if cars are at 8% or whatever, isn’t this still significant? If we are going to ignore all categories of energy consumption/GHG emissions that’s below 10% (or whatever) of the total, we’ll be ignoring pretty much everything. There’s no reason to only focus on the single biggest factor.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
Its more a matter of “low hanging fruit” car use and building efficiency are easier to address than many other uses of energy.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
Thanks phil u. Here’s another piece well worth a read:
Gordon Campbell On the EQC’s funding woes, and a peak oil update
So, it seems, the Greens were right all along – a special levy to fund the costs involved with the Christchurch earthquake still makes good sense, if only (this time around) to replenish the funds available to the Earthquake Commission.
Like or Dislike:
1 
1 (0)
Owen said (at 9:31am):
“NZ sits on a sea of natural gas – which is not a fossil fuel – and can be turned into oil or used directly as a fuel.”
If is deep in the ground and largely carbon, hydrocarbon or carbohydrate, it is a fossil fuel (or a diamond).
Also discussion of liquid fuels can lead to people ignoring gaseous transport fuels such as CNG and LPG. I have previously advocated conversion of some of our petrol-driven fleet to CNG, and avoiding using CNG or other fossil fuels for stationary energy applications where renewable resources can be utilised instead.
Trevor.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
The statement “40% (of children) were not reading at the expected level of their peers” is actually meaningless, even if intrepreted as meaning those 40% were reading below the expected level of their peers. If you take any measure of ability and apply it to a population, you would expect up to 50% to be below the average, so if you take this average to be the expected level, you get up to 50% of the people having an ability below the expected level.
The statement only has value if it includes a measure of how much below the expected level these children are, coupled with an indication of the natural variability likely to be encountered between children with the same learning environment.
Trevor.
Like or Dislike:
1 
1 (0)
Good luck getting through with that argument, also pertinent is at what age the 40% figure refers to and trends within the school since earlier reports and of course the school decile area (and maybe intake circumstances depending at what age the 40% figure applies).
Some of the difference between schools comes from outside community factors and comparing to norms has to be put into a more relevant context.
In accounting terms internal control should be efficient but not expensive – in education terms the national standards system is expensive in terms of time and focus/resources.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
Schools in my area however simply say they have developed better assessement and reporting systems and do not see the national standards as providing informed quality judgement.
Criticisms include little consultation, and near non existent professional development for teachers, the standrds not being aligned to current norm referenced assessment tools, a warning that labelling children behind their age gropup norm could be a self-fulfilling prophecy, and that there is no provision for across schools moderation meaning there is no consistency or credibility.
Mr Patterson says nothing has changed in that time to change the thinking of the school’s board. “We got an ultimatum that the charter had to be delivered and we have done that,” he says. “Our [current] achievement data is decent, proven and reliable whereas the standards are flawed and rushed. “The [ministry's] professional development has been mixed at best and most people don’t understand them,” he says. “They don’t line up against any of the usual reliable assessment tools for student achievement.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/local-papers/upper-hutt-leader/5272831/Upper-Hutt-schools-defy-national-standards
Mr Hipkins says the policy is “rushed and poorly thought through”. “Children learn at different rates and they start school at different points in their development and the way these national standards are being implemented, these things aren’t being taken into account. “Really it’s time to slow down and take stock and come up with something that will actually work,” Mr Hipkins says.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/local-papers/upper-hutt-leader/5308480/Schools-tight-on-standards-protest
Note that Jonathan Fletcher National candidate for Rimutaka says (in that above news story) virtually word for word what photonz does on this blog.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
There are two separate issues which need to be kept separate if there is to be useful debate.
…
Then there is the completely separate issue of the need for liquid fuels
…
Good that you got the first two. Two out of three ain’t bad but the third, which you omit, is the need to reduce our release of CO2 into the atmosphere. That makes the use of Lignite coal to create diesel or natural gas wherever it is FOUND, a problem.
One can make the stuff renewably, but that’s more expensive/difficult than digging it up.
Which is what the current business model owners object to…. they’d have to change. It isn’t cost-free.
It remains however, quite real.
BJ
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
The ten percent comes as a surprise to most because they have been persuaded that cars are the great enemy and must be stamped out.
This reality also means that the impact of modal transfers in major cities has a trivial impact on fossil fuel use for the nation.
Natural gas appears in the wrong places for it to share the same origins as coal. As far as I know there were no carbiniferous forests in the surrounding oceans. But more to the point, how does one account for the frozen methane oceans on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. These gases were embedded in the interstellar stuff that congealed into the solar system and which gradually seep into caverns or up to the surface.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
Trevor 29 says “If you take any measure of ability and apply it to a population, you would expect up to 50% to be below the average”
You have taken the EROs measure of expected reading age, and replaced it (wrongly) it with “average” reading ability.
It’s blatantly obvious that around half of children will be above and half below average, just like half of drivers go above average speed and half below.
These measures against average ability are meaninless – they are not a standard.
The measure is against what children are expected to know at a certain age (like a speed limit) rather than the pontless measuring against an average.
Using your flawed method to measure reading, a high performing class and a low performing class would both have half the pupils below average and half above average.
The only way it could possible have any use, is if each class was measured against a national average, in which case you’d need a national standard.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
SPC says “Schools in my area however simply say they have developed better assessement and reporting systems and do not see the national standards as providing informed quality judgement.”
So are they doing better or worse than all the other schools around the country, and how do they measure that?
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
Last word on Margarine
I e-mailed Dr Frances Steel, who has written on butter history in New Zealand seeking clarification. She writes “Polyunsaturated margarine, a modern form of margarine, was ‘decriminalised’ [licensed for import] in 1971 but only made available on prescription. This proved unworkable and in 1972 margarine was made freely available in New Zealand and could be manufactured in the country. My understanding is that Dairy Industry influence ensured that New Zealand took so long to accept margarine, compared to other countries. There was also real uncertainty and debate about the causal link between saturated fats and heart disease.”
A paper by Dr Steel (Steel, F. (2005). A Source of Our Wealth, Yet Adverse to Our Health?
Butter and the Diet–Heart Link in New Zealand to c.1990. Social History of Medicine 18 (3) 475-93 doi:10.1093/shm/hki048) provides a reasonably complete history, from the days when butter was seen as a valuable source of vitamins A and D, through to the 1960s when the link between dietary fat and heart disease was established and the National Heart Foundataion was set up and started promoting polyunsaturated fats for good health. Also in the 1960s soft polyunsaturated margarines were came on the market (replacing the saturated beef or whale fat based product and the hard vegetable fat products, which were avaialble in NZ, but were prevented from imitating butter by the Margarine Act of 1895). Around 1969 the NZ govt then approved import licenses for Australian margarine and some limited NZ production began in 1971, but was only available on prescription to people with high serum cholestrol. This was unworkable and abandoned in October 1972, when polyunsaturated margarine became freely available. Controls on adding colouring and flavouring to saturated margarine continued until 1989.
So it is hard to make any link between margarine control and Muldoonism. Rather it seems to be associated with a long standing pro-butter lobby intersecting with the nutritionist bureaucracy of the Holyoake years. The story about margarine being briefly available on prescription seems to have been extended into the Muldoon years to make a good story. I don’t think this is unusual – just a jump in logic when a story is compelling. I remember arguing with people in the late 1990s who insisted that the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act killed the hemp industry in the USA. The Act didn’t tax hemp and the US industry continued, albeit in decline, until the late 50s or early 60s. None-the-less the connection between hemp-cannabis-petrochemical companies-drug laws made too good a story for people to let go of it – even though the facts and dates just didn’t match up.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
The schools are well rated by the ERO, possibly because they have developed good quality reporting and assessment systems already – the idea of “national standards” being the focus and receiving the time investment instead is not attractive and they note the lack of moderation between schools leaves this system incomplete as a national standard. Given that, there is a case for schools that have well practiced local systems that work well to retain them – just as we allow some secondary schools to offer “Cambridge” exams rather than NCEA.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
SPC says ” Given that, there is a case for schools that have well practiced local systems that work well to retain them”
Our school did that, and simply tacked on NS as well and we’ve seen the additional positive results because of it.
However some schools have very poor analysis and reporting. Parents are given little information on their childrens progress. Boards have no idea of what is going on.
How can schools get extra help to children who need it, extra training for teachers who need it, and extra funding if they are having issues – if they’re not even picking up the issues in the first place (as per the ERO report for I mentioned earlier).
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
I suppose schools with poor ERO reports could be told to establish good assessment and reporting standards themselves or adopt the national standard until they do – give schools with good ERO reports in this regard a choice on the option taken, and as you say some might continue with both/a mix.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
SPC – you can’t properly assess how well a class of children are doing if you use different standards for different children.
It’s no different with classes and schools. To see what methods work better, and what schools/teachers/children need more help, we need to be using the same asssessments instead of the range that schools currently use (or not doing much assessing at all).
If the current National Standards can be improved upon, then great. The point is that for schools/teachers/children to be assessed on their needs, there needs to be a common standard – not lots of different ones of none at all like the current situation.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
photonz, it was you who quoted the ERO report stating 40% of pupils were at a below the year standard figure for the Southland school. This sort of information about performance was possible even for a school without the best assessment and reporting systems (before and without national standards). So there is no need to be reliant on one model – national standards.
Schools with better ones should be able to wait till the national model is as good as the one they already have. Besides the national standards model is still being perfected and lacks any system of moderation to make it relevant as a national standard of any real significance.
Some schools would like to see it as a trial before adopting it themselves.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
National Standards are not pointless measurements against average ability, but are rather based on what Anne Tolley thinks ALL children should know at a certain age. Quack.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
solkta says “National Standards are not pointless measurements against average ability, but are rather based on what Anne Tolley thinks ALL children should know at a certain age. Quack”
The often repeated mantra “children learn at different rates” allows children to slip further and further behind. Many of them are not merely “learning at a different rate” – they actually need additional help, and they don’t get.
And surprise surprise – we end up with 20% getting to high school unable to read and write at the level they need to to continue learning.
Like or Dislike:
2 
0 (+2)
Teachers already know who is behind the year average learning level now (within schools and the ERO the particular schools of concern), and the thing about national standards is that it does not involve any input of extra help to those pupils who fall behind. So national standards will do little to change the number of those who arrive at high school unable to cope at that level.
Like or Dislike:
0 
1 (-1)
SPC says “Teachers already know who is behind the year average learning level now”
Do they? Then can you explain why the ERO report says that because of a lack of monitoring, the school is failing to identify some children who need extra help?
And continued failure to measure in support registers means teachers have no idea if additional support has improved progress.
SPC says “and the thing about national standards is that it does not involve any input of extra help to those pupils who fall behind.”
Schools should be helping ALL children who need extra help – regardless of if they are picked up through National Standards, other assessments, or simple observation. If they don’t, then they’re not doing their job properly.
On top of that, the forth part of the policy platform for National Standards is
“4.Provide targeted funding to assist primary and intermediate schools to give an extra hand to the pupils who aren’t meeting National Standards.”
So specific funding will be aimed at where it is most needed for childrens learning, on top of the usual funding depending on the average incomes of all your neighbours.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
photonz – schools need resourcing for remedial education to help those who fall behind, if this is funded then schools will actively identify those who need this targeted help.
Of course teachers know who is behind the “classroom” (average) standard, lack of verifiable (to external acceptance) monitoring to ERO expectation does not change that.
If and when schools see the targeted help promised with national standards being delivered (without cuts elsewhere in the budget) they will be inclined to see the introduction of the national standard trial as having some advantage for their pupils.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
Photo. We already know who needs extra help and why.
At the same time National added 30 million for NACT standards and 30 million to private schools they are reducing the funding of programs, which do help, by similar amounts.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
SPC – reasearch shows 60% of childrens knowledge is picked up OUTSIDE of school.
SO a big part of the National Standards system is to get parents to help their children more, by vastly improving reporting to them.
Part of NS is the compulsory requirement for schools to give parents ideas of things to help their children with at home. So a big part of the idea is to get parents far more involved than they are now.
Why is that such a bad thing?
You’re wrong when you say teachers “know” who need more help, because ERO says many children who need help are simply not being identified, and are getting left behind.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
Kerry says “Photo. We already know who needs extra help and why.”
So you keep saying, which is obviously wrong because ERO keeps finding schools that are failing to identify children who need help.
We’ve got 20% of kids slipping through the cracks, and spending just a quarter of 1% of the education budget on NS will
- help identify those chidlren currently being missed
- give better information on what methods help individual children progress
- give better information on what teachers need more training
- give better information on what schools need more resources
- give parents better information to help their children at home
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
Is there international research showing that a national standard reporting approach better enables schools to more effectively suggest ideas to parents on how to help their children with remedial education if they fall behind?
I have no opinion on the matter. I just like the idea of adopting programmes that have been trialled and have been shown to work in practice.
As to what the ERO said, what they regard as identified to their objective external audit purposes and what a teacher has identified by noting that some of the pupils are unable to do what others are able to do, on a day to day basis, are two different things – but the latter is still valid knowledge.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
The perverse nature of the reform is that, if schools qualify for more assistance by maintaining a tight test of the line on the national standard, then the school seems unsuccessful and loses pupils to better performing schools.
But if it exploits the loose moderation, then it is seen as more successful and retains pupils, but does not get the support it needs.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
Owen said:
“Natural gas appears in the wrong places for it to share the same origins as coal.”
Pike River exploded because methane (natural gas) came out of the coal and was ignited. Coal mines have always been at risk from natural gas explosions.
You just have to accept that there are multiple sources of methane, including belching cows (very natural) and decomposition of buried plants. If it has been trapped underground for millenia, then it counts as a fossil fuel. However and whereever it comes from, it can still run car engines just as well, so I believe there may be a place for fuelling vehicles from biodigesters.
Trevor.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
SPC says “I just like the idea of adopting programmes that have been trialled and have been shown to work in practice.”
We have parents doing activities (suggested by the school) at home to help their children’s learning progress.
And you need international research and trials to decide if that’s a good thing or not?
And you really think primary schools are going to start falsifying results to try to get more pupils? You must have a really low opinion of teachers.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
photonz1 said:
“You have taken the EROs measure of expected reading age, and replaced it (wrongly) it with “average” reading ability.”
I haven’t taken anything except a quoted piece of statistics and shown that it is meaningless as quoted. If you have access to the original statistical information that this quote was based on, then please share it.
Trevor.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
What about, “is there international research showing that a national standard reporting approach better enables schools to more effectively suggest ideas to parents on how to help their children with remedial education if they fall behind?” did you fail to understand photonz?
Schools do not need a national standard system to be doing this. So why do you conflate the two with each other, if there is no international research or trial establishing a link between the two for there to be success from this approach?
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
I see you have no response to this critique of the performance mantra of the national standard system …
“The perverse nature of the reform is that, if schools qualify for more assistance by maintaining a tight test of the line on the national standard, then the school seems unsuccessful and loses pupils to better performing schools. But if it exploits the loose moderation, then it is seen as more successful and retains pupils, but does not get the support it needs.”
… but to defend the integrity of teachers and schools to do the right thing, when insisting on a system imposed on them against their professional judgement because of an apparent lack of trust in either schools with their own assessment and reporting standards or the teachers themselves.
My point is that to realise the extra assistance required to improve outcomes for pupils falling behind the national standard the school will be seen as failing and risk pupil loss (and possible closure as rolls fall) and thus this will not be delivered. The next school they go to will have to go through this process again before any help is given and by then …
And note the national standard system is not effectively moderated.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
Joe Buchanan, Last word on margarine.
Thanks for the info. Very useful.
I would suggest that Muldoonism does not necessarily refer to the years of Muldoon as PM but to a style of government and a set of beliefs that underpin that style. Just as we talk about Leninism in regimes that have never been ruled by Lenin.
Muldoon is a symbol of time and behavious that preceeded him and continue on after him.
I remember how at DFC we used to have a staff meeting every Monday morning for an update on the rules governing our lending and implementation of subsidies etc. They changed that frequently.
Years later I tried to explain life under that kind of regime to a money manager in a large Corp and he backed out of the office with a strange look on his face – obviously convinced I had lost my marbles.
I guess that just as Muldoon was a symbol so was the Margarine experience. The most potent myths are often a mix of fact and fiction.
Anyhow, thanks for the homework. We are all much better informed.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
Kerry suggests that the ‘rich’ should be taxed more because “they evade tax anyway”.
Quite how that would work is fancinating. About as fancinating as the lefts belief that it can promise more spending while creating a stratafied taxation structure which the rich “evade tax anyway”. And this means that the tax must therefor be paid for by the poor. Or borrowed.
The lefts desire for ‘more tax/borrow and spend’ simply ends up hurting the poor. As supposes advioactes for the poor, the left really ought look at their (il)logic.
Like or Dislike:
1 
3 (-2)
SPC says “Teachers already know who is behind the year average learning level now”, but alas this is not borne out by fact.
There is some NZ research around (which I posted on in zn.general while ago but dont have to hand to cite now) which showed that NZ teachers often and consistiently over-rated the abilities and achievment of their own students.
Like or Dislike:
2 
2 (0)
SPC says “My point is that to realise the extra assistance required to improve outcomes for pupils falling behind the national standard the school will be seen as failing and risk pupil loss ”
So the alternative is what? Keep secret all the poorly performing classes / teacher / schools. Don’t identify them and give them extra resources?
You are perpertuating another myth that National Standards will create league tables so parents will try to push their children to better schools.
NEWS FLASH. That’s been going on for years with ERO reports. For six years we’ve driven past the poorly performing school at the end of our road, a better school 3km down the road.
And despite substantially MORE taxpayer money per pupil being spent on the poorly performing school, it’s pupils continued to perform worse than kids at other schools who were spending a lot LESS per pupil.
The schools numbers did drop – even the mongrel mob pulled their kids out, and sent them to better schools, and it closed last year.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
Photonz notes that “For six years we’ve driven past the poorly performing school at the end of our road, a better school 3km down the road”. Similar story here.
We pored over ERO reports and visted about half a dozen schools, and visited and spoke to the principal of the local school (twice). And then we went in three ballots and won two.
The principal of the local school could not tell us her staff turnover was (which is an indicator of workplace happiness), said they did nothing about the ‘donation’ (which hardly encourages reponsibilty), and when asked about aspirations talked about getting a silver-star in the ‘eco-schools’ program. Wow. The latter is like getting up and bruching your teeth – its parr for the course, and hardly aspirational. Nothing at all about nuturing kids interests, encouraging their inquisitiveness, or anything like that.
There is no way we were sending The Spawn to the local school after that, and now we go out of zone to a public school chocka with a even-four-way split between chinese, indians, whitey, and ‘others’. The Spawn wants to go to school, wants to learn, and wants to read to us every night (and wants to recycle et al).
And the lefties would take that choice away from us.
Like or Dislike:
1 
1 (0)
MC, it was noted by tax lawyers that recent court decisions in favour of a more active IRD would mark the return to a former time when avoiding tax was harder than it has been in recent decades. They noted that this was not the result of any law changes but the tenacity of IRD in challenging tax avoidance measures.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
MC, if as you say teachers “consistiently over-rated the abilities and achievment of their own students” – how do you think this might impact on national standards when there is no effective moderation between schools?
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
photonz how is it a myth to say that national standards will by used by parents to judge between schools, when as you say some already use ERO Reports to do the same thing and this just makes that more accessible to more parents (with “tables” in the local media).
Better reporting for parents is just a trojan horse for school choice, more schools will close because of falling rolls as a result.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
PS Clearly the ACT Party now lead by a former leader of National knows the plan all to well.
It is to imbed this step of the full reform plan first before revealing that it is to lead to a school choice voucher policy. Thus to bus children from poorer area state schools (to be closed and the land sold to property developers to raise money) to middle class school areas and watch as parents in these middle class state school areas use their vouchers to send children to private schools with their vouchers.
Farrar of Kiwiblog has already indicated willing support from those still in National for this ACT policy NACT coalition programme.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
Essentially NACT have decided that they have no real answer to continued under-performance in low decile schools in areas of the 20% of children raised in poverty (they could just act to reduce child poverty) and so are step by step determined to close down low decile schools to hide the correlation and hide this evidence that there is no effective equality of opportunity.
Like or Dislike:
2 
0 (+2)
Photo. I will take the word of educational researchers and my own training in how education works, over your subjective “anecdotal evidence’ which for some strange reason exactly echo’s the words of other RW ‘concerned parents” all over the blogosphere. Suspiciously like a script.
Narrowly focused, constant, summative testing does not improve educational outcomes. This has been proven many times all over the world.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)
I know it is a bit hard to get access to research findings unless you are attached to somewhere that subscribes to the journals (Another market failure. http://www.monbiot.com/2011/08/29/the-lairds-of-learning/).
All the evidence we have shows narrowly focused, constant, summative testing does not improve educational outcomes.
Which is why Universities and highly regarded private schools do not use it.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
Relax MS. We are not that tough on the rich.
I know you are really concerned about them.
Your figures are wrong anyway. Over 60% of all net tax is paid by those on middle incomes. Between 50k and 150k roughly. And half of the wealtheist 5% pay no tax at all. That’s why a capital gains tax is a good idea.
So calm down and take a happy pill. Things are not as serious for the rich as you think.
If those people paid their share, eventually, tax rates across the board may be reduced.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)