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On the heels of the news of a 40k party we have this:
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2023/08/parliament-s-new-te-k-hui-m-uri-marker-cost-500-000.html
Funny on parenting – but true?
Locke coined the term ‘Sherpa parent’ after seeing a woman push two children standing on scooters up a hill while wearing both of their school bags on her back.
“I thought ‘She’s their Sherpa … she’s doing all the grunt work. They’re pretending that they’re getting up this hill on this scooter themselves but they’re not doing anything.”
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018902053/the-bonsai-child-is-modern-parenting-limiting-our-children-s-potential
How many parents, I wonder also, speak to their children about how difficult life can be, and encourage them to think how they can surmount problems? Children can be traumatised by being presented with a heap of problems, but simply being helped to know their strengths, their faults, will help them. They can then be more confident in their own abilities, and know how to understand others’ behaviour,which is a big help in being capable. Talking together about life might be something a parent and child never do.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA2308/S00068/government-acts-to-close-gender-pay-gap.htm
This seems like Labour washing and putting on clean tidy undies in case they are run over by a bus or something, and their faults will be revealed. But it’s too late. The clear-eyed children have noticed that in fact the noble personages have no clothes on at all!
And they (the poor people) turn away and look for a place to lay their heads. But they don’t belong to the middle class to whom all good things must flow and so they don’t count for anything. In the industrial revolution they weren’t even taught how to count or read and slept on hovels over streams from middens of poo and wee and were sent down mines at 8 years or up chimneys at age 6. Soon be back to the good old days. The middle class then of course knew themselves superior to the poor so didn’t feel sorry for the coarse, dumb sorts that (who) carried out their requirements, or starved or froze.
I have been reading Will Hutton – clued up and (was) hopeful of improvement in UK and politics.
https://www.hachette.com.au/will-hutton/the-world-were-in
Comment on ‘The World We’re In’ :
Written with typical passion and command of a battery of facts, Will Hutton’s The World We’re In is a fierce attack on the politics of Euroscepticism and US economic conservatism. Hutton has already established his credentials as one of the leading liberal economic thinkers on the British State with his bestselling The State We’re In. In The World We’re In he widens his focus to discuss the global economy and the fraught relations between the US and Europe in the aftermath of September 11. – Hutton argues that “if the rest of the world is not careful, our future will be to accept globalisation almost entirely on American conservative terms
It’s sobering – written in 2003 (ebook 2008). Trouble is – it’s not out of date.
I’ve been watching the new Sherlock Holmes on the small screen and his manic quest to expose the crim. Just thinking how slow we all are here in Newzild and with time running out before the election, we need to elect to do some spotting for ourselves. Can we start a regular hunt for the points that are going wrong in Newzild and make a game of hunting down the clues that will expose the whole case? We are doing it now but it needs to be exciting and interesting and become the rage so that even the dull-minded become aware of this exciting pursuit; one of minds rather than motorised ve-hicles.
Or should it be a sport or quiz. Who can be first in with the most right answers without sneaking a peek on the internet? Let’s have a seasoned populist educator set up something with its own ‘sticky’ title and see who can win (out of three entries?).
Has everyone listened to the UK faux political reports from last century on the disc ‘How to Win an Election or not Lose by Very Much’ which is our sort of show in a Nutshell – or am I wrong? If you can’t find it I think I can dig up links.
Further on the quizes – think how popular quiz nights are! Going round the motu would be good (not holding them in Maori though, that is aspirational to be included in our everyday language, look at what Wales did). It would be held on a different day/night than the other political discussion events. And would be good if there were prizes of vouchers to local businesses giving discounts of 10% or more. Have we any truly populace-type liberals (seems a loaded word with shadowy corners) that could fund simple meetings run effectively and enjoyably along with practical quizzes, with perhaps several rounds to find a winner?
Perhaps what we need is like European philanthropists who came here after WW2 and did well and set up trusts for various causes to advance society. I think we have become more acquisitive as the 20th century has ‘progressed’, with less ‘liberal’ wealthy.
Further – about political trusts, democracy foundations. Discussion on the Atlantic : https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/is-philanthrophy-compatible-democracy/531930/
and, interesting – thoughts about democracy from MInistry of Foreign Affairs of China (PRC) :
https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/202112/t20211205_10462535.html
What Large Foundations Are Doing to Strengthen Democracy
University of Pennsylvania
https://www.impact.upenn.edu › …
Since 2011, philanthropic organizations of all types have allocated some $5.7 billion in grants to strengthening U.S. democracy, according to the Foundation …
and, as with all human matters today, money will become dominant. So we need Sun Tzu ploys to keep control and stay on course according to a set of guidelines and a few rules to follow. We know about the danger of veering off the path from accidents at Rotorua’s hot pools. So we would keep that analogy in mind! The following paras are examples of what can happen. Money can oil all wheels say, so the smart lower-class to lower-middle class democrats need to be discerning; smart for humans not as in IT terms!
https://www.bostonreview.net/forum/foundations-philanthropy-democracy/
Judge Richard Posner, one of the foremost American jurists outside the Supreme Court, once observed, “A perpetual charitable foundation . . . is a completely irresponsible institution, answerable to nobody. It competes neither in capital markets nor in product markets . . . and, unlike a hereditary monarch whom such a foundation otherwise resembles, it is subject to no political controls either.” Why, he wondered, don’t we think of these foundations as “total scandals”?
If foundations are total scandals, then we have a massive problem on our hands. We are now living through the second golden age of American philanthropy. What Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller were to the early twentieth century, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are to the early twenty-first century…
…Perhaps. But whatever the personal virtues of wealthy philanthropists, Posner presents us with a forceful challenge to the role of foundations in a democracy. (Posner worries most about the perpetual charitable foundation, but the challenge is more general.) A democratic society is committed, at least in principle, to the equality of citizens. But foundations are, virtually by definition, the voice of plutocracy. The assets of a modern philanthropic foundation are set aside in a permanent, donor-directed, tax-advantaged private endowment and distributed for a public purpose. These considerable private assets give it considerable public power. And with growing wealth and income inequality, their apparent tension with democratic principles only intensifies…
But foundations have no electoral accountability. Don’t like what the Gates Foundation did with its $3.4 billion in 2011 grants ($9.3 million each day of the year), or what it has done with $25 billion in grants since its inception in 1994? Tough, there’s no way to vote out the Gateses. Referring to the Foundation’s considerable and influential education grants, critic Diane Ravitch has called Bill Gates the nation’s unelected school superintendent.
Alert – there is mention of China here, in a desire for informed understanding!
Deterioration of values and laws in our era enabled by the internet!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018902529/phd-thesis-sold-as-book-without-author-s-knowledge
As New Zealand’s wool prices reach some of the lowest levels in decades, one Tairāwhiti business is working to revive the strong wool industry.
A copyright expert says the rise of Artificial Intelligence means academics and authors are increasingly at risk of having their work taken without their knowledge and published.
Last month, Wellington PhD student, Hayden Scott Thorne, had his academic thesis about the US Supreme Court published as a paperback book, for sale on major book sites such as Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.
‘The Due Process Revolution’ was available for $33.99 plus shipping. But Dr Thorne had never authorised a book to be published, and after getting in touch with the companies involved, has had it removed from sale.
Last week, five books purportedly by American author Jane Friedman were pulled from Amazon after she complained they were falsely advertised as being written by her – she believes they were written by AI.
Susie speaks with Dr Hayden Thorne, and Sam Irvine, chief executive of Copyright Licensing New Zealand.
For more on wool see comment below – this is hard work you know! Trying to catch the good ideas plus the right links together. Sometimes one finds oneself s wool-gathering – off the wrong fence!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018902532/wisewool-helping-revive-the-strong-wool-industry
Wisewool is family-run, headed by Henry Hansen, who’s been in the wool industry for over 40 years, although he comes from a family with more than 120 years in the business.
Conscious of a growing despondency amongst strong wool farmers and a waning industry, Wisewool was formed during the Covid lockdowns.
(Covid it’s an ill wind that blows no good! But here’s a good wind flute – Koauau (Matai Flute) (Richard Nunns RIP 2021)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGZbRtNVneQ
Could this be first of a number of important businesses showing initiative in areas of our production and trading that gummint takes a striking interest in?
Should this be the first of government ‘s forming Private-Public Purchases with government having a 55% ownership in exchange for cheap finance (government drawn) that would assist in growth and the innovation, with an agreement to sell the great majority of remainder when wished to government, with owner’s family able to have say 15% residue so they could continue to work in business if they wished but govt aiming to own outright with no foreign or large corpse entering!
Auckland Harbour crossing talk with map from Waka Kotahi.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018902539/city-life-with-bill-mckay
We now know the shape of the Government’s plan for a second harbour crossing in Auckland: car and truck tunnels similar to the Waterview tunnel, with a separate tunneled light rail route to Belmont, Takapuna and up to Albany. Bill breaks down some of the practical issues arising from the plan.
Bill McKay is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Auckland.
Map of planned second harbour crossing for Auckland…
Which is the first part of a considered employee that the pickers check out first? Is it the size of the head and presumably brain – or is it further down depending on twerfdom? Money’s no object and a big structure gives good possibilities for tender price rise mid-stream when you press the client’s pulse in a tender spot! We in NZ/AO have Ozymandias syndrome but till we sharpen up the helpful planners and architects will help us construct along the lines of an aspirational mini 3rd? Reich.
Woo! Hoo! We have reached ‘Heard Immunity!’
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/government-ditches-all-remaining-covid-restrictions-as-case-hospitalisations-rise/OJWFQTIXY5HZHPPBAGD4EWC62A/
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/495778/security-of-west-coast-highway-a-grave-concern
Government systems are inadequate. By all means keep the private agencies but if citizens
decide something is immediately required but if TK – Transport Dept doesn’t get it done within whatever time frame is appropriate for the people and their businesses then a purpose-planned practical team should be available to be called on and paid out of Transport budget. We are expected to pay for a system that decides its own timetables and practice to suit its own targets – not ours.
FYI
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018902539/city-life-with-bill-mckay
We now know the shape of the Government’s plan for a second harbour crossing in Auckland: car and truck tunnels similar to the Waterview tunnel, with a separate tunneled light rail route to Belmont, Takapuna and up to Albany. Bill breaks down some of the practical issues arising from the plan.
Bill McKay is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Auckland.
Map of planned second harbour crossing for Auckland
Photo: Waka Kotahi
NZ shooting itself in the foot again.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/495790/wreckers-move-in-at-waiwera-thermal-pools-site
Some’furriners’ bought this up. IIRR Waiwera had been going for some time but required maintenance to keep it in good condition. The new owners let it run down and it was closed for a while and deteriorated further. Meanwhile the extended business that it brought to the area was going down too. Now it has been wrecked and possibly going to be all glammed up. If locals had it and not some Russians or something they would put pressure on the owner to keep it shining and suitable for everyday families – doesn’t need to be all chrome and high class. Local attractions need to be owned by a local trust, overseen by council. Work to be done by Council, or as a result of ratepayers insisting on improvements, or being leased to responsible local and only renewed every two years if kept in order!
How many of failed businesses/projects around NZ have overseas people started and/or mismanaged. We won’t even be shabby-chic soon!