Wednesday, June 22, 2011
The big clean out
So, how's that closing the gap with Australia going?
Well, a record 3300 (net) Kiwis left New Zealand for its warmer, wealthier pastures in May alone.
This compares (unfavourably) with a net loss of 'just' 1700 last May.
That Nice Mr Key is lucky the media is framing this largely as a "people abandoning Christchurch due to the constant bloody earthquakes" issue, rather than as a "the New Zealand economy is poked, and getting worse" issue.
However, the Christchurch angle doesn't bear too much scrutiny: only 800 international departees listed that as their prior permanent abode. That's only 300 more than left Christchurch in May 2010.
Put it another way: even if all 800 Christchurch residents leaving New Zealand went to Australia (and they didn't ... that figure includes all emigrants), it would account for only half the net increase in loss to Australia between May 2010 and May 2011!
In addition, we could estimate that the 800 figure is only 18.8% of the 4257 gross departures from New Zealand to Australia (945 people moved permanently in the opposite direction).
Given that not all 800 would have left for Australia, this means that more than 83% of New Zealanders heading permanently in that direction were from non-earthquake-afflicted areas.
That's the line the media should go with.
Or, it could lead with part of this quote from Prof Paul Spoonley, which seems on the money:
"Once these people have found a job and are settled in Australia, then the short answer is that they are unlikely to be coming back," he said.
"We are losing people who are in their prime working age and very often, they take their family and children along with them.
"So effectively, New Zealand is losing two generations of Kiwis at least."
Labels: australia, john key is a morally bankrupt wanker, migration, new zealanders
Saturday, September 18, 2010
An idiot's guide to exterminating state education in ten simple steps
An idiot's guide to exterminating state education in ten simple steps:
1) Give the Minister of Education portfolio to your least intelligent MP – a woman known around the capital as ‘Chocolate teapot’ Tolley. Ensure that she has no experience of educational practice, pedagogical theory, or knowledge of the sector.
2) Tell the state education sector that there is no money in the budget, then give $36m to wealthy private schools.
3) Ignore the genuine crisis within state education and manufacture a whole new one around achievement, so that voters are distracted and misinformed, and dogmatic changes can be pushed through without the support of teachers, boards of trustees, school managers, academics or anyone else who actually understands education.
4) Enforce changes to the sector based on populist, vote-winning slogans and initiatives that have failed internationally, are not backed by peer-reviewed research and therefore not supported by the sector.
5) Wage war on the sector by taking an arrogant approach to pushing through these changes against all the best advice of those with the most experience and knowledge.
6) Undermine the work teachers do by entering negotiations in bad faith; removing hard-won advances in conditions and terms of employment and proposing an effective pay cut for teachers.
7) Ensure that while conditions deteriorate and pay is reduced, workloads increase and class-sizes grow.
8) Ignore concerns about recruitment and retention.
9) Ignore agencies working within the international marketplace who are actively recruiting New Zealand teachers every day.
10) Continue to repeat simplistic soundbites and one-line rhetoric in attacking teachers as greedy, mischievous and unprofessional, instead of working with the sector to address genuine concerns and negotiate an acceptable solution.
If you are as concerned about the decline of state education in New Zealand as I am, please copy and paste this, publish it, hand it out, stick it up etc etc etc.
Cheers,
Neil Watts
1) Give the Minister of Education portfolio to your least intelligent MP – a woman known around the capital as ‘Chocolate teapot’ Tolley. Ensure that she has no experience of educational practice, pedagogical theory, or knowledge of the sector.
2) Tell the state education sector that there is no money in the budget, then give $36m to wealthy private schools.
3) Ignore the genuine crisis within state education and manufacture a whole new one around achievement, so that voters are distracted and misinformed, and dogmatic changes can be pushed through without the support of teachers, boards of trustees, school managers, academics or anyone else who actually understands education.
4) Enforce changes to the sector based on populist, vote-winning slogans and initiatives that have failed internationally, are not backed by peer-reviewed research and therefore not supported by the sector.
5) Wage war on the sector by taking an arrogant approach to pushing through these changes against all the best advice of those with the most experience and knowledge.
6) Undermine the work teachers do by entering negotiations in bad faith; removing hard-won advances in conditions and terms of employment and proposing an effective pay cut for teachers.
7) Ensure that while conditions deteriorate and pay is reduced, workloads increase and class-sizes grow.
8) Ignore concerns about recruitment and retention.
9) Ignore agencies working within the international marketplace who are actively recruiting New Zealand teachers every day.
10) Continue to repeat simplistic soundbites and one-line rhetoric in attacking teachers as greedy, mischievous and unprofessional, instead of working with the sector to address genuine concerns and negotiate an acceptable solution.
If you are as concerned about the decline of state education in New Zealand as I am, please copy and paste this, publish it, hand it out, stick it up etc etc etc.
Cheers,
Neil Watts
Labels: ann tolley is a total fuckwit, john key is a morally bankrupt wanker
