Open mike 01/02/2010

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, February 1st, 2010 - 13 comments
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Topics of interest, announcements, general discussion. The usual rules apply (see the link to Policy in the banner).

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13 comments on “Open mike 01/02/2010 ”

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  1. Jenny 1
    1 February 2010 at 8:54 am

    In an interview with the Sunday Star Times Hone Harawira discusses the furore around his trip to Paris and his white Mo Fo comments:

    “But will the fuss cause me to go quiet? No. Will it stop me from challenging and attacking policies that hurt those who are vulnerable in our society? No.

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/3279689/No-holding-back-maverick-Maori-MP

    At the end of this interview is a quote from Tariana Turia, who admits that Hone Harawira has dragged the “more conservative” leadership of the Maori Party to the Left, and to what she calls the “middle”.

    This frank admission by Tariana, is a nod to Hone’s mana and leadership and confirms Hone as the left wing conscience inside the Maori Party leadership.

    I wish him all the best and hope that he can drag the Maori Party leadership over the “middle”.

    However, if he succeeds this will bode ill for the Labour Party’s narrow sectarian target of destroying the Maori Party in 2010.

    Tariana Turia:

    “He’s probably been one of those people to force those of us who are more conservative to take a different line. He’s brought a lot of us to the middle. People like him, and I think… he will continue to challenge us and keeps us more focused.”

    • mickysavage 1.1
      1 February 2010 at 10:12 am

      “if he succeeds this will bode ill for the Labour Party’s narrow sectarian target of destroying the Maori Party in 2010

      It is very rare for any significant party to agree not to stand candidates against the other parties. Labour has always stood candidates in every election as far as I can recall. The closest they have ever got to an accommodation was in Coromandel in 1999 where tacit support for Jeanette Fitzsimons was given. Labour’s candidate Max Purnell was still on the voting form.

      Of course they are going to stand against the Maori Party. Turia and Sharples have given support to a bunch of ideologues who are against everything that Labour stands for. Super city, every environmental policy change, even the minimum wage level.

      And why should Labour not contest these seats?

  2. prism 2
    1 February 2010 at 10:24 am

    Monday 1/2 This am on Nat Radio there were useful discussions on the new school testing regime and its value and effects.

    Speaking to a teacher I know about it – she says that her school already uses good assessment systems like AsTLe (Assessment tools for Teaching and Learning) and PAT (Progressive Achievement Tests). The AsTLe test is one the children do on computers and gives them direct feedback and indicates where they are performing poorly. So at a considerable saving of the $26m all schools could have been updated to this.

    This teacher says that a big problem is providing the social backup for needy children, it is this and families struggling in their lives that is the biggest barrier to improving NZ children’s learning and success.

    Apparently the problem with some of the reporting to parents is that it is in jargon such as deciles, percentiles etc which isn’t useful plain English to us all. The problem then is that individual schools are using inappropriate reporting and that is a result of government not requiring schools to use approved reporting systems.

    The change from Dept of Education management to giving too much autonomy to localised school boards under Tomorrows Schools has then brought about this more costly delayed response by government to set reasonable national requirements on reporting.

    This is a link to a relevant piece on educational standards in NZ Herald 1 April 2007 –
    education test
    Quotes from it – Cathy Wylie, a chief researcher with the Council for Education Research, said…
    “The main problem was resources, she said. “You can have standards but if you don’t have the means and the capacity in the schools to work with kids to improve their learning then the standards don’t mean anything.”
    Lyn Avery, principal of Glen Taylor School in Glen Innes, says her students were doing extremely well after two years using the AsTLe system of assessment.
    Before 2004, the decile one school was criticised by the ERO for low student achievement. But in 2005, after introducing AsTLe, all students learned more in a year than they previously had in two.
    “The kids really do engage really strongly with the information that the assessments give them. What we’ve noticed is it particularly engages Maori children… It gives them a greater sense of responsibility: ‘these are my results, I need to start work on this’.”

  3. jaymam 3
    1 February 2010 at 12:20 pm

    It has been noted on Kiwiblog and Whaleoil’s blog that The Standard has given up talking about Anthropogenic Global Warming. After the IPCC “we only use peer-reviewed science” has been shown to use Greenpeace and WWF as their sources, and Pachauri has just launched his latest work of fiction – a softcore novel about the sexual adventures of a climate expert in his late 60s, and Osama bin Laden believes in AGW, do you agree at last that AGW is crap?

    • NickS 3.1
      1 February 2010 at 12:28 pm

      /facepalm

      Except of course lprent and others have already dealt with the glacier stuff in the comments when it’s popped up. But hey, evidently arguments from ignorance, in the form of a lack of posts on climate change = the authors of the Standard changing their minds on climate change must be true, right?

      /sigh

      Hmmmn, eh, if asked, I can break from my current Mass Effect 2 binge and collate and write up a summary post on this, since there’s a lot of stupidity from denialists about this particular subject. Not that I’d expect any rational commentary from the likes of the above.

      • Pascal's bookie 3.1.1
        1 February 2010 at 12:36 pm

        Nick, if you believe in AGW the terrorists win.

        You can’t actually argue with logic like that, (but it doesn’t stop them trying).

    • lprent 3.2
      1 February 2010 at 12:39 pm

      Bullshit on all accounts… When are you (expletive deleted) ever going to learn to get a sense of perspective.

      I’ve been working on things to support the forthcoming site upgrade. So I’ve been writing and releasing posts that don’t consume too much of my precious time.

      There are currently 3 partially written posts sitting in my writing queue about climate change issues. One of which is on the topic of the CCDs and CCSs obsession with trivia – the very topics you’re referring to.

      The WWF references were in non-substantive parts of the report. They had nothing to do with the modelling. Consequently they are a not significant errors. The same with all of the ‘climategate’ ‘revelations’. While they’re good for slogans for the scientifically inept to play with, they just don’t factor in anything significant at a policy level. They, like you, are unimportant errors.

      Quite simply, all reports have errors and mistakes. The bigger they are, the more they have. The glacier stuff just points to a need to have better reviewing of AR5. That is its only significance.

      If you want a debate, then at least bring something substantive to the table. I really don’t have time for idiotic trivia.

      Which is of course why I don’t have time to read either the Sewer comments or the ravings on bloated one’s site

      Besides I usually only write posts on climate change a few times a month. My last one was middle of Jan. Try looking in http://www.thestandard.org.nz/author/admin

      The other authors are still getting into their stride after the break, and anyway they write more on the political aspects than the science.

      • Tigger 3.2.1
        1 February 2010 at 3:45 pm

        I knew the The Standard’s writing was avidly followed by the right but wow, they really need it as something to push against. They’re looking here for discourse…and for the ‘agenda’ – the site has truly succeeded in cementing itself as a leader and continues to succeed as a co-op blog.

      • jaymam 3.2.2
        1 February 2010 at 6:54 pm

        I did do a search of The Standard by clicking on the “Climate Change” tag on the right, and the only articles it came up with were dated last year.
        I see that your post of 16 January does have a “Climate Change” tag on it, but the search did not find it. What is going wrong?

        As I’ve said before I am not on “the right”, but am a hard working Labour member. I have been checking raw temperature data from NIWA and GISS for a couple of months and I see many sites that have at most a tenth of a degree rise per decade that has been happening steadily for a century or more. Nothing catastrophic.

  4. prism 4
    1 February 2010 at 6:54 pm

    It often seems to me that the right defend their side as if braying for some sports team. Or perhaps its closer to physical fun rather than mental effort and blogs are like a fairground sideshow where they go to take aim at somebody and knock them off their perch.

  5. NickS 5
    1 February 2010 at 8:54 pm

    So, did anyone else catch the end of Close Up tonight and see they’re going to have some on claiming vaccines caused their child’s autism?

    Because dear mind eating elder things, the stupid, it burns.

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