Affirmative Action Creates Victims

I’m sure that no regular reader of my blog needs reminded that people should be treated on merit and ability, not race. But it seems that some have not yet caught onto this idea. The results can be very ugly. The National Review covers a case where a young man was admitted to a university…

US Doctors rejecting Bureaucracy

Back when I started work, I learned a valuable lesson from my boss. My boss ran his department lean. He focused on the key deliverables, had minimal management, and kept a tight eye on costs. From that I learned one thing: if you keep your overhead costs low, you’ve already won much of the battle.…

TED Talks – How to green the world’s deserts and reverse climate change

I was listening to some podcasts a few weeks back, and I heard this guy speak. I’ve now watched the video and I have to say, in terms of political issues of the day, this has got to be one of the most important talks ever given. I say this for 3 reasons. 1) There…

Getting rid of the public education system should be the goal of every politician

I find this just weird, myself. The Green Party reshuffled its portfolios today and co-leader Metiria Turei is now in charge of speaking on education for the party. She came out swinging saying the Government was undermining the public school system through national standards, Novopay, the Christchurch schools announcement and charter schools. Charter schools were…

How not to help your cause

There are a variety of ways of responding to a massacre of innocent people. This probably ranks up there in the top 10 worst ideas. The Journal News story includes comments from both sides of the gun-rights debate and presents the data as answering concerns of those who would like to know whether there are guns in their neighborhood.…

Free Speach… well, when it doesn’t matter.

Idiot is all up in arms about free speech in the UK – and rightly so. As can be expected, this has led to a large number of abusive prosecutions. People have been threatened with prosecution or actually arrested, charged and tried for calling Scientology a cult (an obvious statement of truth), barking back at a dog, standing…

Charter School – results matter, the crown doesn’t

Charter schools seem to be some sort of weird obsession with the left. Witness the latest attempt. Before the announcement was made, the Education Ministry’s documents warned the overall potential for a negative impact on students’ education from teachers who did not meet the minimum standards for the profession was high. “Teacher registration is one…

The best teachers are the best teachers

Oh, this is funny. The government has announced the framework for its new charter – sorry, “partnership” – schools. The core details? No requirement to teach the national curriculum No requirement to hire trained staff No requirement to pay those staff the negotiated collective rate The upshot: deunionised schools, Sounds good. employing poorly-paid, Or rather, paid…

Set nets

I was curious to read this on Idiot’s blog. Maui’s dolphin is the world’s most endangered dolphin species, with only 55 existing in the world. The biggest threat to their survival is fishermen, who have killed five of them in the past decade. But despite the loss of 10% of this critically endangered population, the government…

Student Allowances

I was browing around with a vauge feeling that there was something I was going to blog on tonight. Then I remembered – this. Student allowances will be limited to four years of study and automatic loan repayments will be bumped up to 12 per cent of income, the Government has announced. In a pre-Budget…