How to fry a kid’s brains around the campfire

Wanna know what happened to the lunatics when we closed the asylums?

Alf has long harboured the suspicion that many of them infiltrated the country’s education system and became teachers.

His suspicion has been strongly fortified by news that staff at Remarkables Primary School are set to adopt some remarkable job titles when it opens next year.

Teachers will be known as “expedition leaders”, while the school receptionist will become the “director of first impressions”.

Alf wonders if the school has tumbled to the dangers of creating a bad first impression by hiring an ugly receptionist.

Sharples’ recipe for a half-baked degree

In his controversial Orewa speech a few years back, Don Brash argued that the Treaty process was out of control, that race-based political correctness is infecting the institutions of our society, and that we are headed towards a racially divided nation, with two sets of laws and two standards of citizenship.

He contended there could be no basis for government funding based on race, no basis for separate Maori electorates, no basis for introducing Maori wards in local authority elections, and no obligation for local government to consult Maori in preference to other New Zealanders.

Strong stuff.

There was huge support for Brash’s boldly expressed opinions. There was widespread denunciation of him as a racist, too.

On balance, New Zealanders have opted to avoid being branded racists. We turn a blind eye to the gradual evolution of two sets of laws and two standards of citizenship, if we don’t actively encourage it.

Hence Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples has been encouraged to call for universities to consider open entry for some students.

Yep. Maori students.

Pointers to a bleak but not black Budget

Those who like sniffing out clues to what will be in the Budget would have learned nothing significant from The Boss yesterday, when he talked to Business New Zealand in Wellington.

Essentially, he destroyed any illusions about it being a generous budget that might have survived the release of the crown accounts for the nine months to March.

The accounts showed there ain’t much scope for extra spending without borrowing, and John Key and Bill English are reluctant borrowers.

On the other hand, Key (the previous day) was trying to disabuse us of the idea it will be black budget.

“I wouldn’t describe it as black, in fact we are spending a lot of extra money on health and education, but beyond that there is not a lot more to go around,” said Key.

Finance Minister Bill English said he would be scaling back some of the spending promises made by Labour, but there would still be increases.

Nothing here to make up for those bloody fuel taxes

Alf has been eagerly awaiting news from the Beehive to help mollify his Eketahuna North constituents, who remain riled about being stung with higher fuel taxes to make life easier for Aucklanders on the transport front.

No salve was dispensed today.

That’s not to say the Beehive has buggered off to the West Coast for a get-together, as Labour MPs did – to a region that should have been as scarlet red as The People’s Flag, but which fell to the Nats at the last election.

National’s Ministers are beavering away and earning their keep.