Archives
The Need for Strategic Voting by Dr Michael Bassett
Tuesday, October 28 2008
With eleven days to go until the election, and the race tightening, it’s time to look at the potential coalition partners for the two main camps contending for office. Our mad MMP system is forcing a lot of people to contemplate strategic voting. Voters not only get two votes at the ballot box; it is possible, by strategic voting, for individuals in some electorates to assist with the election of extra MPs as well. For instance, if Jim Anderton holds…
Education a Disaster Under Labour
Tuesday, October 28 2008
Despite the economic crises the issue that anyone with children should be most concerned about in the current election is Education. As background to my comments I have taught for 18 years, including six as a Principal, have an Economics degree and Masters degree in Education. I have 3 children aged 17 to 13. I have not yet belonged to a political party and have changed my vote over the years to support the party that best appears to understand…
Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights? By Orson Scott Card
Friday, October 24 2008
An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America: I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know. This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration. It was a direct result of the political decision, back…
Pedagogue’s prejudices
Wednesday, October 22 2008
AT one of Sydney’s best private girls schools, Year 8 geography students opened their term three materials on changing global relationships to read the following definition: “Globalisation is what happens when you lose your job in Brunswick, Bankstown or Elizabeth because the company for which you work has been bought out by the Australian subsidiary of a Dallas-based transnational company that has decided to relocate its production of T-shirts to Mexico because of cheaper wage costs and lower health and…
The United States, Europe and Bretton Woods II
Wednesday, October 22 2008
By George Friedman and Peter Zeihan French President Nicolas Sarkozy and U.S. President George W. Bush met Oct. 18 to discuss the possibility of a global financial summit. The meeting ended with an American offer to host a global summit in December modeled on the 1944 Bretton Woods system that founded the modern economic system. The Bretton Woods framework is one of the more misunderstood developments in human history. The conventional wisdom is that Bretton Woods crafted the modern international…
A Capitalist Manifesto
Tuesday, October 14 2008
Markets remain our best hope for a better future. By JUDY SHELTON "Le laisser-faire, c'est fini." It was French president Nicolas Sarkozy who actually uttered the words, but you could draw the same message from watching the televised debates in the United States at both the vice-presidential and presidential level. You know that America's founding economic philosophy is in deep trouble when candidates for our nation's highest office refer easily to "Wall Street greed" and "predatory lenders" to explain the…
REVIEWS
BOOKS with Doris Mousdale
Valvona and Crolla A Year at an Italian Table
From Distant Villages - The Lives and Times of Croatian Settlers in New Zealand 1858-1958
Big Star — the new New Zealand website for children's reading and books.
www.bigstar.co.nz