| Friday, June 01, 2012 6:30 PM

Teachers

The teachers are furious about the changes to class funding. In the end they will probably strike.

I fear that the teachers are against anything this government does. Not all teachers of course, but the fact is, the teacher unions are supporters of the Labour Party.

This class size outrage is just the lever they needed to vent their spleen about other matters they don't like. National standards and performance pay come to mind.

The crux of the argument though is that schools will be funded to the tune of one teacher for every 27.5 students. There doesn't appear to be anything unreasonable about that. Let me repeat that. The schools are FUNDED for one teacher to every 27.5 students.

The $60 million towards improving teacher quality seems like a good idea too.

Now sure, there may be some valid arguments put forward by teachers but remember the teacher unions are never happy.

Not under a National government anyway.

 

Superannuation

The Government is coming under pressure on the age of entitlement for superannuation.

Their opponents want to raise the age of entitlement to 67.

Oh, well sort of.

Labour wants to reduce it to 60 for manual workers - their constituents of course.

The Maori Party wants Maori to be able to pick the pension up at 60 - their constituents of course.

Therein lies the problem.

These nitwit politicians won't be able to get it right because politics comes first, not economics.

In that, they have an ally in this government who don't see the future cost on superannuation as a problem at all. Not right now anyway.

None of them will do what is right for the country. And I don't mean just raising the age of entitlement. That won't cut it.

 

Shane Jones 

The Auditor-General has appointed a QC to look into the Jones/Yan case.

David Shearer asked the AG to investigate around the "process" of Jones approving citizenship. He got more than he bargained for because the QC will look at any other matters that may be of interest.

There are actually a lot of matters of interest and you'd expect the QC to delve into all of them.

The fact that a High Court judge ruled the way the Chinese millionaire Yan was granted citizenship was "highly suspicious" won't bring much comfort to those being investigated.

 

Asset Sales 

The Green Party is spending $50,000 paying people to collect signatures for a citizens-initiated referendum on asset sales.

The equivalent of 10 fulltime staff have been hired for the next six to eight weeks in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.

Are the Green Party supporters really that stupid?

This is taxpayers’ money for a referendum that is not binding and therefore totally pointless.

Talk about a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Besides, we had a citizen referendum, it was called an election and we have just had it.

Pike River 

The families of the Pike River miners have more or less abandoned hope of recovering the remains of the 29 victims.

Experts told them that there was only a five percent chance. This confirmed what Solid Energy had told the families a few weeks ago.

At that time there were claims that they had been lied to and been betrayed. I can understand the reaction. The families were living in hope. They just wanted their loved ones back.

I could never understand the political reaction though where MPs Kevin Hague and Damien O'Connor lumped the blame onto the Government.

That was pretty low.

  

NZIER

If the NZIER are correct, we are in for a long period of snail-like growth.

They are predicting virtually no uptake in the economy for the next seven years. Their words - the outlook is for a biblical-like "seven years of famine".

They point to the country's high level of indebtedness, plus the number of emigrants to Australia and other countries.

The forecast is for 1.5 percent GDP next year and rising to 2.5 percent through next year.

Now that is seriously at odd with the budget forecasts that were relying on 3 percent average GDP to get back into surplus.

The problem with all these numbers is that a lot of voters wouldn't know a surplus from a deficit if they fell over it, let alone what it means for the country.