It has been a long, long, long, long, long, long time since I last put my fingers to the keyboard and transfered my thoughts to the interweb.

There are some reasons for this lack of electronic wordplay.

I think perhaps the fact I had wanted to be less ‘complainy’ contributed. There’s always lots to moan about… especially with the constant changes at facebook creating a listless beast of great annoyance. Plus the birth of my son a 16 months ago has meant nothing much other than him has happened since.

This weekend we have had an election. There has been no real change in the government, more a rearrangement of the numbers with National almost taking an outright lead. They will now continue with more of what they’ve been doing.

On the Tuesday before the election TV3 featured a documentary on child poverty in New Zealand. It was astounding. And not in a good way. What disturbed me most about this was the fact that afterwards people alleged it was a party political broadcast for the Labour Party or left wing of the political divide. People turned it into a political debate and ignored the fact that children – people who have very little control over their environment and circumstances – were suffering from preventable diseases. This shouldn’t be happening in New Zealand.

Being a relief teacher, I’m in contact with a lot of these kids week by week and it saddens me. It saddens me that people fail to put their politics aside in this circumstance. If we made sure that every child in New Zealand had what they needed to feel safe, well fed, well educated and set up for the future then I think everything else (crime, housing, jobs, abuse and so on) would fall into place. Eventually. Over time.

However, the problem with long term planning is that it doesn’t really work if you have to impress voters every three years.

National, Labour, ACT, the Greens, New Zealand First, United Future, the Maori Party and Mana must begin working together to solve these problems, otherwise New Zealand will continue coming last in the OECD for everything.

Hope twenty ten is treating you well.

I think I spent too much time complaining last year and not enough time celebrating, or being positive. It’s all going to change!

That’s right. This year I’m going to ignore those things that annoy the hell out of me – like greedy banks or drivers who seem incapable of passing a licence test despite the fact they’ve been on the road for years. Those types can kiss my taut buttocks.

This year I’m celebrating. There’s a lot to be positive about. American Idol season 9 has just started in New Zealand (we are a few weeks behind you guys in the US so no spoilers please!!). My wife has just entered her second trimester and as of tomorrow it is just 6 months until our wee bairn (newborn child) is due. It’s all looking good for me.

Anyway, have a look at the pictures below. Both are of Henry VIII. One is the real Henry while the other is a dramatised Henry from the television show the Tudors. Can you pick which one is which?

Please log your votes in the poll below…

View This Poll

See you later!

Boon x

It would be remiss of me not to do what everyone else in the world is doing over the course of this week so here goes…

A lot of people must be looking back at 2009 and thinking, like I am, where the hell did that go. This year seems to have flown by much quicker than usual. Or is it the fact that I’m getting old? Does time pass quicker the older you get? If I think back to my childhood the years seemed to go on forever, weeks and months melding into each other like one long hot summer. Anyway, that’s enough of the Stand by Me crap. On with what I was going to say.

It’s good to see that the capitalists of this world still think the sun shines out of their arses despite the complete and abject failure of their way of doing things.

Oooo, ooo, Mr. Obama… Mr. Obama… I’ve got a good idea!! Me, me! Look I know that in the last couple of years that things haven’t been going quite right. In fact, technically speaking, when you crunch the numbers, they’ve been going quite wrong by quite a lot – mainly because I’ve been trying to make ridiculous amounts of money by effectively gambling on things I didn’t really understand but pretended I did.. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that if you give me MORE money, and when I say give I mean lend, if you lend me more money I can do some more guessing and gambling and I can make it all better. And once it’s all better, then I can pay you back. Good ay?

6 months later….

Oh, yeah, hi Mr. Obama… look I know that we made some number of billions profit this year despite having to ask you for some readies to tide us over but we really can’t afford to pay you back just yet. But I am good for it, I really am. It’s just that we need that money to do a bit more guessing and gambling. See, we’ve made $60 billion in the last six months, but if you let us keep going with the loan, if we can keep doing what we are doing – and remember we are the experts in the field, we know what we are doing – if we can keep going then that $60 billion could turn into $63 billion or maybe even $65 billion. That would be like an extra $5 billion that you didn’t have before man. Where did it come from? Well… um… I don’t really know. I just checked the balance at the end of the day and it had gone up a bit. No, it’s not like actual money you can hold in your hand, like a $2 note or anything. No no, this is an on-line bank balance. Well, yes, I suppose it could go back down just like it’s been going up, but I doubt that very much. After all, we play the markets like this all the time so we have experience and know how that allow us to be extremely confident in ourselves and what we are doing. No, I don’t have any qualifications other than a diploma I got from a technical college in Halifax. No, that diploma isn’t in finance – it’s in something called book labelling… it’s like book-keeping but instead of accounting for the ebb and flow of cash through the books, I’m am qualified for making sure all the books are correctly named. How did I get into the finance industry? I knew a guy in college who told me I was quite good on computers and adding up and he suggested I become a day trader. The rest is history.

Of course, that’s not to say that ALL of those people still involved in the financial institution that nearly bought the world to its knees (but thanks to some quick cash from those people who actually pay taxes, they can continue on their merry way) have no idea what they are doing. Indeed, I’m sure that most people who take huge daily risks with money that doesn’t belong to them in situations they can barely understand, know completely what they are doing.

I am being incredibly sarcastic here. I doubt whether anyone on Wall Street really fully understands anything about the institution they’ve created. All they really care about is making money – and lots of it. And before you go all funny and start suggesting I’m a communist, or, God forbid, ‘against us’, think of it this way… where does the money come from? If I’ve clicked my mouse to complete a trade, then later that day I sell making money, the only thing changing is a number on a computer screen. Where is the cold, hard cash – the tangible thing that I can hold in my hand that shows I’ve actually done something useful.

If I go out to a market and buy a carrot for 9 cents and later that day sell it for 10 cents, I’ve made a penny. I also have a 10 cent piece in my hand that I can show people and say – look at me, I’m worth 10 cents. Yesterday I was worth only 9.

The thing that really sticks in my mind from this year is the amount of profit these US companies made in the months following their bailout by Obama. For example, AIG made $1.82 billion in the second quarter of 09. This after getting nearly $200 billion in loans. I suppose, technically speaking, these loans have to be paid back by AIG, but all they’re doing is shuffling things around and selling them off to do this. They’re not really changing the root cause of all the financial market malarkey that has occurred in the last couple of years (oh, and in the late 90s, and in the late 80s, and in the 1970s, and so on and so on and so on).

People are driven by wanting to make as much money as they possibly can with little regard to whose money it is that’s actually helping them do this. When human nature is involved, you can’t have a totally unregulated situation in the marketplace, no matter how many times they tell you to let the market provide. Look what it provided last year (oh, and in the late 90s, and in the late 80s, and in the 1970s, and so on and so on and so on) – complete meltdown because those in charge of the money-go-round all got off at the same time. Dicks.

Oh well… I’m sure they’ll do better next time (I’m picking it to be around 2018).

Happy new year!!

Boon x

My mind and my energies have been elsewhere.

Friday October 23rd, 2009

After being on hormones to bring a halt to her cycle Mrs. Boon and I head for a wee scan up at the clinic. They need to see if the correct things are happening in her ovaries to warrant taking what’s called the ‘trigger injection’. Before you ask, this is not as violent as it sounds. The trigger injection is taken to release the eggs.

Ultrasound of Follicles

If we go back a step, what the hormones do is to stop the natural cycle of the body. Once the IVF people have control it is that time they need to tell the body to release the eggs. Once the eggs are released into the ovary follicles the harvesting can take place. Phew! It all sounds very pagan.

So, when you head into the clinic to have your follicles checked, you end up getting a picture like the one here. Inside the folicle there might be an egg hiding…

At that Friday appointment we were told that things were going along nicely and that the trigger injection would be needed shortly. It’s a very fluid situation based on hormones being at appropriate levels – not too high, not too low. Results of the morning blood test came back and another scan and blood test would be needed the next day.

Saturday October 24, 2009

The blood test and ultrasound confirmed that it was time to pull the trigger. Technically, I suppose, an injection involved some kind of pushing motion. Anyway, it was to be done in preparation for the harvesting ceremony to be held on Monday – quite ironically this was Labour Day here in New Zealand.

Human Egg Cell

Monday October 26, 2009

So the harvesting went well with six of the little ‘half-bubbies’ (as the wife called them) found and put into tubes. As an aside – did you know that the human egg is the biggest cell in our bodies. See, look, it’s huge!

After that it was my turn to deliver. A sample was duly produced and washed in the lab so the testicular Michael Phelps’s were separated from the silver and bronze winners.

Then our DNA was mixed together in a sterile environment and voila!

The Moment of Truth

Tuesday October 27, 2009

Emily the scientist reported back from the lab. We had one definite, two maybes and the rest were unclear as to whether they had fertilised or not. This bit is quite hard. On the one hand you could have one egg removed, totally fertilised and put back in. On the other you might have 16 eggs removed and none of them fertilise so you have no mini-bubs to put back in. Which is harder? I do not know.

Thursday October 29, 2009

D-day… well not really, it’s E-day. Mrs. Boon gets our little one put back inside and the more natural part of the process begins as miniBoon affixes to the endometrium and begins to grow into a baby. It’s a great little process. The small one is placed in a looooong needle in a bit of solution, bookended by 2 pockets of air. You sit there and watch the ultrasound screen, the needle goes in and pretty soon you see a flash of light as the embryo is deposited. It’s the air bubbles doing it but it looks like a flash of light you see when there’s a star being formed at the edge of a space cloud. It’s all very beautiful. In about 10 minutes it’s all over and you’re sent on your way.

And now we wait. November the 10th is the day we find out whether we are having a baby through a simple blood test.

Mrs. Boon Couldn't Wait

Sunday November 8, 2009

After doing a wee test on Saturday (and failing), we were both convinced it was all over. That was that – no baby for us, not this time anyway. Well, after going online to her discussion forums my wife discovered that the test she had bought from the chemist may have been about as useful as a Republican at an anti-chastity meeting. So out she went and purchased a different, more robust test.

That was during my school fair day. I got a text asking when I’d be home. I thought that was a bit strange, but thought nothing more of it until I walked up the stairs of our house to see the wife with a goofy yet triumphant grin on her face. She told me she was pregnant then she showed me the wee test she had done. Very cool. That was the first time in my life that I thought, “Wow, I’m going to be a dad!”

After all the dramas of the previous 2-3 years, or however long it’s been, neither of us could believe what the stick of joy was telling us… I suppose you set yourself up to deal with failure so often that when something positive happens your brain can’t process it!

Tuesday November 10, 2009

miniBoon - 7 cells

Today the blood test confirmed the wee test above. More amazement, goofy smiles and whooping for joy. I’m sure this caused some consternation to the people walking past our car in the supermarket car park where we were situated.

If you’re interested, just before our little one was replanted, a quick picture was taken. 7 cells of magic. Thank you scientists, doctors and nurses who made our baby happen.

Suddenly, after all these years of trying, it’s happening! It’s quite surreal really. You go through so long of thinking it ain’t gonna happen and then it’s all go.

Wow.

Thursday December 3, 2009

Today was the day of our 7-week scan. Today was the day we saw our baby’s heartbeat for the first time. Today was one of the greatest days of my life.

We both looked up on the ultrasound screen and there, in the centre, a embryological lighthouse shining through the fog of infertility was our baby. Our tiny baby, no bigger than a thumbnail, heart racing at 180 bpm.

Double wow (wowow).

Wednesday December 16, 2009

Our miniBoon is now 9 weeks old. We are out of the IVF system and in with the ‘normals’ hunting for a midwife and wondering what the hell to do next. Thankfully all our friends who’ve had babies over the last few years know what to expect and will be tapped handsomely for their information.

IVF is the single most harrowing thing I have been through. So many ups and downs, but the ultimate up when it comes is so sweet. To all others out there reading this and perhaps going through the same situation I wish you well in your endeavours. You will try to be positive throughout but that may not work sometimes, so do embrace the grumpy bums when they come, because you sometimes need to yell and scream and curse to get it out.

Kind regards and best of Christmas wishes to you all.

Boon x x x

Having read the above you must be thinking, “How very benevolent indeed. Imagine thinking of the worker in this scenario.”

The point I have to make at this juncture is – Bollocks.

To understand by point let us why the report exists in the first place… About a year ago in little old New Zealand there was an election. This election was won by the National Party after they created coalition agreements with ACT and the Maori Party. Traditionally National are a right / centre right party – this means they are like the Republicans in the US – except for the extreme nonsensical gibberish about Money, Jesus and 9/11.

In terms of coalition partners, ACT are slightly more right of National and therefore obvious drinking partners. ACT stands for the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers. Ironically enough, the leaders of this party probably don’t pay any tax thanks to creative accounting. I’m not implying they are breaking the law, I’m implying that they are creative with their accounting. Things like trust funds for family homes, cars and putting things in the wife’s name. This creativity means a reduction in taxation imposed upon them by the Inland Revenue people. As part of their coalition deal with National, ACT demanded a review of things led by Dr. Don Brash, a former head of the National Party himself and a notable proponent of the low tax, low spend government that ACT so lovingly puts forward.

New Zealand has had a long history of low productivity compared to Australia. Over the years our wage gap has remained for years and this sees many New Zealanders eyeing up the sandy Ozzy shores to make a new live. And being just 3 hours away on the plane it’s very easy to return to see the family now and again. In recent years escaping the financial talons of a student loan has also been a great motivator.

Having done some backgrounding of the issue we can now move on to Dr. Brash’s report recommendations. If you can remember back to the 80s when hair was big and shoulder pads even bigger, many policies adopted by governments around the world were very much focused on cutting government spending in a variety of ways including rationalisation of health, education and welfare spending, selling off of state assets to the private sector and lowering personal income tax while lifting the level of consumption tax. Dr. Brash’s report brings us back to those heady days. He called for, among other things, cuts in government spending, cuts in income tax, lifting consumption tax, selling of assets, and cuts to the minimum wage – the argument being that the private sector is able to offer far more efficiencies to the taxpayer than the government-run organisations, and over time these changes will increase productivity and close the wage gap between New Zealand and Australia.

Again, I make my point – Bollocks.

I’m not an economist or a statistician. I don’t pretend to know everything there is to know about GDP or tax law. I am not a world leader in the sale of assets. I am, however, a wage/salary earner. If you want to increase my productivity, if you want to make me more efficient than I have ever been, then you reward me for my efforts. This seems, on the face of it, a very, very, extremely, very simple solution.

The minimum hourly wage in Australia is $A14.31 ($NZ18.32), whereas here in New Zealand it is a mere $12.50 – and Brash says this should be cut. I must be an idiot because I would have thought that if you cut the minimum wage and I can earn 50% more for doing the same job in Australia, then I’m going to move there… aren’t I???

Cutting health and education spending is not going to work either. Having a sicker, stupider workforce is unlikely to lift production or wages. I admit that this is flippancy at its extreme, but there is some foundation there. Brash and his report buddies are asking for more private sector involvement in the provisioning of health and education. The idea is that competition will cut government spending levels. This is good I suppose… but the private sector is not the great liberator of spending Brash thinks it is, and they don’t always run things better than the government. Just look at the state of ridiculousness at the end of last year where companies like AIG, Lehmann Bros and so on couldn’t do their jobs properly because they didn’t know how the system they operated in worked.

Who’s to say the same collapse wouldn’t happen if the education or health system were privatised? Once you get money involved in things then maximising profit and returning dividends to shareholders becomes the motivation, not delivering a public service and ultimately those services, and the consumers of those services, suffer.

Brash and his rich little cronies should get their wallets out of their arses and try and live on $12.5o an hour with 6 kids to feed. He never will though and therefore he will never really understand what it’s like in the real world. It’s all numbers to them. Numbers can be made smaller. Unfortunately, and this is the case for all economic arguments, people aren’t numbers.

So again I say: Bollocks. You can’t build a bridge between two things if you begin by cutting away at the coastline on one side.

Brash, you’re a dick, and you always will be (this is slightly inflammatory so I must qualify the word ‘dick’ by adding the word ‘alleged’ to it. So, Brash you are an alleged dick, you nerd).

Until next time. Word.

Boon x

Take this as a kind of apology – qualified if you will. I perhaps should have said this last time: you are quite welcome to have views of any description, but at the same time be prepared to feel the wrath of my words rallying against your view. My point last week was that the group organising the march were talking about wandering up Queen Street for ‘democracy’ rather than their actual reason for marching which was to be allowed to hit their children and claim a defence of reasonable force if they were taken to court. That’s what they had voted for in the referendum and the government said ‘no’ to making the referendum binding, so they marched.

So to this week… it’s my turn to march.

Currently, and for the next two weeks and two days, I am a teacher. I have my own class of wonderful Year 5 & 6s. To give you an idea of numbers there are 28 of them. As any teacher knows, it really does depend on the make up of your class as to how independent they are as learners. Sometimes your class can be filled with kids who require very little assistance with their learning, whereas other times you may have a lot of kids lumped under the ‘special needs’ banner.

Special needs is an umbrella term that includes a vast range of things – I call these things ‘things’ because you can’t really lump them together even though they quite often are. You can have kids on the autistic spectrum (in itself this is a capacious grouping), children who’ve moved to New Zealand from other parts of the world and have English as their second language, kids with specific learning needs in one or more of the core curriculum areas, those kids who are now dubbed ‘differently abled’ by the PC brigade (again a huge range of different things there, from cerebral palsy to spina bifida, blindness and any other affliction in between), kids with nut allergies who, if they touch a nut, go into anaphylactic shock and need an injection of adrenalin or they will die.

These are the children I can think of while typing. I’m sure I’ve missed loads out and I apologise to those kids.

In New Zealand we have something called free education. It is available to all children from the age of 5 until they leave secondary school. When I say all children I mean ALL children. If you are 5 years old and were born in New Zealand you can go to a public school here. You can read all about it right at the start of the Education Act 1989.

So, all kiwi kids can go to any government-funded school. This is great! In so many countries around the world this is not the case. We are truly lucky.

With class sizes of around 30 teachers have to cater for a massive range of different educational needs, including, possibly, some of those children mentioned above. If you are a very lucky teacher you can occasionally get a little bit of help delivering specific learning programmes (I suppose you could say teaching!) to these kids with the help of a teaching assistant. Sometimes they are assigned to specific children and work in the class with the teacher, other times they may take groups of children with similar needs from around the school and teach them together. Either way, these learning support staff are integral to the running of any school.

You must be thinking at this point, “if these staff are so integral to delivering learning to the children in the schools most in need, then they must be getting rewarded for their amazing work.” You could think this, but you’d be wrong. Due to a variety of reasons, most notably in education (and nursing for that matter), because the vast majority of the workforce is made up of wonderful female women who are so altruistic with their caring, a multitude of governments over the past 30 – 40 years have used this to their advantage and because of this some of the lowest paid educators in this country are paid less than the people who clean their rooms at the end of the day.

WHAT???? you all say in disbelief, but this is completely correct and I’ll repeat it just to cement my point. In some schools, the cleaners are paid more than those with finely honed educational skills responsible for teaching those most in need.

Is this fair? In short, no, and so today I am marching in support of my colleagues. My wonderful and amazing colleagues who have given so much over the years and receive so little in return – sometimes, depending on their qualifications, minimum wage. It’s just not fair.

So far I’ve talked about a specific group of support staff, but there are so many more. In my school, for example, there are the learning support staff responsible for teaching those kids under the ‘special needs’ umbrella, but there are many, many others. Our ICT person responsible for making sure the school computers, network, internet and communications are cranking along in the correct manner is part of the support staff (this person would be worth tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands working a similar job in the private sector). Our librarian who runs things in that part of the school. Our art guru who produces the most amazing displays for school, resources for the classroom teachers and enters the wearable art awards each year. The list goes on and on and on (and I apologise if I’ve missed you out – you can hit me at school on Monday).

If you think not getting paid enough is unfair then think about this. Support staff are not on full contracts either. Their contract ends at the end of the school year so technically in two weeks or so all the support staff in New Zealand are out of a job and don’t get paid for 6 weeks. Schools do keep these people on year by year, but in the private sector if you’re on a fixed term contract when your contract comes to an end you are out of work. So every time there is a change at the top these people must be concerned for their positions. Who’s to say a new boss isn’t going to look at things when they come in and say, “we don’t need all these people, surely” and just not renew contracts come the end of the year. Fixed term contracts end and uncertainty every Christmas isn’t good for the psyche.

And so my call goes out – support the support staff in your local school. Go in on Monday, find them and thank them. They are the teachers in your school you are getting from minimum wage up to around $20 an hour (depending on qualifications).

My final point is this: support staff at our school are paid not from the wages and salaries budget, but from the same budget we purchase our toilet paper with.

Actually I have another final point: John Key, our venerial venerable leader said if support staff wanted a pay rise then perhaps teachers would be willing to take a pay cut.

Both of those final points show exactly how much the current (and previous) government value not only support staff, but education workers as a whole. What do you expect from National – after all, they did choose an Minister of Education whose sum total of previous experience in education was going to school.

Dicks.

Kindest regards,

Boon x

The Democratic Republic of Congo.

Need I say more?

OK… the United States of America.

Before I get the usual Bush-lovers bleating on about how good it was before Obama, I wish to explain further.

Democratic Republic of Congo

Let’s start at the most obvious place: the Democratic Republic of Congo. Situated in between Angola, Sudan and the actual republic of Congo, this country dubbed itself the Democratic Republic of Congo after, would you believe, a kind of coup/rebel takeover of the capital Kinshasa in 1997. In fact, since independence in 1960 there haven’t been too many elections there. You might remember President Mobutu from the film When We Were Kings (he starred alongside Muhammad Ali, George Forman and the USA’s own Mobutu – Don King). He was used to be an army dude, but got into power in 1965 by your standard ‘overthrow’ tactic, then he went on to invade and fight with neighbouring Angola. Since they were backed by the Soviets, Mobutu raked in the ideological cash from the US who thought that funding the likes of him and Saddam Hussein would somehow bring down the USSR (???). As we all know, that job went to David Hasselhoff. (As a PS to this paragraph, I like how the country has now dubbed itself on various world maps as Dr. Congo – sounds like a fix-it-up consultant that flies in to restore credibility to Dancing with the Hasbeens).

The second most obvious place is, arguably, the United States of America. I say arguably because I’m arguing my point of view. You may not agree with it, but the rest of the world does. Anyway… the US has spent the best part of the last 50 years telling the rest of the world democracy is the answer. Funnily enough, the rest of the world didn’t really ask a question. The US like to place sanctions against the might of communist Cuba, or invading world terrorising countries such as Afghanistan – Operation Enduring Freedom (just cut out the word freedom and that’ll sum it up), Iraq – Operation Iraqi Liberation, and Panama – Operation Just Cause.

They, and when I say ‘they’, I mean the US government / State Department, not the many wonderful people who make up the rich tapestry of the country, tell us they’re invading/liberating to bring ‘democracy’ to the affected area. I can tell you now that countries or regions of the world aren’t sores that can have the elixir of free and fair elections applied to them and be cured. People in those countries have to want to change and I suspect many inhabitants of the aforementioned countries were none to happy with the US-led forces trotting over their borders waving the flag of extreme shock and death awe freedom.

Democracy is something that can’t be imposed – it has to come from a groundswell of the people. Hang on… isn’t that how the United States was formed in the first place…

So we know that the US aren’t really leading these charges against undemocratic nations in an altruistic way. Nope. It’s got more to do with what type of petroleum-based goo lies under these, or nearby nations, or, in the case of Panama, how they can secure a shortcut for the ships taking that goo to the Californian refineries.

While I’m spouting on and on, as is my want from time to time, why don’t we briefly talk about the example of democracy that the US is setting for the rest of the world. The choice between two parties, one who thinks they’re Jesus and the other who tries not to be but if someone says what they’re doing is wrong then… Democrats too scared to be leaders, Republicans too scary to be leaders.

And so we move on to my actual point of this session – the March for Democracy held in Auckland, New Zealand yesterday. If you want to find out more click here. In short, 4000 people marched up the main street of the biggest city in New Zealand calling on the government to make referenda binding.

Failing to see the point yet? Well, as an aside, earlier on this year the government held a referendum that asked people to vote on the question, “should a smack, as part of good parental correction, be a criminal offence in New Zealand?” Overwhelmingly, and much to my disgust, New Zealanders voted 89% in favour of being allowed to use the defence of reasonable force if they were ever brought up in court on charges of assaulting their children. The new National government had promised the referendum before winning the election last year, and to their credit, delivered on the promise. Of course, New Zealand has this wonderful system of citizen initiated referenda whereby anybody with enough signatures can force (yes, that’s right, force) the government to hold a referendum on their issue of choice. This time, it was the right to hit children with impunity.

As a further aside, the legislation dubbed the ‘anti-smacking law’ does not ban smacking, instead, as mentioned above, it removes the defence of reasonable force from the statutes. Anybody who is in favour of this remaining as a defence for disciplining children needs to think… isn’t reasonable force is something the police think about when apprehending criminals.

And, finally, to my point. Yet again the word DEMOCRACY has been hijacked. 4000 people is by no means a majority. It is, in fact, just 0.0001% of the population. admittedly they looked pretty good having been at the cardboard with black paint, tomato stakes and glue, but it was only 4000 at this “family(!!!)” event.

Now I might disagree with the 89% of New Zealanders who want to use reasonable force on their children, but I don’t care. If you want to use the word democracy, be very, very careful. It is, after all, a government of the people. If you invade, does that mean democracy? If I disagree with your march, does that mean democracy? If you coup me out of office, does that create a democratic republic?

You might just say this argument is all just semantics. I say your anti-semantic.

Until next time, all the best.

Boon x

I have been silent for too long. You tend to do that a bit as a teacher. Best not rock the boat, but I can’t keep my mouth shut any longer.

This week in New Zealand there was a big hello and heralded fanfare welcoming to national standards. If you are reading this in Britain or the United States and saying, “what the hell are you idiots doing? We got rid of standards because they didn’t work and failed our children.” Well, yes, this is true. However, the lessons learnt from the experiences of other nations don’t wash with the current government – a wonderful mix of centrist to extreme right wingers who believe, among other things, that mining national parks is a really excellent idea….

Let’s back track a little bit.

The brand new National government (I say brand new but they are nearly a year old now) announced their education policy before winning the election last year. Their key plank was the introduction of national standards in education. This policy was devised, in part, because of New Zealand’s perceived failings of our children when ranked against similar kids from similar countries around the world. They also did a lot of work consulting with parents – they said so themselves.

On the face of it this sounds quite good. Improving outcomes for our children. Not being a parent yet (see previous IVF columns) it is hard for me to imagine what I want from a report on my hypothetical child’s educational progress.

As a teacher though, I’m writing reports at the moment. This is the third time I’ll be reporting to parents this year – the others being in term 2 and term 3. You can’t say that my school is not letting parents know about the progress of their child. In saying this though, there is no comparison of the child against other children in the class, school, or nationally. As a parent this could be important information to have.

Parents and educators have to remember this: no matter what the child measures against any set standard or standardised deviation, you have to compare any achievement made against previous achievement. What I mean by this is… if the child has improved and moved forward with their marks since the last time you’ve reported then the alternative hasn’t happened (i.e. they have stagnated or fallen backwards). Kids move at different speeds – sometimes fast, sometimes slow, but they move nonetheless. You have to compare them against themselves, otherwise you’re comparing apples with oranges, grapes, persimmons and, potentially, steroid-enriched guava.

By setting a national standard or a national ‘average’ for children at a certain level, the National government has instantly, with the stroke of a pen or the pressing of the save button, created a document that is instantly labelling half the children in New Zealand schools as failures – children who are below the national ‘norm’.

What happens to that large minority of children who don’t fit any norm? There are kids with special needs who will just never, ever meet this standard. They learn very differently to the rest of us and suddenly the Minister of Education has said that these kids are not achieving. How can you compare a kid with special needs to anyone other than themselves. Every special needs kid is totally different to every other one. Come to think of it… every kid is completely different to every other kid. How is it all going to work?

Boys. Let me talk about boys. Having been a boy at school once I can tell you that the ‘ants in the pants’ syndrome is not made up. It is very real. Boys need to be constantly moving around the classroom. If it’s not to get to their work, then it’s to get to their friends, who are working and may help them. By saying, sit down and read this then write something about it, many boys can’t handle the jandal. It’s not because they are ‘dumb’ or below average, it’s just that they learn differently. They would rather prefer making something, or finding out how something works by ‘unmaking’ it, and then discussing their findings orally. Writing didn’t come naturally to me until I was well into my twenties.

I’ve just watched Anne Tolley the Education Minister being interviewed by one of the worst television journalists New Zealand has ever produced (if you want to know more just type Paul Henry into google – beware though, is truly, truly awful). She is talking about formative assessment, where teachers are, “….constantly assessing how well, what the results of their teaching are throughout the year. Rather than having one test at the end of the year…” and then Paul Henry adds something about a possible “nasty surprise” at the end of the year for the parent. I’m on my third report of the year you dick. Talk to me.

As a teacher I find these to be totally ill-informed comments about how I work my classroom. I am constantly assessing my children to inform my teaching. That, my friends, is how it is. Most schools are taking part in this formative assessment at the moment. Our school is currently in the process of reporting for the THIRD time this year to parents. There are no nasty surprises. Also, it should be pointed out here that if a teacher or school did find anything concerning in a child’s educational outcomes the first people they go to are, wait for it, the parents. Yes, the parents. We don’t sit in our classrooms saying to ourselves, “oooh, I hope the parents don’t find out. Maybe if I just hide this test in the cupboard then nobody will know.” I use my assessment throughout the year to group my students based on need, to highlight any areas of need so they can be addressed quickly, to target learning opportunities in those areas. The implication that teachers or schools are somehow keeping information from parents is preposterous (that’s a good word).

If you would like to know what experience the honourable Anne Tolley has had in the education sector before becoming boss of the entire thing… She has been a computer analyst, a computer programmer and a bed and breakfast operator – all roles vastly suited to developing and maintaining education policy and the direction of schools and teaching in any country. If you don’t believe me then just look on her parliamentary webpage. I honestly can’t find any experience in the area of education apart from her years at Colenso High in Napier. Really… how can you possibly do a job that you have absolutely no background in whatsoever? You wouldn’t expect me to be able to run a massive company without having some experience in business, would you?

And back to what we were talking about… Once you set a national standard that’s it. You can’t unset it – unless you totally remove it. As soon as standards are set you begin to make the comparisons. Your kid against the national average. Your kid against my kid. My kid against your school average. My school against your school. This school against the national average… whoops leaky portfolio syndrome… and suddenly you’ve got the media comparing schools against each other based on where their average sits against the rest of the country. Below and you’re a failure. Above and you’re not.

Of course, the policy hasn’t been implemented yet. We can’t compare ourselves against England, where the competition between schools ended up in an environment where schools taught specifically to pass tests. It might be that our experience will be totally different and national standards will boost educational outcomes for our students. If, however, they don’t, which I suspect will be the case, and the media end up getting hold of the national data, which I also suspect will be the case, then this policy will be, undoubtedly, the worst thing to happen to education in this country in many a decade.

But we’ll wait and see.

Boon x

Should I talk about the New Zealand Geographic Board recommending the city of Wanganui be spelt the same way as the river running through it: with a small ‘h’ following the capital W. That is, the area called Whanganui by the people who’ve lived there for the last few centuries could be spelt as such in the future. An important side note to this is that the city’s residents have voted against that move in a referendum AND that all (not just some, but all) of the people I’ve seen on the news objecting to this, including the his esteemed worshit the mayor Michael Laws, have been white. The objectioning has been so ardent also. Why object to spelling something in the traditional way? Unless of course you need an excuse to be racist…

That dabbling of the toe of opinion into the icy lagoon of racism brings me to the current “campaign” against Obama’s health plan. A lot of the placards seem to be saying President Obama’s plans to let every US citizen (except the illegals – anywhere up to 20 million inhabitants) have access to some kind of healthcare is communist or fascist. Communism is where the state controls everything on behalf of the people. Sounds like a good idea but generally it gets hijacked by the likes of Stalin or Mao who end up killing loads of people who disagree with their version of it. Of course, this is completely different to a capitalist democracy seen in the US where people are elected to the Senate or the House of Representatives so that they can make change completely independently of any company willing to “donate” thousands of dollars to trusts run by their families.

This is, as usual, a generalisation. I’m sure there are loads of capitalists in Washington D.C. who don’t take any money from people working on behalf of companies. Also, since when was capitalism a better model than socialism, communism or fascism? At least with socialism the government is trying to look after the people rather than letting the markets decide (remember when Lehmann Bros “decided” to pay Richard Fuld $300 million in the years leading up to the collapse for his strong leadership and excellent decision making). Comparing Obama to Hitler is not going to make your point very well. It’s like trying to get Christians to convert to Islam by telling them Jesus was a lesbian. Pretending to believe in the 2nd amendment by walking around these protests with an Ak-47 strapped to your dick isn’t going to win you any friends either you idiot.

Anyway, those two small issues aside…

This week the process has begun. We are now officially going through IVF. When I say ‘officially’ I mean the procedures have started and when I say ‘we’ I mean Mrs. Boon. As I’ve said previously during my other two blogs on the subject, my part in this process is important but is about as invasive as scratching the tip of your nose gently when it’s slightly itchy. I’ve also talked about the guilt factor that can develop from this and the fact I wish I could be doing more – and by doing more I mean having things done to me. But in IVF it seems not to be the way for the man to endure these moments associated with artificial insemination. Helping and supporting is our job.

The very first procedure Mrs. Boon went through in our – hopefully not too long – IVF journey involved her joining a research project looking into the effects of a uterus wash of lipiodol on increasing the chances of pregnancy. For those unversed… Lipiodol is a poppyseed oil that is used as a contrast medium. A contrast medium is one that, when pumped into veins or tubes shows up on x-rays allowing physicians to see blockages and the like. In women it is used to see if there is anything holding things up in the fallopian tubes. As with previous accidental breakthroughs like penicillin or coca-cola, it’s been discovered this flushing may actually enhance the prospectss of a successful pregnancy. So Mrs. Boon offered to go into a New Zealand study investigating this phenomenon.

When she said yes to taking part she had a 50/50 chance of either being in the control group, who would not have had the flushing, or being in the group who did. When the researcher opened the envelope last week she was pleased (although this may be a bit of an understatement) to hear she was not in the control group and was going to receive the lipiodol. Once again, as if I needed any more proof of how amazing my wife is, she selflessly puts her body forward so researchers can develop better and more successful methods of IVF for other couples.

I must also mention at this point that yesterday, the day of the lipiodol wash, was our 5th wedding anniversary.

So next week we head into the hospital to learn how to inject her with hormones that bring on a menopausal state. I am fast running out of superlatives to describe the overwhelming sense of awe I have for my wife and her willingness to undertake such a vast range of actions to bring our baby into the world. I only hope that one day I can return the love.

See yous later.

Boon x

I suppose technically a murderer is a criminal… but let me explain further.

The thing with a hurricane is that it’s big. You can see one from space. Hurricane Katrina was no different. Clicking on the link shows you a weather pattern stretching from the Cuba/Mexico part right across the gulf to the south coast of the United States. It’s not like it magically appeared either. No. Miss Katrina was heralded into existence by the National Hurricane Centre as early as 26 August 2005. Previously they’d just thought it a bit of a storm next to the Bahamas I suppose…

Come the end of September New Orleans was a toxic swimming pool and Bush had lost the Republicans the next election. So bad was the hatred that not only did the Republicans lose to the Democrats, they lost to a Black Democrat who was half African.

Good old Bush.

By good I mean appalling and by old I mean dickheadedly arrogant. Bush was to the United States of America the type of thing that Ebola is to humans. One minute you’re petting the cute Texan monkey funded by the Halliburton of the Congo, next minute your internal organs are melting and you’re bleeding out your eyeballs. Having read over that metaphor it was making sense at the start but I think I lost it towards the end. Basically I’m trying to compare His Bushness with something terrible – perhaps Ebola or some kind of Bobbit-like incident upon your person – because he was truly the most atrocious president I have had the misfortune of living through. That’s saying something because Nixon was in power when I was born.

George W. Bush – an anagram of Beg Worse Hug… mmm, indeed.

How could someone in the face of total catastrophe leave a city to wash into the gulf? How could someone leave one of the cultural capitals of his country to rot in the summer sun? How could a ex-drinking coke-fiend decide to spend anywhere between $US177,000,000 and $US400,000,000 per day in Iraq looking for weapons of mass distraction. Oh that’s right, I remember now. Bush wasn’t actually president. Cheney and his mates were. Bush was just the Texan joker with the mellow accent who made all the evil done by the satanic lapdogs the extreme right boosted to the White House kind of sound OK.

It’s estimated the cost to repair the damage from Hurricane Katrina is going to be around$150 billion – depending on where you look. This would equate to around 850 days (2 and a bit years) worth of Iraq War (based on above estimates which I suppose can be questioned as to accuracy since I didn’t count the actual money as it was being spent). If the Bush/Cheney regime of plantation owning oil munching slave traders had pulled out of Iraq when the world called their bluff on the weapons of mass distruction they may have been able to rebuild New Orleans in about a week.

Why am I going on about this 4 years after the fact? See the Spike Lee documentary When the Levees Broke. It’s an astounding portrayal of how little a federal government made up of rich whities can care about its people. No wonder there are so many fundamentalists roaming around Utah and Montana training for the imaginary apocolypse.

Ah well… at least in New Zealand we don’t have to worry about that sort of nonsense. The government here looks after the people and the country. Oh no, wait, that’s right. They don’t at all. This week the National government, whose been in power for about a year, announced that vast tracts of land owned by the Department of Conservation – the government department responsible for looking after what’s left of our natural landscape – up to mining and exploration of our mineral wealth.

My god. Honestly. Could you be any more unsustainable than that????? Well yes you could. By invading Iraq and spending more than the entire yearly New Zealand GDP figure per day on a war that was argued for on the basis of weapons that didn’t exist.

The reason this is happening is because of the unsustainable thinking of idiots who run the country. Making money seems to be the goal of those on the right. Making money any way possible. The capitalist juggernaut barrels through the pristine countryside on the hunt for gold or silver or nickle. What do we get in return? A filthy great hole in the ground, massive pollution left over from tailings dams and no wildlife because the bush covering the stripped land was cleared to get at the land in the first place.

Phew! Why am I so against capitalism? Because the model just doesn’t work. Time and time and time again we see suffering and deprevation that occurs because some boffin in an office, with no sense of humanity, just a sense of the bottom line of his company’s/government’s wallet, makes a decision to cut and slash and burn. Capitalists only see the balance sheet. Their projections are made only in dollars. They cannot or will not see the people their decisions affect.

Economists have a lot to answer for. Formulas are ok in your computers or on your office whiteboard but as soon as you add the complex requirements of a human being, or many, many human beings, the formula is rendered obsolete.

Money was the reason for the Katrina disaster also. The levees broke because the government cut corners. The government failed to respond because the majority of those affected by the levees lived in the poor parts of town. Those votes don’t really count because they can’t really fund-raise like a Newt Gingricher. Iraq wouldn’t have been invaded if there wasn’t oil there or the contract to reconstruct wasn’t won by Cheneyburton (how that conflict of interest failed to get impeached I’ll never know).

I did promise last time something more upbeat and lively. Unfortunately the Spike Lee doco got in my way and Bush pissed me off again. He’s like the athletes foot of thought in his continued return to my psyche.

George W Bush – anagram of bugger he sow.. how very true.

Boon x