At the same time the Right’s(?) ‘political correctness’ ‘the nanny state’ phrases have almost lost all meaning for me – government does something ‘bad’ = nanny state; government not doing enough ‘won’t the government DO something?!’ I thought the issue with WFF was that the only way to target specific groups for less tax was to make them apply for it, though I suppose an exemption could be given based on how the age of the children changes, as well as their own income – shouldnt be that hard to keep track of…etecetra.

Good on you if you volunteer though

Thought-crime alert at a university – NX didn’t go back to the tutor because s/he disagreed with the tutor?? Universities come up with all sorts of ideas which are even debated sometimes, but debate doesn’t work if you just run away and start complaining to others and acting like you’re proud of running away on an internet forum – wimp!

We’ll all turn into *something* bad if we just run away crying like NX did…

Well I suppose I better defend myself – because obviously Stephen wasn’t there (not that I know of).
The tutorial wasn’t a debate forum. Tutorials generally aren’t and are meant to cover things discussed in the lectures. But this guy was rabbiting on about how great Cuba was & how NZ has accepted socialist dogma as the way forward (or something to that effect), with no chance to interject. In fact, to my credit, the old dinosaur tutor noted the pissed look on my face & said ‘you obviously disagree’, but he didn’t give me a chance to say why. If he did ask I was all prepared to say ‘then why the hell do so many Cubans try & escape to Florida if life is so great for them’…?

This was a few years ago now & my interest in politics was only in passing. I didn’t really have an ideology to defend. But now I realise that socialists achieve that exact opposite to what they intend. For example Helen Clark attacked Dr. Brash’s Owera speech as racist – yet there wouldn’t have been an Owera speech if it wasn’t for her government’s PC driven Maori policies. Their goal of achieving racial equality actually made it far worse. The same applies to wealthfare – removing incentives & individual responsibility actually ties people into poverty. The Working For Families package is so stupid if a family is taxed more than they receive in support – why tax them in the first place??
While I benefit from Interest free student loans, wouldn’t the money be better spent reducing fees rather than paying for our interest. This means we wouldn’t have to borrow as much to begin with. As it is students have no incentives to limit their borrowing.
I also find the left use miss-leading language (well at least Helen Clark does) & often dumb down issues to suit their ideology i.e. they play people for fools. For example; the EFA suppose to protect politics from big money. That sounds good, but actually destroys individual rights.

But Stephen is right, I’m a wimp if I don’t do anything about it. So with that in mind I’m considering volunteering for the National party this election.

Well most universities prohibit any sort of harassment anyway, one would have thought. All i can think of is getting the thought police into the university (probably cos im a trotsky-ite/marxist/pinko/commie etc), through a bureaucratic tribunal being established at each university – the challenge would be to ensure the ‘right’ doesn’t take it so far as to say, “let’s monitor those lefty professors and keep tabs on what they’re saying; and while we’re at it, let’s withhold federal funds from programs that do not display “ideological balance”…and let’s demand that academic institutions demonstrate a commitment to hiring conservatives; and let’s make sure that the material our students read is pro-American and free of the taint of relativism; and let’s publish the names of those who do not comply.” http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i23/23b01301.htm

As for “its doubtful you’d recognise critical thinking.” – easy, opinion on a subject that differs from my own. wow!

————————————————

Examples of bias poured in: course lists comprised solely of radical left texts; essay assignments asking students to explain why “President Bush is a war criminal”; a history professor at Duke University professing “I don’t have a bias against anyone … except Republicans”; another professor informing a Kuwaiti Muslim immigrant that he would need “regular psychotherapy” for writing an essay that defended America’s founding fathers and the US Constitution; another student whose economics professor demanded he drop out of his introduction to micro-economics class or face harassment charges for praising Milton Friedman and free market ideals.

Going by the clash of logic apparent in that sentence, its doubtful you’d recognise critical thinking. Furthermore, students are easily intimidated by lecturers/ teachers, and young university goers who have resisted attempts to instil leftist doctrine have been punished and victimized for their courage. You write Stephen as if you are completely ignorant of what is going on. Let me help you. Go here, and read a few of the case studies-

http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/

..and there is an informative opinion piece here

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,23545660-7583,00.html

that presents a good argument against the claim that efforts to break the absolute power of the left in the education sphere are attacks on free speech themselves. (Leftists are experts at convincing themselves that such propaganda, that in fact presents the exact opposite of reality, is the truth.)

We’ll all turn into *something* bad if we just run away crying like NX did…

But mostly are not. Otherwise why are there so many recently established organisations dedicated to academic freedom?? In the US that is. Here in hoplessly PC NZ, (one of the worst places I’ve seen in the world for PC bullshit) where the commies have a stanglehold on information and education, they’re not yet that common.

NZ’s education system is merely an induction process for totalitarian socialist society, where speech and mind control are daily practised by charlatans who call themselves educators but are really agents for the implantation of leftist ideology in the minds of the young. Sometimes without even being aware of it themselves.

Over the past three decades the system has gone to hell in a handcart.

I challenge the Ministry of Education to subject every teacher to a spelling writing and arithmetic test at the same level as School Certificate in the mid 1960s.

I bet less than 50% would pass and most likely 66% would fail.

What is the NZ percentage when this is added to Central government spending ???.

All in all as a very well travelled family they were shocked at what they found

Sounds like NZ will be in 20 years if we have Clark et al in charge God forbid

Wow really? An “educator” pushing communist ideology? Don’t you know they don’t exist. Ask any leftist if you’re in doubt.

As for Cuba’s supposedly superior levels of health care and education its all a sad sick myth. Typical leftist propaganda, repeated over and over again until its accepted as the truth. Guess where the stats that underpin these claims come from? Castro’s gang of totalitarian thugs of course, and why ever would they lie??

Cubans who have escaped Cuba have been tested and found to have nothing like the literacy claimed by Castro and his propaganda spreading acolytes. Secondly, the methodology that Cuba employs to arrive at the statistics is error prone, and not part of any standardised system.

When asked by an independent Canadian panel to justify their figures, the Cuban reply was “our claim is based on the percentage of persons between the ages of 14 and 48 who are considered by us a being able to learn how to read and write.” When they asked the Cubans how they defined “able to learn” the Canadians were told that was none of their business.

What a joke. Only the braindead left could buy into something so transparently false. However, there’s a worse joke than this. A tragic joke, for while sundry extreme leftists help propagate Castro’s lies, the law in Cuba relating to teaching children says -

“all persons, including teachers, are required to be literate as well as to contribute to the “formation of the communist personality of the youth.”

So the whole idea is just to make them literate enough to indoctrinate them with commie crap. Real education in Cuba is sacrificed at the alter of political power. Just like somewhere else we all know so well right???

But Cuba has a free health system etc

It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and about as many hours of devoted study to train a skilled surgeon. Now why would anyone go through that to work in a crap hospital, for crap pay?
I had a university tutor who banged on about how wonderful Cuba is with their ‘free’ health care. But in my mind it didn’t stack up! I didn’t go back to his tutorial .

Chinese Communist Party is really much better than Cuban Communist Party.

HK was British ruled till 1997. It still has a fair bit of autonomy from mainland China.

DPF: where do you get 42% from?

http://www.stats.govt.nz/products-and-services/nz-in-the-oecd/government-spending-receipts.htm

Yep, as of 2004, New Zealand had the second lowest rate of government spending (as a proportion of GDP) and seventh lowest rate of taxation of the 27 countries in the OECD. The highest rate of spending was Sweden (57.1% of GDP), who also took in 58.3% of GDP in terms of tax receipts. But hey, what do those dirty commie Swedes know?

“milton friedman said if you want to see capitalism in action.. go to hong kong..”

Or Pinochet’s Chile. Which was, of course, the great free-market laboratory experiment long before teh revolution was a gleam in Roger Douglas’ beady little eyes.

[url]http://www.stats.govt.nz/products-and-services/nz-in-the-oecd/government-spending-receipts.htm[/url]

Yep, as of 2004, New Zealand had the second lowest rate of government spending and seventh lowest rate of taxation of the 27 countries in the OECD. The highest rate of spending was Sweden (57.1% of GDP), who also took in 58.3% of GDP in terms of tax receipts. But hey, what do those dirty commie Swedes know?

“milton friedman said if you want to see capitalism in action.. go to hong kong..”

Or Pinochet’s Chile. Which was, of course, the great free-market laboratory experiment long before teh revolution was a gleam in Roger Douglas’ beady little eyes.