Kiwiblog

Stuff reports:

State-owned Solid Energy, if successful with a bid, would probably look to develop the mine in a joint opencast/underground approach. It would need to get part of the surrounding land removed from schedule 4 protected conservation land for opencast mining. Access would be difficult and so would resource conditions.

If Solid Energy do buy Pike River, I hope the Government does make it possible for them to carry on mining there, in the safest way possible. If that means moving a couple of hectares out of Schedule 4, then so be it.

Rodney Hide at the weekend seemed to have ESP with his call:

ACT leader Rodney Hide is calling for open-cast mining at Pike River and on protected conservation land.

State-owned Solid Energy should be allowed to open-cast mine Pike River, to access an estimated $10 billion of resources, he said. “It seems to me it will require a great deal of care and sensitivity. But I can’t see how not continuing their [the miner's] work respects them.” …

Grey District Mayor Tony Kokshoorn backed Mr Hide’s call for open-cast mining at Pike River.

“Yeah, Rodney Hide is correct. We need to get on with it and we need to do it in a way that will safeguard the environment and at the same time get economic development.”

It looks like it might happen, which is good.

Kate Chapman at Stuff reports:

The families of Chinese students killed in the Christchurch earthquake will not get extra compensation, despite claims that they need it because of China’s one-child policy.

At least 24 Chinese nationals, mainly students studying in the CTV building, were believed to have been killed in last month’s quake, though only seven have been formally identified so far. Most were aged between 15 and 30.

Cheng Lei, co-ordinator of the Chinese embassy’s disaster relief centre, told Radio New Zealand that the one-child policy meant the victims’ families had lost their source of economic assistance for retirement. He called on the New Zealand Government to increase the ACC compensation available to them. …

Prime Minister John Key said the Government felt great sympathy for the families but would not change its policy.

It was never going to happen of course. Could you imagine the outcry if the Government approved higher payouts to foreigners, than to its own citizens. You’d be more popular selling steaks to vegans.

The request from the Chinese Embassy is I am sure made in good faith. Losing your only child must be a massive blow to a family, and they’ll never recover from it.

However even if one accepted that parents who have lost their only child should get more compensation than those with multiple children (and I don’t – children are not like tyres, where you just replaced the broken one with a spare), the question might arise about whether the compensation should come from the country where the earthquake happened – or from the Chinese Government which has implemented the one child policy.

It is worth noting that the Chinese Embassy were passing on requests from the families of the dead students, rather than making an official request.

A commenter who just received enough demerits to get him a suspension, has taken to e-mailing his displeasure to me. His four e-mails in the last hour have said:

1. Littlle fat shit i will return
2. david Farrars blog is a gay site
3. kiwi blog encourages CHINESE TAKEOVERS OF NZ BUSNESS
4. Your latest post was pathetic for a fat whimp like you,is that the best????? opps pure national arse licking, well arse licking

Very strange, my last post wasn’t even on politics, but on an upcoming film I want to see.

The scary thing is that he gets a vote.

Anyway if he keeps e-mailing me I’ll publish his name and e-mail address.  And I think his temporary ban is very close to becoming a life-time ban.

From io9:

1) It’s really wrong. In the best way — at least, if you like movies that go way too far and then just keep going, you’ll like this. It has insane ultra-violence, plus some pretty intense sex and general weirdness. James Gunn, the psychopath who brought us Slither, has managed to mash up religion, ultraviolence, fetishism, and a slew of social anxieties into one horribly disturbing package. There are some moments in this film that’ll stick in your mind for quite some time afterwards.

2) It’s scream-out-loud funny. Especially every time Nathan Fillion comes on screen as the Christian superhero, the Holy Avenger, you’ll fall out of your seat. There will be Holy Avenger T-shirts everywhere in a couple months, if not sooner. But also, Rainn Wilson is pretty freaking on top of his game as a well-meaning nutcase who really believes that whacking people in the head with a lug wrench will make the world a better place.

The movie is “Super”. I can’t wait.

The hopes of those calling for a “New Left” party entering Parliament via Hone Harawira took another tumble today, as ccording to Alex Tarrant from interest.co.nz, Phil Goff ruled out working with Hone Harawira.

Of course this position may change. A month ago Goff also ruled out working with Hone Harawira, but backed down a few days later. So this is I think his third position on working with Hone. I asked the rhetorical question in February whether Goff will manage as many positions on Hone (now up to three) as they did on foreshore & seabed (now up to five)

He still won’t rule Winston in or out though. That one should be simpler – you can at least trust Hone. Policy differences can be negotiated in good faith. Trust can not be. Winston lied blatantly to Helen Clark about the Owen Glenn donation, yet Labour are still clinging to Winston in the hope he will hold the balance of power and make Goff Prime Minister.

Paul Jenden has created a wonderfully camp entertaining experience with his Fairy Stories at Circa. Not only did he do the choreography and direction of it, he also did the costumes and just for good measure was one of the five cast members. I’m in awe of the range of his talents.

Fairy Stories runs for around two hours (with a break) and in between the opening and closing numbers, they cover ten classic fairy stories – Beauty and the Beast, The Tin Soldier, Three Little Pigs, Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Conderella, Three Bill Goats Gruff, Tom Thumb, Bluebeard and Puss in Boots.

The cast is led by Sir Jon Trimmer, and as well as Paul Jenden, included Louis Solino, Kate O’Rourke and Jenny Beech.  They danced and sang up a storm. In a performance with basically no dialogue, it all comes down to how well the cast connect with the audience through visual, rather than verbal means.

Fairy Stories managed this very well. The cast’s facial gestures were only matched by the colourful array of costumes they went through.

This photo by Stephen A’Court captures the three little pigs at the end of their routine.

Don’t expect these fairy stories to work out quite the same way as the traditional stories. I certainly never recall Red Riding Hood and The Wolf dancing quite so erotically, and Tom Thumb got to go to certain places no midget should be.

My favourite twist was with the three billy goats. The troll which wouldn’t allow them to pass was a “Ms. Gruff” who was guarding wimmin’s only space. As the three billy goats all have rather large hanging testicles (no not real ones), they don’t have much sucess trying to sneak past Ms Gruff despite the ribbons they wrap around themselves. Finally the largest billy goat settles it in the traditional fashion.

Auckland Girl and I both loved the performance – it was lots of fun. You know you’re really enjoyed it when you’re disappointed that the performance is over. The only slight downside to the night was the laughter from one woman in the audience. Normally having the audience laugh is a very good thing, but this particular laugh resembled a 747 taking off.

Hayden Donnell in the NZ Herald reports:

State owned mining company Solid Energy has revealed it wants to buy the Pike River Coal mine, pay off its unsecured creditors and recover the bodies of 29 men still trapped inside. …

Solid Energy, which operates several West Coast mines including the nearby Spring Creek Coal Mine, today announced it was one of those looking to buy the rights to extract the $6 billion of coal still at Pike River through a mixture of opencast and underground mining.

Chief executive Don Elder said recovering the 29 bodies still inside the mine would be a priority in that proposal.

It was committed to addressing the “many challenges” of making the mine economically viable while respecting the wishes of the families of the dead, he said. …

“As a non-negotiable part of that, the wishes of the families have to be a priority in considering all options including potential recovery, if feasible, of the 29 miners’ bodies. The same applies to the unsecured creditors on the West Coast; any solution to invest in and work the mine needs to address that issue as a top priority.”

That’s possibly the best news the Coast has had, since the explosion.

Elder said the company’s plan would include opencasting parts of the mine.

Somehow I suspect the usual suspects won’t oppose this mine being opencasted.

Whale Oil blogged how media uncritically reported an NZEI media release as news, including this line:

3News has the head­line: NZEI begins inde­pen­dent assess­ment of National Stan­dards [empha­sis mine]

And the release says:

A teacher union is fund­ing inde­pen­dent research into the impact of the new National Stan­dards in schools. …

“Given the absence of a trial of National Stan­dards and the deep con­cerns the pro­fes­sion and school com­mu­ni­ties have, NZEI has decided to fund this research in a bid to get robust evi­dence about the impact of National Stan­dards on teach­ing and learn­ing,” he said.

The project is being run through the Wilf Mal­colm Insti­tute for Edu­ca­tional Research at the Uni­ver­sity of Waikato and is headed by Prof Mar­tin Thrupp.

Both Whale and I have been blessed with the psychic ability of Deb Webber and Ken Ring and we can predict that this research will conclude that national standards are a disaster and have a hugely detrimental impact on teaching and learning.

Well actually we can’t predict the future. Instead Whale just used Google:

Hmmm… I won­der if this is the same “inde­pen­dent Mar­tin Thrupp that has railed against national stan­dards in March 2010, and is it the same Mar­tin Thrupp who is very active on the national Stan­dards protest site, includ­ing this blog post about how to get trac­tion in the media against National Stan­dards and the same mar­tin Thrupp who sent an email of sup­port to the NZPF for their action against National Stan­dards?

I’m now awaiting the Government of Libya to announce they have appointed independent human rights expert Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi to lead independent research into whether the Government of Libya has breached any human rights.

The Telegraph reports:

Parents will get powers to rank local schools using a series of new-style measures under Government plans to stop schools massaging their results.

They will be able to sort primaries and secondaries based on results in any subject to find out which schools are best for sciences, languages, history, geography, music, drama or even PE.

Families can also find out which schools have the worst attendance records and the highest number of exclusions.

Currently, schools are principally ranked by the number of pupils gaining five good GCSEs in almost any subject.

But critics claim the measure is too crude and schools can inflate their positions by moving pupils onto “soft” subjects or prioritising vocational courses that are often worth the equivalent of five GCSEs.

A Coalition source said the move would boost transparency following attempts by Labour to hide the “shocking performance of some of our schools”.

This is what we should be getting in New Zealand. What I especially like is that having realised the existing league tables are crude, the response is to improve the league tables by providing more data.

I agree with critics of league tables that a league table that merely ranks school on the basis of the percentage of students who make a particular grade, doesn’t provide a fair comparison.

But the answer is not to ban the publication of educational data as the teacher unions want. It is to provide better data.

So rather than have a league table just of achievement, have a league table which compares schools in the same decile and which measures the average improvement in students from the time they enter – now that would be really useful.

Even better, do what they did in LA – rate teachers (I would remove names for privacy reasons but have them known to school boards) by their effectiveness at lifting student achievement. Because almost all the research tells us the quality of an individual teacher is what makes the biggest difference to learning.

John Armstrong at the NZ Herald reports:

The man behind the award-winning 42 Below Vodka advertising campaign says Labour leader Phil Goff should ignore the image-building suggestions of his advisers and be his
natural self.

Darryl Parsons, a guest speaker at Act’s weekend conference and a 13-year veteran of the advertising industry, said he was sure Mr Goff would be good company were he to meet him over a beer or dinner.

“He would do quite well if he was just Phil Goff and backed himself .. It doesn’t seem he’s been given the chance to be his own man. It seems he has a whole lot of people around him who tell him, ‘You have to be like this; you have to dye your hair; you have to ride this motorbike.”‘

Mr Parsons described two future aspirants for the Labour leadership, front benchers David Cunliffe and David Parker, as “boring as mud”, and said party president Andrew Little “had no personality”.

He singled out Labour backbencher David Shearer, who holds Helen Clark’s old seat of Mt Albert, as someone with “the John Key factor”.

“He seems comfortable talking to just about anyone. He seems a decent bloke.”

David Shearer is a decent bloke, and I think has a good future. If Labour loses the election, I think the next leader is David Cunliffe. However Matthew Hooton write in the NBR that David Parker’s stocks are rising. If Cunliffe is leader, then Parker is the likely Finance Spokesperson – but it could be the other way around.

iPredict has stocks on who will be Labour Leader on or before 1 July 2012. Cunliffe is at 42%, Street 1.9% and Mallard 1.0%. That leaves 55% with other – which could represent Goff still being Leader plus Parker plus Shearer’s odds.

The Dom Post reported:

A senior Labour Party office holder has accused the party hierarchy of treating Pacific party members merely as campaign workers and voting fodder.

The Labour Party’s Mana Tagata Pasefika chairman Shane Laulu says it is at risk of losing the traditional support of Pacific members if they are not given more prominence.

In a letter addressed to Labour Party official Paul Tolich and John Ryall, the Service and Food Workers Union national secretary, Mr Laulu said he was disappointed at the lack of “Pacific candidates and their overall ranking order”.

Mr Laulu said the Labour Party was in danger of losing the support of the Pacific community because of a fallacy “their vote is a given”.

“I believe Pacific party members have moved beyond being seen as only campaign workers and voting fodder.”

Mr Laulu, who has been a member of the Service and Food Workers Union for the past decade, wrote the letter after unions, including the EPMU, SFWU, dairy workers and meatworkers’ union, published their preferred rankings of Labour candidates.

The letter and list rankings were obtained by The Dominion Post.

The full list of rankings is meant to go online, but I don’t think it has, so I got a copy off the reporter. The unions wishlist is:

1. Andrew Little – EPMU
2. Michael Wood – FINSEC
3. Jerome Mika – EPMU
4. Deb Mahuta
5. Brenda Alexander
6. Mea’ole Keil – SWFU
7. Josie Pagani – Rangitikei
8. Jordan Carter
9. Christine Rose – Rodney
10. Kate Sutton
11. Sehai Orgad – Hamilton East
12. Nicola Vallance
13. Peter Foster

It will be interesting to see how closely this follows the final list. The unions have a pact that that they are all obliged to vote in the order they have agreed, as a bloc. This gives them considerable strength at the regional list rankings and the national list ranking.

One may wonder how many new MPs will Labour get? Last election they got 43, and generally they have polled below this level. But let’s assume they get 43 MPs again.

Retiring MPs are Pete Hodgson, George Hawkins, Mita Ririnui and Lynne Pillay. So assuming they protect their current MPs, they should get 4 new MPs. However three of these will be electorate MPs in Dunedin North, Manurewa and Wigram. So if Labour get 43 MPs again, they may have just new List MP.

This suggests to me they will need to rank Little above some of the caucus to guarantee him a place.

A pretty good effort by the PM, even with Warne playing nice. Three boundaries and one of them was only a metre off being a six. Had to laugh at his sledging Warne by yelling out “Liz says hi”.

Andre Hueber in the HoS reports:

Nick Smith is the Minister responsible for ACC – but some might say he’s just asking to come a cropper.

Smith and the Skeptics Society are planning a lunch in one of Christchurch’s highest, oldest, stone buildings – on the day that “moon man” Ken Ring says the city will be hit by another devastating earthquake. Ring’s prediction of another earthquake on March 20 – a week today – has caused alarm among some Cantabrians, who have said they will flee the city.

But the minister, who has a doctorate in geotechnical engineering, said he took a very dim view of people causing alarm with no scientific underpinning.

“I believe in free speech but just as people should not stand up in a picture theatre and scream fire, people should not be making phony predictions of major earthquakes.”

That’s a good practical way to try and calm down people who actually believe Ring.

The lunch will be held at noon on March 20 at the Sign of the Kiwi, on the top of the Port Hills – which Smith said was the closest building to the epicentre of the February 22 quake.

Skeptics spokeswoman Vicki Hyde said she wouldn’t be surprised if a shake happened during the lunch because Christchurch had been getting shakes almost every day – “but it wouldn’t have anything to do with what Ken Ring’s been saying”.

Again, a good initiative.

AP reports:

An explosion shattered a building housing a nuclear reactor yesterday, amid fears of a meltdown, while across wide swaths of northeastern Japan officials are searching for thousands of people missing more than a day after a devastating earthquake and tsunami.

The confirmed death toll from Friday’s twin disasters was 686, but the government’s chief spokesman said it could climb enormously

AFP is reporting that 9,500 people are unaccounted for in one town alone, Minamisoma. …

The scale of destruction was not yet known, but there were grim signs that the death toll could soar. One report said four whole trains had disappeared Friday and still not been located. Others said 9,500 people in one coastal town were unaccounted for and that at least 200 bodies had washed ashore elsewhere.

Who knows when it will end. I must say that over the last coupel of days I am glad NZ is nuclear free. I know the reacter hasn’t actually leaked, but still nuclear reactors on fire is a problem you can do without in a disaster.

Of course in some countries nuclear power is a necessity – they don’t have our access to hydropower and the like.

Despite the scale of the tragedy, Japan is well used to disasters like these. Was interesting to listen to a TVNZ report with Kiwi Cole Cameron in Japan. The majority of people are just carrying on with business.

It seems there is little loss of life from the earthquake itself despite being a massive 8.9. The tsunami is what has been so lethal.

Martin Kay in the Dom Post reports:

The chances of a broad-based Left-wing party rising from the ashes of Hone Harawira’s meltdown with the Maori Party have been dashed after he made it clear that any group he led would have to be Maori-focused.

Former Greens MP Sue Bradford – who has been closely associated with speculation that a new party was being planned – said the prospect of one being in place for this year’s election were now slim after Mr Harawira indicated he wanted a “more Left-wing Maori Party”.

Ms Bradford has said she would be interested in discussing a more generalist party that campaigned on a broad range of issues, but Mr Harawira’s comments suggested he was not interested.

I never thought Hone would want to lead a non Maori party. Maori nationalism is what he is all about.

There is a way they could try and do it – copy the Alliance structure. Have Hone as Leader of the “Mana” party and Sue as Leader of the “Left” party. The Mana Party could become a constituent part of the Left Party and that would mean if Hone retains his seat, then the Left Party would gain a List MP if they received around 30,000 party votes.

However that would mean that Hone’s party is subservient to the left party, and bound by the rules of the left party with regard to how they determine policies, list ranking, leadership.

The Dom Post reports:

The three-strikes legislation and stripping prisoners of the right to vote breach human rights and could result in New Zealand being hauled before international agencies, a watchdog says. …

The three-strikes law means a 25-year non-parole sentence for the worst criminals after their third serious offence.

No it doesn’t. It means the maximum sentence for the offence without parole. This may be as little as seven years.

What can one say. The video and the photos show Mother Nature as a force beyond our ability to withstand. Planes and cars get scattered and end up kms inland.

The death toll is provisionally around 1,000 but I think anyone who has watched that video coverage would share my fears it will be far more than that.

I read on Wikipedia that Japan has requested USAR teams from Australia, NZ, South Korea and the US. Sort of glad that we can do something to assist, after we got assistance in turn.

Otago University Politics Lecturer Bryce Edwards has been producing a daily politics summary for the last two weeks. It must take him hours to do, and is hugely useful to political junkies.

He does a summary of the major issues with his commentary, and then provides links (or pdf copies in the e-mail version) to several dozen stories that have appeared on media on blogsites. They’re helpfully grouped together by topic.

I am already quite addicted to it. While I see most of the stories that Bryce compiles, there are always a few I have not seen. I recommend you check it out every day.

Simon Collins reports in the Herald:

A Maori former solo mother who recommended free contraceptives for beneficiaries is defending her group’s report against charges of Nazi-style racism.

Sharon Wilson-Davis, a solo mother of three by the age of 21, was a member of the Welfare Working Group which proposed radical changes to the welfare system in a report last month.

Former Green MP Sue Bradford said the group seemed to be “looking to Nazi Germany for inspiration, with its underpinning ‘work makes free’ philosophy, attempted eugenic control of a portion of the population, and its potential racist implications for Maori”.

Sue Bradford is just doing hysterical name calling. Her hysteria stands in contrast to the quiet dignity of Mrs Wilson-Davis, whom Sue has effectively called a Nazi. I guess that makes her a Maori Nazi.

The group recommended work-testing almost all beneficiaries, including sole parents with no children under 3, and applying the work test after 14 weeks for parents who have another child after going on welfare. This was the only point on which the eight-member group disagreed.

The group also proposed “free long-acting reversible contraception” for parents who are receiving welfare”. Pharmac has fully funded a long-lasting hormone implant called Jadelle since August.

I’m not convinced on work testing at 14 weeks, but do agree one should not encourage parents already on full-time welfare from having further children. They have the right to do so of course, but there is no “right” to remain on welfare for 20 years when you are capable of working.

Mrs Wilson-Davis, whose Strive Community Trust runs work transition programmes for sole parents in Mangere, said on Tuesday that she supported both proposals to encourage young women to “make wiser choices”.

“Fourteen weeks is the same as paid parental leave. You are going back to work, and if you don’t like it, don’t have another child,” she said.

“What are your choices? We have a contraceptive device that is totally subsidised, so that when you are in better circumstances, if you have work or if you meet a lovely man and he’s willingto support you, fine, have twins, have whatever. But not while you are in this situation.”

The reality is 90% of families do take account their ability to pay their bills, when deciding whether to have further children. It is relatively rare now-a-days for families to have more than three kids.

Mrs Wilson-Davis, 56, was raised by her grandmother in Otara and left school at 14 because she was embarrassed by not having the correct uniform or money for books.

She married her first boyfriend at 16 because “all I wanted was to have my own place”.

When she was 21 her husband left her and their three children. She transferred to the night shift at a factory to pay the mortgage, and asked cousins to stay so they could feed the baby at 3am.

She said many young women had children because they wanted to be loved.

Welfare made people feel useless, she said, but she had seen huge changes in the women who came on her trust’s course for sole parents.

One she cited was Taina Matthews, 49, a former battered wife who is working for the trust and completing a social work degree.

“I think of one woman who was cowering in a corner when she came in. Now she has blossomed.”

So this is whom Sue Bradford is effectively calling a Nazi?

NZPA report:

Labour leader Phil Goff joked that the army should shoot looters stealing goods after the Christchurch earthquake in a radio interview.

On radio station BFM on February 28, Mr Goff talked about meeting a man in Linwood whose sister was killed in the quake, whose house had been badly damaged but then it was ransacked by looters.

“I saw the army out in the street and I thought court martial, firing squads you just can’t believe how low a small minority of people can get,” he told the radio station.

Right wing blogger David Farrar highlighted the comment on twitter.

“Interesting that Phil Goff on radio said that army should shoot looters. Wonder how his caucus feel about his law and order policy?” he wrote.

Mr Goff said it was clear he was joking.

“I was making the point that first of all I had absolute contempt for anybody who would exploit other people’s misery at a time like this but I was making a joke … It was obviously not intended to be taken seriously by anyone other than the most dim-witted National Party blogger.”

Unusual for Phil to get personal, so it must have hit a nerve.

Of course no one thinks Phil Goff was actually advocating that new Zealand bring back the death penalty, and that we abandon trials in favour of court-martials.

What is the real issue, that NZPA avoided, was contrasting what Phil Goff said with what his own MPs have said about Judith Collins far more mild comments.

Grant Robertson blogged:

 I also truly hope Judith Collins regrets her statement made in the wake of looting incidents. She was playing to the crowd of course, and I don’t think was refering directly to Arie, but it was not the calm words of leader in our community.

Now Judith’s statement was that the action of looters was “akin to ‘people who rob the dead’” and that “”I hope they go to jail for a long time – with a cellmate.”

Now while you can certainly argue the “with a cellmate” comment was un-necessary, it pales into comparison with saying they should be shot.

Now personally I think both Judith and Phil have just reacted as human beings to particularly vile behaviour.

But when Labour MPs then start to have a go at the comments, well it is entirely appropriate to point out that Labour’s own leader has made comments far beyond what Judith did. In fact could you imagine the hysteria if it was the Police Minister instead of the Leader of the Opposition who had talked about shooting looters. I imagine Labour MPs would have rushed out a plethora of statements comdemning her.

So the question that remains for me is that Grant Robertson has said that Collins’ statements were not “the calm words of [a] leader in our community. So I can only conclude that Grant also thinks that Goff’s words were not the “calm words of a leader in our community”.

Incidentially Phil Goff went on to say (you can listen below) that the looters should be shackeled to shovels and made to do hard labour for 18 hours a day. He also says he stands by those comments. Now I’ve got no problems with that view point, and I suspect the Sensible Sentencting Trust will back Phil up 100% on his views. But I do wonder about whether his caucus and the wider Labour activists are all that supportive of his “Sheriff Joe” type dialogue.

Phil Goff wants to shoot looters by whaleoil

Andrea Vance in the Dom Post reports:

Up to 65 jobs will go in a merger of agriculture and fisheries ministries and the Government is hinting more departments could be pushed together.

Workers at the Fisheries Ministry and Agriculture and Forestry Ministry were told of the move yesterday.

The Public Service Association said staff were told 65 jobs would go. They are likely to be in Wellington headquarters and regions where there are both MAF and Fisheries offices.

State Services Minister Tony Ryall said the merger would reduce “back-office bureaucracy” and save up to $10 million.

Good. Each seperate agency means the cost of a seperate IT system, a seperate HR Department, a seperate payroll system, a seperate CEO.

Speculation is rife that Treasury, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and State Services Commission may merge some functions. There are suggestions Culture and Heritage may join with Internal Affairs, which swallowed up Archives NZ and the National Library last year with the loss of 55 jobs.

I’ve said this before, but I think time is up on SSC.  Its reputation amongst the rest of the public service is not at all good, and many hold the view that it no longer adds value to the state sector.

I think one could combine SSC and DPMC together, and not only have significant cost savings but also improved performance. DPMC generally has an excellent reputation, and is well respected.

The other change which would be beneficial would be to combine all the small social policy ministrues into one Ministry of Social Policy. An MSP would have far more influence on Government decisions than all the small ministries such as Women’s Affairs.