Well I have an update on my attempt to become a camp counsellor. I have an interview set now, and everything is coming together nicely now it is just a matter of saving the money so that I can make it. I really can't wait, I am looking forward to this so much now I think I'll have a great time.
Well it appears Don Brash has fallen on his own sword twice inside a week after resigning as leader he announced at lunchtime today his resignation from parliament and that he would not be back for the new year. This was pretty much expected as he was unlikely to be wanted by many in the national party as it appeared they wanted a fresh start and a new looking team.
If someone can tell me who this brings into parliament could they post a comment and I will run a profile on them I am lost as to who is next on Nationals list
Hey I am looking for a new laptop, well not new, but secondhand and don't wanna spend too much, so if someone has one sitting around or knows of someone looking to seel one could they post a comment on here or send me an email please.
The Welsh have stopped the All Blacks doing the Haka, well not quite, but they have tried to break the pattern so the All Blacks have given the fans the big finger. Now I am more pissed at the All Blacks over this than at the Welsh. If I had been the All Blacks I would've waited to the end of the National Anthem and gone and done the Haka like Normal and said Hell to with the Welsh if they wanna kick off, go ahead the all blacks will still beat you anyway.
"So I shall name my "Front Bench aka Key Leaders for National" I believe that John Key is the right pick to lead the national party. behind him as Deputy I would pick Judith Collins as this will a) get more women attracted to National and secondly she has been one of the top players in this term in opposition. The other key members of a strong National front bench would have to be Katherine Rich, Bill English, Simon Power, Nick Smith, Gerry Brownlee, Lockwood Smith and Tony Ryall. This combination I believe would be able to lead the party to a victory in the next election. Then behind these are an excellent team still with Murray McCully, David Carter and Maurice Williamson pushing them hard. "
I said this on my blog on Sept 27th 2006, and I stick by these members as the right team to lead National now that a change is needed. here is the whole post...National Blunders
So I would like a John Key and Judith Collins team, but its not going to happen.
The Government seems to be more willing to spend taxpayer money on White Elephants like a "National" Stadium in Auckland than concentrating on making the country better for the people who live here.
The so-called "National" stadium will not be used and is more Labour trying to build a monument to their time in power than giving any benefit to the country. If Labour really cared about the people they would be spending the money they want to waste on this stadium on Healthcare education or even to stop this disgusting spiral of violence that is currently prevalent in our society.
Did anyone else know that it would be cheaper for Labour to fly 80,000 people to Sydney to watch the World Cup Final than it would be for them to build this stadium, now that is ridiculous in itself. Labour has continued with building on their ideas and not bringing about policies that will better the country, but what more could we expect from a group that use taxpayers money to get themselves reelected??
Well this is slightly unexpected, Stuff has a poll on whether parents should be able to smack their kids and it is currently running at 85% Yes and 11% No...these are huge numbers opposing the Section 59 Repeal.
What a load of bollocks, at a time when the rest of the country is screaming out for harsher sentences, we have the Labour Government increasing the use of Home Detention because it will increase savings. Well of course it will cost less to have them out in the community, but it will greatly increase the chance of them reoffending hence the social costs are much higher and then as the next step on from that if they reoffend they also cost more in the end when they end up getting punished for their new crimes...
Labour is out to make a quick buck, I say harsher sentences they say "Let them loose"
They are also extending the non-parole period to 2/3 of a sentence, but this is not going to make a difference when they are suggesting sentences cut by 25%... Hence an old 10 year sentce out after 3.3 years is now a 7.5 year sentence and they are out after 5...
Oh a very small increase and that is on a large sentence. a four year sentence out after 1.3years is now a 3 year sentence out after 2.
This is obscene... The link is here
Well here is a breaking story for all of you. Did you know that IRD charges us to make our loans interest free...??? Yup you heard it they whack on a certain amount every year as they write off our interest so its not free no matter what they try to say this is Bull, if they are going to call something free doesn't it have to be free according to the Commerce Commission???
Our Education system as it is currently stinks. NCEA has made a joke of everything, no longer do you fail you get a not achieved oh and they don't even appear on your final grade paper so you don't have to worry cause noone will see them in the future anyway. This is pathetiuc and then to top it all off our Tall Poppy syndome has extended into the class room, the top students are being punished, while yes they can get excellence if they got one easy question wrong, like I know I did in my days at school chances are they could fail the whole paper even if they get all the excellence and merit questions right, this is ludicrous and if they can use those ones as credit for lower marks then they lose the excellence that they should've got.
There needs to be a full overhaul of our education system NCEA does not work, and guess what, the one thing they said it would remove would be scaling, well it didn't even fix that they still have to scale marks...and then there are people who can get into university with pass grades in Work studies, Life Studies and "Communications English" what a load of crap. I personally think a drift back to Bursary/School C would be great, but noone would accept that so my idea is to hell with all the New Zealand Exam systems, lets use the Cambridge international exam systems...
Ok even with the spelling error I know what I am saying I think. I have decided to apply for Camp America, to be a counsellor for a camp in the States beginning in June next year and to follow this up with my travel around the states. I wanted to get into this a few years ago, but didn't have a chance so now with my extended experience I shall be able to continue and just do it. It should be a great experience as I have a great love for kids and will be able to teach them all new skills.
David Farrar has a great post on Learning from Helen and now I suppose also from Winston as his staff have burned all copies of the leaked Brash emails as they were worried about an ongoing police investigation, this is exactly what Helen's staff did when they heard about the painting forgery issue.
Now in Part II I discussed positive role models for our kids, these two are an extremely bad example of this not only did they break the law in the first place, but then they taught out youth that the best thing to do when the cops turn up is to burn the evidence or find some other way to destroy it...
And these are supposed to be the leaders of our country, great work guys.
Violence is starting at younger and younger ages, the youth of today are growing up without good role models, they are not getting taught respect or responsibility at home and the country is slowly spiraling into a dark and dirty hole. If the violence in our society continues the way it is going soon it will not be safe to walk the streets at night without a gun in your pocket.
The problems as I see it are obvious, firstly the police are no longer respected in New Zealand a lot of this in my opinion has happened since the Traffic Officers got phased out, now that cops are being petty and having to control traffic as well they are seen as not doing their job properly and the government is more worried about them as revenue gatherers. Secondly our prison senetences are a joke, 17 years for murder??? and that is not counting that they can get out earlier than that for good behaviour after as little as 7 years. Our prisons are not tough enough, some of the criminals in prison have better treatment and lives than their families including little children on the outside. This is not right and something needs to be done about it. The soft punishments for crimes in New Zealand is starting to cause the violence...a huge number of criminals reoffend so obviously the rehabilitation is not working. So my system is simple...Sentences should be firstly a DETERENT to criminals, secondly a punishment and finally a rehabilitation, but this rehabilitation should be the last third of their sentence and no matter what they should serve out the whole thing from start to finish.
These measures would actually start to deter criminals from committing crimes. As far as I know from my experience at University it is widely accepted that Humans are cost/benefit rationalising beings, therefore if the cost is too high they are less likely to commit the crimes in the first place.
But at the same time something needs to be done to make sure these kids have positive role models from an early age, even if this means communtiy leaders working within their communtities directly and noticing at risk kids early on and helping the parents to keep them out of trouble and setting them on the right path for life. we have heard in the news lately that it is the fault of Alcohol, well this is a poor tradesman blaming his tools. These criminals need to accept personal responsibility for their actions. But while saying it is not society's fault that these criminals are doing this, I think it is now society's problem and we have to deal with it as a group.
Well this is going to be nothing more than a rant and may lead to a viable discussion, but we shall see.
Right now the world is getting more violent, our school system is a joke, the government would rather spend money on a white elephant for Auckland than anything else, PC is running rife, Helen lies cheats and steals, and the rest of the Labour party can do anything and get away with it because the people of New Zealand in general are stupid.
I cannot for the life of me understand after all of the bad things that happened during the last six years how the New Zealand Public could vote Labour back into power again.
Over the last six years, Unemployment has gone down, well no actually it hasn't the total number of those unemployed has skyrocketed, Labour just found ways to put them on sickness benefits. Violent Crime has increased a lot. The PC brigade is stomping down on everything, more money is being given to minority groups even since Labour said they would stop funding based on race, oh and continuing on that line, Maori Quotas at Universities have increased. These "Reverse" Discriminations are not fair and are still discriminations and they actually end up hurting the people they are supposed to be hurting. The people they are supposed to be helping end up thinking that they are not as good as others thats why the government thinks they need these grants, quotas etc.
The Economy has not risen to the heights expected, and even though it has been risaing the whole time labour has been in power it has been steadily flattening whereas pre '96 the economy was rising something close to exponentially.
In General the Country is going to the dogs and something needs to be done about it.
Well Jeremy Clarkson has come out with a new line against all these twats of greenies, his latest one is that its all a load of codswallop, lets start with the fact of Global warming ok so we cut CO2 emmissions by 30% by 2010, yet the temperature wqill still rise, this is according to research done in britain. So no matter whether we cut our CO2 emmissions or not we will still have to find new homes for a hundred million bangledeshis.
And he goes on to say that the Greenies are just a bunch of whingers and guilt trippers. The Exxon Valdez killed something like 100,000 birds, but he pulls up statistics showing that the same number of birds are killed everyday in the world by running into plate glass, and 100,000 birds are killed every 2 days in Britain alone by the friendly neighbourhood house cat.
So all you greenies out there, come onh I wanna see an argument against this, don't blame the humble automobile, get out there and attack anyone using plate glass, or you could go all rambo on a group of cat lovers.
The greenies are more and more seeming like a bunch of scare mongers and just working to try and keep themselves on top in the world cause of course the world economy will collapse without them.
President Bush may be coming to New Zealand next year to hold a forum with the pacific leaders to try and find a way forward for the Pacific as a whole.
This has just been announced by Helen Clark, but as she says it was only an informal idea, so chances are it will never happen...Just like the Waterfront stadium
Micheal laws brought up something interesting in his column for the SST today, stating that a study was done to show that wearing a hoodie would give the youth of today Vitamin D deficiencies, and also insomnia.
I think I have finally found the cause of my insomnia I need to stop wearing my hoodie and it'll all be fixed.
YEAH RIGHT
I found the Link
Well I think it is almost fair to say New Zealand has the top two rugby teams in the world right now...
I don't think there is another team out there that could even look to compete with us. This is a scary thought though cause we were in the same position 1 year out from every world cup since 95. And we didn't win a single one of those, but all hoping it goes better this time.
With National now supporting Eden Park over the Waterfront Stadium and ACT and the Greens also, it looks like support for the Waterfront Stadium has evapourated. Only Labour and New Zealand first now support it.
I think for the Rugby world cup we will be left with just an upgraded Eden park, but I still think only Aucklanders should be paying for it as the rest of the country will not be using the stadium.
Well it turns out I was wrong, the Democrats took both houses and now have a share of power though this could always come back to bite them in 2008 when they run for president as if they haven't made some changes and tried to get out of Iraq or at least win the war they could lose because they have promised so much.
So this election result has put the Democrats on a knife edge for the lead-up to the 2008 Elections, but it'll still be a great race whether they do well or not.
As I post this polls in the USA will be beginning to close on the most exciting mid-terms since the swing of 1994.
I personally believe the Republicans will carry both houses, but with reduced majorities. The Senate will be extremely close with my pick being 51-49, way too close to call, but I needed to put my numbers out there. As for the Congress, The Republicans by 4.
This would leave Bush with a workable majority even though a lot of his own Republican candidates have tried to distance themselves from him in recent campaigning, but if they carry both houses every single one of them will coming swinging back to him.If it happens that the Democrats take just one house then Bush will be hamstrung, but knowing Bush he will come out of his corner fighting. Sources close to him have been quoted as saying he will fight the democrats on every piece of legislation, and will take the fight all the way to the supreme court if thats what it takes.
A Lame-Duck President will struggle to continue his legislative agenda and it would be hard for him to push through any major policy decisions that would affect the nation. The only policy Bush is likely to have any success with is his harsh immigration stance as a large number of members of both parties agree with him and support stricter controls.
The Dominion Post seems to think it knows the future, "The Democrats have swept the republicans out of power in the Congess..." and they followed this by saying the senate race is way too close to call. Yet as I continue to read their article it states that as many as 60 congress seats are still too close to call.
The results should start coming in within a few hours and the outcome of the election will be known. After the Result, George W. Bush will either be riding a wave through his final two years or will be fighting a war harder to win than Iraq.
Here are my results, The longer I follow politics the more right wing I become, though I still think I should be more liberal than the political compass seems to think i am.
Economic Left/Right: 6.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 0.46
Political Compass
Well here we go for introduction part II
A few lists this time. Some of my Favourite things
Movies: Matrix Trilogy, American Pie, Saw 1 & 2, Pulp Fiction, Clerks and Bad Taste.
Bands: Metallica, Blink 182, Pink Floyd, System of a Down, My Chemical Romance and Green Day
Colours: I like Blue, oh and Yellow.
Places: I really love Wellington.
Sports: Ice Hockey, Rugby, Cricket...Hell I like almost every sport
Food: Curry, Spag Bol, Pizza. I love food in general.
Books: The Belgariad, The Sword of Truth, The Dreamers.
I had fun watching FOX news last night, and following the americans reaction to Saddam being sentenced to being hung. The Shi'ites were celebrating in the streets, while in his hometown a small protest erupted as they still claim he is the rightful leader of the country.
FOX proceded to talk to a conspiracy theorist who claimed that Bush forced then judge to make a decision so he wouldn't lose control of the senate. This is most likely a load of Bull, but I must say the convienence of it is all pretty crazy. Even though perks has been sentenced, he still has his appeal, so it could be another 3 years yet before he actually hangs, yet still people are celebrating...
Well I am going to start this blog off with a little bit about myself, I will have several posts that I will refer to as the introductions and shall post permanent links to them on the main page so anyone who wants to can read up on them.
So first off I was born on July 13th 1982 in Feilding New Zealand. Feilding is a small town of about 3000 people. At the age of 4 I moved to Wanganui, which is a small city of 40,000 or so and grew up with just my Mum, the best person in the world, and my 2 brothers and one sister.
In 1999 I finished High School and went off to University in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, Here I studied and recieved a Bachelor of Arts in Politics from Victoria University. Currently I am working 3 jobs in an attempt to save enough money to head to the States in August of 2007.
I love kids and hope to have some at some point in the future as well as become rich and Famous...Well everybody can dream can't they. I enjoy life and am thinking about getting into teaching my second passion in life, as I also love politics as anyone will see by reading this blog or the archives on the old version.
to be continued...
