Public Address - Island Life (Home)

Staring into space | Jul 31, 2008 09:47

It would be untrue to say I was a homely looking child, but at the age of seven I got my first pair of glasses, and at that point things took a turn for the worse. They were big, horn-rimmed and dark, and they covered a large part of my face. The most calamitous break to my nose was yet to come, so the Groucho Marx effect was not as pronounced as it might have been, but it was still enough for my brother to say to Mum in despair: do I have to look at David?

At seven years of age, I was probably overdue for spectacles by three or four years. In hindsight, it was abundantly clear to the family that I needed them. "Look at the parachutes!" they would say.
"Where, where?" I would wail, squinting up into the sky.

"Look at the gliders", they would say.

"I can't see them," I would cry, in gathering exasperation.

I don't recall any of this, I should say. Mum does, vividly and often, and unduly reproves herself. She was an exemplary mother. She missed almost nothing. She lavished us with the attention of a teacher who now had a special class of three. But it wasn't until I told her that I couldn't read the school blackboard unless I was sitting right at the front that the penny dropped.

The optician in Palmerston North was a nice man who took me into a darkened room twinkling with red and green lights like some kind of land-borne aeroplane cockpit.

Perhaps at the initial visit, perhaps a later one, Mum asked about contact lenses. He solemnly described the dreadful injuries he had seen done to the wearers of these things who had been in car crashes. It was a dreadful business picking tiny shards of glass from their eyes. Until I reached my twenties I settled for spectacles: square frames, German frames, round ones like John Lennon's, but not achieving anything like that effect. Imagine. One pair was in the aviator style and was best worn by the kind of man who dried his hair with a machine.

You are doomed to repeat your parents oversights and omissions. Karren noticed the problem. Mary-Margaret said she had to sit at the front of the classroom to read the blackboard. Earlier tests at school had reported her hearing and vision to be fine, but Karren wondered if there might have been a change. It was time for another school holiday adventure.

She asked what would happen at the optometrist. Would it hurt? I reassured her. I described the aeroplane cockpit. She wondered if there might be eye drops. I told her there would not. She relaxed. I hoped for her sake that she might not need any correction. Glasses and lenses are a hassle. We thought it would be sad for her to obscure her pretty face.

We sat down in the surgery, the optometrist, Mary-Margaret and me and the test began. For the first time in 41 years I followed the progress of the letters on the chart with perfect vision, and I heard my own child's voice reading out the letters, eager to oblige, but wildly awry. It's a Y not an Q, It's a Q, not a U. My heart ached.

He drew a disclosure from Mary-Margaret which she allowed with a guilty grin. She reads books under the cover at night when Mum and Dad think she's asleep.

She can now do so with the aid of a very fetching pair of red spectacles. She chose them herself and counted the days until she could pick them up. She rang all her friends to alert them to the change they would be seeing. She fretted a little that the boys and the mean girls would tease her. The teacher astutely seized the teachable moment and encouraged the class to treat the kids with glasses with respect. The girls who already had them were thrilled with this and put their own ones back on.

Janet Digby is the manager of the See Here project. It was initiated by the JR McKenzie Trust and it asks the question: "What do we know about the state of our children's eyesight?" The answer is "not as much as we really ought to".

The way we collect data about children who have trouble with their vision seems to be pretty loose, if not sparse.

There are programmes that screen and check our children's vision, but how well do they work, and what information and support do parents get if they're told that their child needs help?

The project reports a less than perfect state of affairs.

There's no process for tracking vision-impaired children( which in this context refers principally to the ones whose vision can be fully corrected with glasses).

There is no reliable way to establish whether children have received the help they need.

If your bureaucrat-intolerance has been set to high by the PM-in-waiting then stand by to be further disgruntled. The project recommends that an agency be made responsible for finding out how well the job of screening is being done. It recommends free screening for all children under 18. It also says the B4 School Check needs a good going over. There's plenty of sensible stuff in there, and you can find it in a concise summary here.

We also learn from the report that being short-sighted tends to yield average or above average academic performance. That may well be so but I can testify that it does sweet bugger-all for your performance on a football field.

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Who Was That Masked Bag Man? | Jul 21, 2008 08:06

So farewell
Then
High Horse.

You and Winston starred in
Many daring
Adventures.
"The Wine Box."
"The Sickly White
Liberals."
"The Gravy
Train."
"The Secret
Donations."

It was like the Lone
Ranger,
Only with better
Hair.

You were a noble steed,
And I will think of
You tonight when
I give the cats their
Jellimeat.

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What it don't get, I can't use. | Jul 17, 2008 09:43

In December 1948, a Washington DC radio station asked ambassadors from a number of countries to say what they would most like for a Christmas gift.Their replies were recorded for a special holiday broadcast.

"Peace throughout the world," said the French ambassador.

"Freedom for all people enslaved by Imperialism," said the Russian.

"Well, it's very kind of you to ask," said the British ambassador. "I'd quite like a box of crystallised fruit."

If you suddenly had a billion dollars, what would you spend it on? asked Tearaway magazine of Mr Key and Miss Clark.

Helen said she'd give it to "development agencies offering education and opportunity and campaigns against HIV and AIDS in developing countries."

John said he'd quite like "a jet, a personal jet." And he'd donate some to charity.

John, John, you're not following the cue cards! Will you get it right the next time you're asked?

'Next time' came yesterday, when Wammo put the same question to him. Either John is sticking to his guns, and being his own man, or he's alert to the perils of inconsistency. "Well I told Tearaway I'd like a private jet," he laughed. "Who wouldn't?"

"Really?" asked Wammo, "You know, Helen gave all hers to charity."

"That's nice," said Candidate Key in a rather hurt and vulnerable little voice. Awkward questions seem to strangle his vocal chords. The same thing happened when he was first asked that Springbok tour question. But he was off balance for only a moment. Back he came with a good left cut: He reminded Wammo of the substantial amount he gives to charity already. He wondered how much Helen gives.

It's a free country. John Key has the right to decide for himself whether to spend his money on a private jet and of course we have the right to decide for ourselves whether we would like that in a Prime Minister.

Perhaps my ambitions are too modest, but I cannot see myself reclining in one of those things. If I had to, I'd at least want to leave CNN turned off, lest they should run any pictures of Darfur. All of us who live in relative comfort could be equally criticised for enjoying more than our share, but some of us would seem to reach gagging point a little later than others.

The people I have known who work in the world John Key once lived in are ridiculously, trivially and endlessly competitive. They brandish their trophies, they covet their scalps:

I have this.
I have a bigger one.
In your face!
Burn!

Candidate Key, the man without a non-negotiable belief, has thus far presented a puzzling empty canvas. What makes him run? A Fourth Way? A reinvented mixed economy? The West Wing? His taste for private jets suggests a simpler answer: perhaps it's trophy fever. Picture the trader buddies swapping bragging rights over drinks in Maui.

I took Merrill Lynch for a billion last month.
I took KKR for two.
I scored two supermodels and a Russian tennis player last night.

Trader John looks at them with a slow, assured, smirk of triumph.

Pussies. I just got voted Prime Minister of a country.

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Abusage | Jul 16, 2008 11:24

I would like to address a polite request to certain people.

It is the habit of these certain people to use the word 'absolutely' when what they really mean is: 'yes'.

My request is: would you mind not doing that? It makes me feel so irritated, I fear I could lash out. No excuses, except to say I have a short fuse, I get tired from working so hard, I have a lot on my plate, and there's no telling what might happen if I should hear you say it again.

Also: 'mischievous' has three syllables, not four.

And to my ear it sounds incorrect, and perhaps a little declasse, to rhyme heinous with penis.

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Courtroom 15 | Jul 10, 2008 08:56

I am the kind of father who whiles away the school holidays by taking his daughter to a murder trial. Not just any murder trial, mind. Mary-Margaret is only nine, so we settled for one involving a samurai sword, chopped hands and a hostage drama.

We could content ourselves with the mall, and a Disney movie, but there is a beckoning world for an inquiring young mind to explore. Mary Margaret asked me about Parliament. How does it work? What do they do there all day? Uh huh.

And what about court? How does that work?

"Well, you know, that's easy," I said. We could go see for ourselves." Could we? Really? Cool!

I had in mind a visit to the District Court: the doleful stream of bemused, confused, defiant; competently, briskly and irretrievably processed by The System. But then I thought: why stop there? There might be something interesting on at the High Court.

Mary-Margaret likes our Dad-and-daughter outings, but she also sometimes likes to take a friend along. She rang Belle to see if she would like to join us on a visit to the High Court. Could we? Really? Cool!

Nine year olds skip quickly towards an adventure and we are off the ferry and up past Albert Park in no time. I give them some words of caution as we arrive at the door: you'll need to be well behaved or they might not let you in. In an instant they transform themselves into sombre young women.

We walk respectfully towards the fixtures list. The IRD is pinning some taxpayer's ears to the wall in courtroom 5; in another, a dozen or so defendants whose names suggest Asian extraction are being prosecuted in a matter regarding methamphetamine. Sundry business people have fallen out with one another over money: carefree days of long lunches at Euro with sunglasses perched atop their gelled heads have given way to litigation at a cost of many hundreds of dollars per hour as they hold one another's feet to the fire.

Entertaining as all that might sound, I know it may seem dry to my young charges. But a criminal trial, well now, that's another matter. The Dixon trial needs no introduction to most grownups in this little nation of ours, I'm sure, but it warrants careful explanation to tender young souls. I tell them that this case will probably be a very good example of a jury trial, but it could be scary. If it is, we shall get up and leave. I am not, despite the contrary evidence so far, a reckless or irresponsible parent. I am in fact proceeding with caution.

Up we go to courtroom 15. The High Court is to the District Court what the boutique hotel is to the backpackers lodge; quiet, warm, smoothly functional. We pad along carpeted quiet corridors past a well appointed interview room where Barry Hart has an entertained smile and is in amiable conversation with someone.

We push open the door and take three seats at the back of the courtroom. A woman is unpacking her laptop at the Press bench. The registrar is moving about the desks. The reporter gives the girls a cheerful and somewhat amused smile. I explain that we're spending this sunny morning of the school holidays taking a civics lesson. If it's scary, we're leaving, I tell her. I'm really not a creepy Dad. She reassures us: no need to worry. This morning's witness is a policewoman. She was the senior sergeant who was negotiating with the defendant while he was holding a man hostage. We are reassured by this and I begin to answer the girls' questions. This modern, small, courtroom with windows doesn't look like they thought it would, they say. Not like the movies.

In sweep the senior counsel. Barry Hart's smile has given way to a rather more determined and serious expression. Simon Moore has a jaunty scarf wrapped around his neck and is ebullient. He sees the girls and breaks out in a wide smile. To their delight he comes across and welcomes them. He describes what they'll be hearing and seeing this morning. The better to illustrate this, he goes to his desk and brings back a replica of an exhibit of crucial importance: the weapon the defendant is alleged to have been training on the hostage. The girls' eyes are now as wide as saucers. He tells us that they will be playing a tape of the conversation between the negotiator and defendant. Their eyes are wider again. He also tells us that the defendant has been creating a little bit of a ruckus downstairs so we might not be getting underway on time. There are also some matters to be heard in chambers - which process he explains to the girls - and so we may have to wait outside for a little while. He introduces the girls to the police officer in charge of the courtroom and reassures them that he will look out for them. Sure enough, a moment later, the registrar tells us we must now go out and wait.

Oddly enough the very reassurance he offered seems to have unsettled my brave little girl. She has become a little tremulous at the notion of a bad man being at liberty in the courtroom. Belle and I reassure her that she will be quite safe, however we need not go back in if she would rather not. We talk it through and she decides she will take a look and if it's not right, we'll go.

The door opens. In we go. I give Mary Margaret a reassuring squeeze of the hand. She immediately sees that all is calm. She relaxes. "Where is he?"she asks after a few minutes. I point out the close cropped head three rows ahead of us flanked by two security guards and a third behind. She nods, satisfied now. We listen to the Senior Sergeant work her way through a remarkable scenario. A man whose words sound by turns perturbed, calm, confident, desolate. She guesses he was doing 90% of the talking. Her role was to talk her way towards a satisfactory resolution. Every few minutes I check: are you okay?: They are most assuredly okay. This is fascinating.

Barry Hart raises a number of objections: these are leading questions surely? Finally we are once more sent out while the matter is discussed in chambers.

The girls have many questions. I explain the rules of evidence, the nature of a jury trial, the reason we have a rule of law and the way it has developed. We talk about how it would be if someone could simply accuse you of a crime and throw you in jail, with no system that permitted you to defend yourself. We are having a splendid morning of civics education and they are intrigued. They are also, Mary-Margaret cheerfully tells me, perfectly glad to be watching this. It's not even a bit scary Dad.

In we go again, and now it's time for the tapes to roll. Wireless headsets are passed out to the jury, the press, the officers of the court and instructions are given by the registrar. The on/off switch is here at the bottom, the volume control is here.The tape is somewhat scratchy but we can nevertheless make out the two voices, the tenor of their exchanges. The Senior Sergeant, however, has noticed that we have come in after the start, and missed a page of transcript. "You're lucky," the judge tells her, "at least you can hear it." The headphones are not working.

To the girls' vast amusement, a familiar scene is playing out here. Adults are having difficulty with simple technology. The girls know, from much experience, that if they had a headset, their little fingers would have gone unerringly to the right button. Their respect for authority is not undone by this, but they are perhaps reassured to find that even in these lofty surroundings, the grownups are just like the ones at home who can't set the VCR.

After an hour they are still agog, but their little stomachs are calling them. We adjourn for an early lunch. As we walk along the street they enthuse about the experience they have had. One part of the evidence has resonated with Mary-Margaret. The Senior Sergeant had recounted how Dixon had said he had nothing left to lose. He was going to jail for a very long time, he had no family who cared about him. She thought that was terribly terribly sad. You might say that the bleeding heart liberal has raised another, but I judged it to be her own empathetic nature at work. I love her for it.

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John Key: ambitious enough for web designers? | Jul 04, 2008 09:32

John Key tells you "This year Sparc will spend $5.5 million on its website." What is your response? Do you harden in your resolve to vote out those wastrels? Do you say to yourself "How can I get me some of that gravy"? Do you think: "They do good research work at Crosby Textor"? Perhaps you say to yourself. "Can you give me a little more information please, Mr Key"?

I'm ambitious for New Zealand too, and just like John I hate to see my hard earned tax dollars wasted. But I don't have access to expensive consultants. I have to rely on the public service to give me my research material. I got on the phone to SPARC and said to them: "Can you give me a little more information please?"

What did I learn? I learned that SPARC are not spending 5.5 million this year on their website. They are, however, planning to spend almost as much as that on two website projects, both to do with their Mission-On programme.

What is Mission-On, then, and how much are they spending on these two projects?

The hope is that they can do something about all the kids who are eating the wrong food and not getting enough - or any - exercise. Precisely what John Key was lamenting in his speech. Can a website make such things happen? Surely not. Next you'll be telling me people will use it to buy a house and get a job and hook up for sex and change their career and learn how to make a pipe bomb.

Let's just assume for the moment that it might work. How much might it cost? SPARC has costed two projects for two age projects. Next slide please.

5-12 year olds 
The amount budgeted for 2008/09 for this initiative to maintain the website and constantly update the content is $1.6m.

13-24 year olds (concepts still in development)
We are currently researching and developing technology/popular media concepts which look at the best ways to encourage this age group to increase physical activity and make healthy nutrition choices.
The amount budgeted for implementing this initiative in 2008/09 is $3.5m.

This would be the point where you say sarcastically, oh well if it's just 1.5 and 3.5 mill for two websites, then that's alright. Humour me, though, for a moment as we consider the question How long is a piece of string?

If you want to make a website that gathers together the names of all your friends and your favourite bands, you can do that for the cost of precisely nothing, and Rupert Murdoch will happily take your registration.

If you want to make a website that makes you money, well now we're getting into rarer air. It may cost you nothing more than the value of your own personal toil, and I speak from personal experience when I say that that figure can quickly grow quite large. Various commentators have averred this week that TradeMe grew to the impressive scale it did with the labour of no more than a couple of dozen savvy young men and women and surely cost nothing like 5 million.

I have the greatest admiration for anyone who can parlay a website into a three quarters of a billion dollar success story, but it has to be said that TradeMe also sits on the shoulders of the inspired thinking of others. The concept was not new. The reason New Zealanders use TradeMe rather than E-Bay is that a killer idea was refined adapted and implemented in a superior way to meet the needs of the local market.

Mission-On doesn't have that head start. Of all the things you had to achieve using a website, getting kids active would surely be one of the tougher gigs. However it does stand to reason that with kids spending so much time in front of screens that would be the smart place to go looking for them. But what to do when you get their attention? There's really no familiar territory to cover, no proven formula to emulate. There's a lot of thinking to be done.

That calls for time and money and expertise. And to the chagrin of the hapless web designer who takes on this very public project there is the sure prospect that in the same way that people will stand in an art gallery and declare "My 4 year old could do that" there will be an army of weekend html coders who will stand ready to declare that they could do the job by Sunday night for two dozen Steinlagers.

What might burn the dollars? Here's a stab, working on some back of the envelope guesses with people who do this kind of work.

Research: Before you actually make the site, you'll need to find out what you're dealing with. You'll need to talk to the kids. Ka-ching.

Development: Once you've done your research, you're going to have to work up the killer ideas. Much talking, much thinking, much brainstorming. Can't be avoided. Ka- ching. Ka-ching. The result in this case could be described as a site that's a combination of social networking and personal banking for kids, with interactive games that encourage them out the door and down to the park by sharing ideas and challenging one another to get active.

Set up some focus groups: Once you've worked out what you're going to do you'll need to try out the ideas on the kids and see if you've got it right.Ka-ching Ka-ching.

The grunt work: Then you get to the actual work of making this stuff, and it's not just a few pages of bog-standard coding.The Mission-On site is your typical modern elaborate site, and that tends to be the work of not just one hard working coder but the output of a whole team of designers and programmers. Ka-ching ka-ching and whose turn is it to order the pizza and V?

Keeping order: The whole thing runs as a membership site, with extensive moderation as befits a government site that has kids talking to each other - which means you need moderators, and of course backend database support for the membership system. Ka-ching ka-ching and that language is not acceptable in here, MatthewH.

Tuning it: You'll need to do user testing to make sure it's working right. Ask the people at Xero how much effort they continue to put into that aspect of their operation. Xero is a useful point of comparison. On one level, it's just a website too, but they would say it's also much more than that, and rightly so. They could also say they're a listed company running a service that stands to change the way many small business owners run their enterprise. You might not go so far as to say that it's life-changing, but it's certainly habit-changing and I would happily call it a joy to use. I would also say they seem to be doing a highly competent job of applying the 15 million they raised from their float, but if you wanted to be hard on them you might simply say that's a hell of a lot of money to spend on a website.

In that context, 1.5 million for what's been done so far might still look on the high side, but if it can actually get the kids of that age group into healthy activities, then the payback could be substantial. Let's say you save 100 kids from diabetes. That would probably put us taxpayers ahead on the deal, on a crude arithmetic calculation. In reality, you might hope for something substantially better in payback. Sitting next in the ledger is the 3.5 million still to be spent on a project for the older age group. It sounds like a hell of a lot more, but why don't we wait and see what they actually make before we discard it out of hand? If it were 5.5 million for a simple website that said Welcome to SPARC and click here for our news releases, then you would have an honest-to goodness rort outrage on your hands, but what if this should turn out to be a device that ultimately reduces the burden on the long-suffering taxpayer? Is it still a waste then, even if the people who produced it have been paid handsomely?

Wherever you look, you can see waste at first blush. Take, for example, the more than 3 million dollars the taxpayer spends each year funding the staff of the Leader of the Opposition. For 3-plus million, all we've got so far is 15 policies and most of them warmed-over platitudes, light on detail. I understand, if Winston Peters' information is reliable, that there might even be a website designer on the staff list. Who knows what they do all day?

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