The barbarians are in the citadel
Raifee was a passenger in the car but her and her boyfriend denied all knowledge of a point bag and laptops that were found in the vehicle.
Source: Trade Me fraud suspect released on bail, on the New Zealand Herald website
A ‘grab’ of the offending sentence, for the sake of posterity.
Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
A small price to pay
Regular readers may have noticed that I am not overly keen on the Rugby World Cup (one, two).
The cost of the Cup has hit home again this week, with the total misalignment of university breaks and the school holidays. The first two school terms were pushed out by a week each, meaning that the school holidays started this week, exactly when the second semester started at universities.
There are a fair proportion of parents working at universities, as staff, and as students. Ordinarily, we can juggle our way through the school holidays, because we don’t need to be in classes ourselves, either as teachers or students. That has long been one of the attractions of university work for me, particularly so because I am able to work a 50% job, which my boss and I have arranged in such a way that I work school hours, during term time. Child care problems solved, just like that.
Except for these school holidays. This time around, I have had to engage in a child care juggle, as well as losing the time that I usually spend with my children. I was talking to a colleague about this, but he was totally unsympathetic. “It’s a small price to pay,” he said.
Well, perhaps it’s a small price to pay, if you’re actually interested in bloody rugby. I most assuredly am not. However, I suggested to him that seeing as he regarded it as a small price, he might like to come and care for my children over the school holidays.
Funnily enough, he declined.
Fortunately for me, Greenhills University has an excellent school holiday care program, and I have been able to enrol the girls in it for some of the time. But that has cost me $297 so far.
My colleague wasn’t interested in paying that either.
Curmudgeonly complaint round-up
One
What is it with fools who want to race through supermarket carparks at high speeds? For goodness sakes, there’s kids and trolleys and cars backing in and out, and you choose to indulge your middle-aged angst by going as fast as you can?!!! Get a life. Or use the street. Or something.
Two
With respect, Mr Sarkies, Palmerston North has done no such thing, so let’s direct the provincial epithet at the place where the sign actually is going up, neh? Source: Rethink Wellywood sign – Emmy winner
Director Rob Sarkies, who made Out of the Blue and Scarfies, said the sign would be “embarrassing” and “provincial”. “It’s the sort of thing Palmerston North would do – and I have nothing against Palmerston North – but, in short, it’s provincial.”
Three
To the young cyclist who came up alongside the left hand side of my car at a roundabout, when I was indicating left, and then went straight ahead… sweetie, please, don’t do that again. Your life is valuable, and although I managed to stop in time, it was a matter of good luck. That rule about not undertaking turning vehicles? It’s there for a reason.
Four
For my academic friends: Pestiferous Blasted Rotten Farrago.
Lawn Art
I mowed the lawns today, for the benefit of our supervising neighbour.
Description: freshly mowed lawn, with the woman symbol in unmowed relief.
Description: lawn with wavy lines mowed into it.
Our neighbour does not seem to be amused.
I tried various other designs, but there’s a limit to what can be achieved with the somewhat blunt cuts made by a lawn mower. My pentagram didn’t work at all. I’m thinking that crenelations might be the go next time around, on the boundary between us and our neighbours. The symbolism would be, well, symbolic.
Get your business OUT of my kids’ classrooms
I am over the Rugby World Cup 2011 already. Especially, I am completely over the way that school children are being shoved around and preached at, all in the name of the great god rugby. The school terms have been changed around this year to accommodate the Rugby World cup, so that the first term and the second term are both 11 weeks long. Those are very long terms, with no break at all for the kids. Of course, every now and then due to the vagaries of Easter, a movable feast, the first term of the school year ends up being short (or long), and the length of the second term is adjusted to compensate for it, but two long terms in a row? That’s hard going, especially when one of them is a winter term.
But now they want it to be incorporated into the school curriculum as well.
Rugby World Cup part of school curriculum
The Rugby World Cup is set to become part of the school curriculum, and teachers are being urged to fork out for rugby-themed merchandise.
Primary school teachers will be encouraged to bedeck classrooms with strings of flags – available at $1.20 a metre – arrange school rugby tournaments and learn about international teams.
…
“Given the Rugby World Cup … is going to be the largest event New Zealand has ever staged, and it’s going to be so dominant on the televisions and in households around New Zealand, we wanted to make sure that every school-aged child had access to information about it. “
Repeat after me. Rugby is a business. Rugby is a business. Rugby is a business.
I know that all sorts of ideologies are peddled in schools, from fatuous health information to dicredited religions and ill-informed histories. But pushing a business at schools, and telling kids that they ought to be devoted to it, sticks in my craw.
The Rugby World Cup organisers talk about New Zealand being a stadium of 4 million for the tournament.
4 million minus one, I say to them.
And as the excellent Dr Cat is wont to say, “You kids get off my grass.”
