What should an Oranga Tamariki social worker do (when uplifting a Maori child) to help the child’s parents feel better about themselves? I pose this question after reading the Commissioner for Children’s report on the practice of ‘uplifting’ children and failing to make the parents feel better about themselves.
Here’s why we should all feel particularly glad to live in New Zealand at this time, and not only because Covid-19 has gone.
First, because we have no natural predators, and secondly the three rapacious leaders of America, China and Russia don’t think we are worth bothering with. And just in case they do happen to look our way, they will be confused by our headlines.
I don’t share the wishful thinking of those who believe the Corona pandemic will somehow lead us to a more enlightened way of thinking. As if the blight of dirty dairying, unsustainable tourism and no-tax housing investment is going to be less inviting after alert level one has come and gone.
For me; retired, no mortgage, good health, a section to wander around, family near-by and pleasant surroundings, the shut-down is nothing more than a mild inconvenience. A far cry from the experience of the many people who don’t know how they’ll get by without savings, job or secure home, never mind anxiety about the looming economic depression.
Indian students with their awards for education excellence.
It was John Cleese who made the above comment famous in regard to German guests in the 1960s television show, Faulty Towers. The theme; attempting to keep silent about guests whose behaviour or history you think deplorable is universal, which is what made the show so brilliant.
My daughter named him Popcorn, a cockatiel that came into my possession as a present some years ago. There are many things that come into the unwise-present category, and animals come near the top of the list.
Understanding India from a distance, or even close-up, is not easy. The variety of warring ethnic groups, tribes, languages, religions, casts, class and political grouping complications is bewildering. Just one of those factors, social class, makes 1920’s England look like a classless society.
We do not have a housing crisis. The housing market works perfectly for those it was designed to serve. Landlords are now protesting because the precarious position of renters has (finally) been acknowledged.
But who knows how long it will it take before the talk ends and the watered down action begins? And even then if the result resembles the government’s affordable housing fiasco where do we go from there? But we are not alone.
It will seem mean to those who think the demise of TV3 is a shame, but I’m glad it’s gone and gladder still to see the beginning of the end of all television as we have come to know it. The dying distorted remnants of what was once an entertaining, informative and artistic public service has had its day after far too many years in expelling noisy, lingering death throes.